Sociology examines how our behavior individually and in groups is influenced by social processes and what that means. In fact once you start seeing things with a sociological perspective – things will never be the same. It’s knowing how and why we do what we do that engages us with the world around us and makes us more effective agents for social change. However, sociologist C. Wright Mills describes sociology as “the intersection of biography and history?” A lot of you may wonder what he mean: well from my studying and perspectives; The reason why he say sociology is the interception of biography and history is because, Biography: happens to individuals and History: happens to society. For example, every
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.
Marx believed that societies grew and changed due to struggles of different social classes. Durkheim believed in studying the “social facts,” which would help determine if a society was healthy or pathological. Weber’s focus on the structure of society included the elements of class, status and power. Each sociologist had a great influence in the field of sociology, but took different approaches to studying societies. Sociology enables us to understand how society functions and under which circumstances.
Social policy is government principles and legislation designed to deal with social problems like crime and poverty. However opinions from sociologists all vary on this matter because some believe that their research should feed into policy; whereas others are in the opinion that sociologists must find out what is happening, why it is happening and what can be done to solve the problem. There are many things that influence sociology on policy for example globalisation and policy preferences of the government at the time. This essay is going to examine the relationship between sociology and social policy. Positivists and functionalists such as Durkheim and Comte view sociology as a science and they argue that sociology can discover all the social problems.
‘Assess the usefulness of Social Action Theory to our understanding of Society’ (33 marks) Social action theories are radical opposites of structural theories. Structural theories commonly view people as ‘puppet’s’ of the social system, passively and unthinkingly playing out their lives as determined by pre-existing social laws. The main disagreements between this social structure is that Functionalists emphasise the benefits for the entire society, whilst others believe that it is only beneficial to one type of group, via means of production; these are Marxists or Feminists. Social action theories have an issue with determinism, they alternatively believe that people within society are social actors and have free will, consciousness, meanings and motives. Social action theorists believe that illusion of a stable and constant society is slightly more than hundreds of individual interactions each carried out by choice and interpretation.
While some common-sense statements can be true and are able to be supported with evidence, it is best to examine them critically before accepting them as fact. The Sociological Imagination is centred around critical thinking and differs vastly from from common-sense explanations. The Sociological Imagination is a concept developed by American sociologist C. Wright Mills and is used to allow sociologists to “grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world” (Mills, 1959, page 4). It asks us to question how society has ended up the way it has and our own positions within society. To use our Sociological
This is done instead of having findings that are objective. Social psychology has a high number of main ideas but some of them are: 1) how the attitudes of people, biology, social influences, and personalities shape a person’s behavior; 2) how social reality is constructed individual; 3) a person’s social intuition; and 4) how the principles of social psychology is able to be used in everyday life (Myers, 2010). Social reality is constructed with materialistic assumption which understands that a subjective interpretation of the world is separate from an objective world. However, viewing reality can only happen by looking through a lens of a person’s individual beliefs and values. Even more, social intuition is the power being having a snap judgment about a person and it also becomes dangerous after reasoned
As societal patterns change and influence everyone and everything around them, they may not affect many as badly as they affect others. We therefore need the ability to see things through other people’s perspectives, to understand their point of view and how society affects it. This is done by using ones “Sociological Imagination” otherwise known as your sociological perspective. It enables us to see life through the eyes of others and understand where they are coming from. C. Wright Mills wrote that the task of sociology is to understand the relationship between an individual and the society they live in.
‘Our ethical decisions are merely the result of our social conditioning’. Discuss. The base of our ethical decisions can only be described as a mystery to a non-philosopher, but debates have taken place between many philosophers determining whether our decisions are due to having free will, or if everything we do is pre-determined anyway. Libertarianism is the view that human agents can, when faced with a moral choice, freely act and retain moral responsibility for that act. However determinism take an opposite view to this; hard determinism is the theory that everything in the universe, including all human actions and choices has a cause which proceeds it.
n sociology there are several ways of defining sociology. Sociology is also know as a social science. It stands for looking at at the social structure of an organization. Also, it looks at the the pattern of behavior, institutions, and the context that sets up the circumstances where the behavior takes place. Sociology is a perspective way of thinking, where people tend to overlook different situations.