Sharing the same culture integrates individuals into society by giving them a sense of solidarity with others. In which this enables members to agree on goals and how to achieve them, this would result in allowing them to act and co-operate harmoniously, through social order. Functionalists believe that society could be studied scientifically. They study society on a macro scale, in which they generalise their ideas to the overlooking society, they study human behaviour and how it is shaped by the social structure i.e they look at what education does for society as a whole not just an individual. Functionalists views society is like an organism, they view it as a social system of interconnected parts, for example like the human body and how it functions, i.e the body needs the heart and lungs and brain to work together to stay alive.
Functionalism is a macro, structuralist theory. This means they see human behaviour being shaped as an influence of social forces. It is also seen as a consensus theory, as functionalists’ argue that, individuals are socialised into a shared value to ensure conformity and social order. However, this functionalists approach is criticised by action theorists, as they argue that individuals create society through their interactions. Unlike other functionalists, Parsons argues that individuals are integrated through socialisation and social order.
The world and culture is founded on the social construction of reality. How people perceive society to be has an influence on how society actually is. Our views affect how we treat other people and our actions toward them influence their actions and how they treat us as well. Different situations that take place in our lives and ones’ social interactions are the basis on which we choose what type of dispositions we take, who we take them with, and the setting in which these interactions occur. One’s life experiences can lead to a person's "construction of reality" by living the realities of everyday life.
Theorists such as Talcott Parsons and Karl Marx have both came up with theories for why they believed norms are needed in society. According to Parsons, norms dictate the interactions of everyone with social encounters in a society. On the other hand, Marx believed that norms were used to promote the creation of roles in society which allows for people of different levels of social classes to be able to function properly. He also claimed that this power creates social order. As humans we learn when and where it is appropriate to say certain things, what actions to use and how to dress around certain groups.
There are various ways to implement such things. In other words we can say some special type of behavior is expected from members of society. Such expected or controlled behavior is called social control. Social control refers to social mechanisms that regulate individual and group behavior, leading to conformity and compliances to the rules of a given society or social group. Many mechanisms of social control are cross-cultural, if only in the control mechanisms used to prevent the establishment of chaos or anomie.
Hence, microsociology’s objects of interest are individuals, who shape ‘our everyday realities’ as these realities are ‘socially constructed’. (Macionis and Plummer, 2012: 208). Microsociology demonstrates the accomplishment that is social order, ‘which provide the social context or conditions under which people act’ (Layder, 1994: 4). It is formed from people’s everyday interactions and exists in norms, customs, traditions and regulations. Social order plays a significant part in regulating and organizing peoples’ way of living within society.
The macro-sociological perspective broadly examines society paying close attention to the dynamics of social structure. The social structure of a society is analyzed through the lens of different groups within society and the patterns among and between them. Therefore, this implies that our behaviour is shaped and guided by social structure. Social structure consists of many different elements but is impacted heavily by the effects of social institutions. These include things such as the family, education, the justice system, the mass media etc.
In this sense, who humans beings are, what they believe, and how they came to be, have all been influenced by society. Society has formed human nature to a point that is hard to argue against. ELABORATE/MORE EVIDENCE. To determine the social coordination/organization of society, Benedict stems many of her claims from observations of three groups: the Zuñi, Dobu, and Kwakiutl. In order to determine social coordination/organization, Benedict claims, “we need detailed information about contrasting limits of behaviors and the motivations that are dynamic in one society and not in another” (229).
Definition In practical terms symbolic interactionism is a theoretical perspective that argues that humans communicate through a world of complex symbols and engage in intricate interpretative work that actually creates the social world. It recognizes that individuals are not passive in making meaning and establishing social order and therefore offers a non-traditional angle on social reality. Researchers can therefore use symbolic interactionism to not only explore how we go about creating our selves, but also how we go about shaping society (O’Leary, 2007). The aim of symbolic interactionism is to discover the meanings of the individuals involved in a given social situation. This leads to the adoption of methods of research which yield qualitative rather than quantitative information (eds.
P1 Sociology is the study of human social behaviour, especially the study of the origins, organization, institutions, and development of human society. Sociology studies society and this is when there are lots of different types of people living in the same environment. An important part of sociology is culture, this refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions which are shared by a large number of people. Another important part of sociology which is included in culture is values and beliefs. Our values are what are important to us; these are what we have for example quality, honesty, education.