Sociological Perspective P1

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P1: Explain the principal sociological perspectives Functionalism Functionalism is one of the major theoretical perspectives in sociology; it is also the oldest but most dominant. It views society as a system of interconnected parts. It is described as using body parts such as the brain, lungs and heart which all work together to be able to keep the body alive. Each function within society holds its own values and policies and each plays a big part, in order to make society work, each function must work together to keep society running smoothly, if one function was to have a problem it would affect society as a whole. An example of this would be a school, police, medical and social services all being important in their own right but it…show more content…
A social interaction is a face to face process between two or more people, the interaction involves, actions, reactions, communication and a mutual concept of each other’s body language and mannerisms. The goal of interactionism is merely communication with others. One person would observe the others behaviour and adapt their own communication skills to return the communication. For example, if you wanted to communicate with a deaf person, you would identify immediately that either sign language or lip reading would be the most appropriate way of communicating. All individuals have different attitudes, values, cultural and religious beliefs, however in such a diverse society it is important to understand a minimal amount of knowledge about others beliefs in order to all come together in society. An example of this is a white Christian boss allowing his Muslim employee to pray during work hours. P2: Explain different sociological approaches to health and ill health In this part of my assignment I will take two sociological perspectives and explain the different approaches to health and ill health in both classes. In Marxism there are two major social classes in society. One of these classes is the ‘higher’ class, which is classed as the people that are well off; have good careers e.g. having their own business and land. The other class are the ‘lower’ class, also known as the ‘working’ class, which have to work hard for…show more content…
Biomedical model makes a cure the priority within health care services. Health is determined by the “absence of disease”. The reason for national health services are to find cures for already existing diseases and or an illness. After researching the illness enough to find out how to cure it, they then give out medication to cure the illness. Sociologists find that doing all the research needed to find a cure is a limitation of the model. The biomedical model also has a link to functionalism, and example of this linking would be a family man, who works hard to put food on the table for his family, to fall ill which would cause the family to run differently and not as they would normally do. In the absence of the family man, he would go to health care services to quickly cure his illness to make his family run normally once
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