The New Right is a conservative, political perspective that shares similarities with Functionalism (e.g. believing some people are more naturally talented than others) but contradicts it in arguing that the state should have less involvement in society (e.g. by cutting welfare). Durkheim saw modern industrial society as based on a complex division of labour which promotes differences between groups, weakening social solidarity. He argued that the resultant freedom to the individual must be regulated by society to prevent extreme egoism from destroying all social bonds.
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. He sees some similarities between society and a biological organism i.e. body parts are inter-related, so is society, as different institutions assist in socialisation. However, over socialization, as Durkheim argues, could be a motive to suicide as individual tends to put others before themselves.
Methods of micro sociology include symbolic interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology. However there is opposing argument as macro sociologists think the opposite as although they concentrate on individuals as well they also look at families and other larger groups in society in which an individual is part of. Weber a social action theorist believes people hold meanings about the world and consciously act on the basis of meaning. He saw behaviour in terms of the meanings people action to actions and classified them into four types. Instrumentally rational action is when a goal is not desirable but an induvidual still works out the best way to reach it.
Though this is often difficult as social facts tend to be unnoticeable therefore sociologists must avoid being bias when developing their theories and concepts. Positivist Popper suggested in his theory of falsification that in order for something to be regarded as a valid science it must try to disprove their hypothesis. He believed that science can never have absolute truth, but the longer it can go without being falsified the truer it is. He rejects
they consider crime and deviance, ahead of a certain level to be dysfunctional to society, as it is seen as threat to social order. However, they believe a certain amount of crime and deviance is not only ‘normal’ but also healthy to all societies according to Durkheim. Strain theory, Merton wrote an article entitled Social Structure and Anomie. Merton offered a social rather than a psychological or biological explanation. It was a structuralism theory as it saw the structure of society shaping people's behaviour.
How and why have socialists endorsed collectivism? Socialism defines collectivism on the grounds that human beings have all the capacity of human being for collective action. In this way, socialists reject the liberal idea of a self-sufficient and self-contained human creature as well as 'atomised society'. A collective, unified collection of social creatures is capable of overcoming social and economic problems by drawing on the power of the community rather than individual effort. Socialists, therefore, endorsed collectivism to strenghten the idea of fraternity - society is desired to work together while being bounded by sympathy and comradership, that are believed to symbolise the the bonds of common humanity.
Functionalism, Marxism and Feminism are all sociological theories that all take a structuralist approach to society. They all agree that society shapes us. However, their views on how this is achieved are very different. Functionalism is a consensus approach and focusses on everyone agreeing on the same shared values and functional prerequisites. On the other hand, Marxism and Feminism are both conflict approaches and believe not everyone agrees or has the same shared values, but that they are forced upon us.
Freedom within the market means freedom of choice, e.g. the ability of a business to choose what goods to sell, and the consumer to choose what good or services to buy. These relationships are therefore voluntary and contractual as they are made by self-interested individuals. Economic theory therefore drew on utilitarianism, the notion that human beings are essentially egoistical and bent on material acquisition. The thought of classical economics was that although each individual is materially self-interested, the economy itself is said to operate according to a set of impersonal pressures; market forces that tend to
How do human actors so construct the world that their products come to appear as things? Why does the social world seem real to people? Throughout the book and in the Conclusion we find arguments that emphasise this dual nature of social life, the way in which social structures and individual consciousnesses are not separate but interlinked. We also find an attack on both functionalism and ‘later Marxism’ for giving a one-sided, distorted picture of this interlinking — functionalism reifies the social system, ‘later Marxists’ have reverted to a crude economic
Postmodernists reject this view of Marxism, that we still live in a two-class society and the claim that education reproduces class inequality. Postmodernist sociologists such as Morrow and Torres see class divisions as no longer important and that society is now much more diverse and fragmented. Marxist approaches are useful in exposing the ‘myth of meritocracy’. They show the role that education plays as an ideological state apparatus, serving the interests of capitalism by reproducing and legitimating class inequality. However, postmodernists criticise Bowles and Gintis’ correspondence principle on the grounds that today’s post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force from the one described by Marxists.