Q. 1 Solution:
Perspectives
Level of Orientation
Prominent theorists (any two )
Basic assumptions/ideas(any two)
Functionalism
Macro
Talcott Parsons Rober K. Merton
1. The general interrelatedness or interdependence of the system’s parts; 2. The existence of “normal” state of affairs, or state of equilibrium, comparable to the normal or healthy state of the organism; and 3. The way that all parts of the system reorganize to bring things back to normal
Conflict
Macro
Karl Marx Max Weber
1. People have number of basic “interests,” things they want and attempt to acquire. Common to all. Nothing specified. 2.Power is the core of social relationships. 3.Values and ideas are seen as weapons used by different groups to advance their own ends rather than as means of defining a whole society’s identity and goals.
Social Exchange/Rational Choice
Micro and Macro
George Homans Peter Blau
1. People more or less act rationally and on the bases of their interests. 2. Rewarding exchange of interactions are repeated. 3. Reward can be basis for rational choice. 4. Continual exchange of actions makes people conditioned. 5. Emergence of patterns of social exchange . 6. Enables sociologists to predict patterns of behavior on both small and large scales.
Interactionism , i. Phenomenology, ii. Ethnomethodology
Micro
George Mead Herbert Blumer, i. Alfred Schutz, ii. H. Garfinkel
1. Emphasis on face to face interaction of humans rather than on the working of the social system as an abstract entity. 2. Emphasis on meanings rather than functions i.e. sociology has to be an interpretive science. 3. Emphasis on lived experience rather than an abstracted concept of society. Focus on the way human agents experience regularized patterns of social interaction, and support them.
Question: Explain the ways that your micro-level social world of relations with family and friends is influenced by macro-level structures or cultural influences of the wider environment? 04
Solution:
The structures and patterns of the macro-level social world help constrain and shape our behavior through “micro” system in which we are involved. This mutual interdependence of individuals’ micro-level social actions and macro-level social structures is particularly important in analyzing recurrent or general patterns of behavior that are widespread throughout society. Such patterns can be analyzed independently of particular individuals in their local contexts.
For example, sociologists or social theorists may be interested in explaining how changing birth rates may be related to the state of the economy or general cultural attitudes toward children, even though individual decisions to have or not to have children will reflect personal choices that are not at all oriented consciously toward trends in birth rates or the overall state of the economy or the culture. Similarly, social theorists may seek to understand patterns of upward or downward socioeconomic mobility in a society without reference to particular individuals who are trying to
“get ahead” or “get by” in terms of their own personal well-being. From the standpoint of particular individuals in their local settings, the overall structures and dominant cultural patterns of a society may be taken as background or context, and their primary focus is the specific situation in which they find themselves. However, to understand society itself, sociological analysis at the macro level must focus on the major institutions of society as well as differences among people such as those based on social class, race/ethnicity, gender, or age. This means that our analyses of major institutional structures must be linked with an understanding of how individuals are stratified into various socioeconomic classes and numerous other categories that distinguish them from one another.
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