Assignment task:
Module: Looking at Social Phenomena
After studying the content of this module. Select a social phenomenon or institution you would like to study. Select three sociological theorists mentioned in this module or find others in the virtual library. Create a table that will show how each of the theories selected would interpret your chosen institution or phenomenon.
Module: Principles of Sociology I
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was considered a philosopher. Before sociology was considered a science, it was more looked at as a branch in the humanities. Comte's idea was rational planning of society will solve its problems (Osborne, 2000). There was this thing called society that came to be more defined as we gathered in cities and cities grew. But nobody had stopped to think about how the whole thing was put together. There were many social challenges to overcome, but to face these problems we needed to start looking at society and define what it was. What was the nature of the social interactions among the member of a given society? How do changes occur in society? What types of things can we change in society? How?
Comte and the positivists thought they could figure out society by looking at it and experimenting. If they could figure out what was the nature of society, then they could propose ways of dealing with social problems. But this was a big claim. Society is not static. It has too many variables at work and each of those variables affects others.
The beginnings of sociology were enthusiastically influenced by the evolutionary theory put forward by Darwin. They call it Social Darwinism. It implied that some societies, usually Western societies, were superior to others (Osborne, 2000). Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) for example suggested that through evolutionary theory we could explain social development. Emile Durkheim (1859-1917) proposed society as a social moral system and attempted to explain society by studying suicide and how suicides were influenced by the society in which they occurred.
It has been hard to pin down society. There are so many variables and contingencies involved in the fabric that makes society, that it is almost impossible to figure out a way in which we could get to the essence of what social interactions are about.
Psychology had an advantage over sociology. Psychology did experiments and so it was recognized as a science. But psychology is focused on human behavior, trying to study and understand the nature of human thought. Sociology is interested in how human behavior relates to social forces like religion, the economy, and others.
Schools of Social Thought
As different thinkers developed their theorists on what the social is, their followers take further these studies and turn them into schools of thought. One of those was Karl Marx. Marx was able to discover that society was not just interactions among its members. Marx saw society in conflict because of the way the economy was structured. Most of the members of society did not own the means of production. A small minority controlled what was produced and the rest of the members of society only had their time and energy, in short, their life, to offer in exchange for jobs. Marx argued that morality, religion, government, and even philosophy were part of an ideology developed by the owners of the means of production to keep the majority unaware of their potential. "[P]eople's commonsense views of the world were colored by the ideology or viewpoint of the dominant groups in society, and that this produced false consciousness" (Osborne, 2000). Marx's approach was "historical materialism". Wealth and power were unequally distributed. Most of us are alienated as we comply with the current ideology established by the owners of the means of production. Capitalism, which is the system dominant in the world, needs most of the members of society to be alienated.
Contrary to Marx, Max Weber (1864-1920) argued that religion was not a drug. For him, Protestantism was an example of how religion could be "progressive and lead to social change (Osborne, 2000)." Bureaucracy and rationalization were welcomed by Weber in his approach to society. He understood that societies become bureaucratic as they rationalized their set structures. The "big brother syndrome" (Osborne, 2000).
Sociology of the family
One of the specialties of sociology, for example, in to study the family. What are families? What do families do? How do families work? Sociologists study family lives, histories, composition, and other family-related phenomena like divorce, single parents, stepparents' relationships, and others.
For example, in the 19th-century, families were larger. There were more extended families. The members of the family stayed within the home. Even if they got married or were working, they supported and assisted each other. In the 20th century, families were smaller. The family was called the "nuclear family". Structural functionalism understood that this worked. All these parts contributed, and the media spread the idea that a nuclear family was the normal family. For Talcott Parsons, there were two essential functions of the family, primary socialization and stabilization of adult maintaining routine (FMG 2005).
But Marxist theory took a different look at families and demonstrated that the nuclear family was also part of the bourgeoisie scheme to perpetuate the values of the owners of the means of production. Another theory that was in conflict base was the feminist theory. The feminist theory showed that women's roles were again based on the ideology created to keep the status quo. The ideal family was man, woman, children. But there was a dark side to family life. Feminist theory demonstrated that there are other roles women could play within society, and it did not need to be just that of "wife", or mothers "gendering" the next generation. It is during the late sixties that domestic violence became an open issue that could be discussed, and the first women refugees showed up.
If we want to study the family now, we will have to include diverse forms of "families". Marriage has changed. Some people live together before they get married. Some people never get married and just live together. Having children is not the reason to get married anymore, as it was thought before. Marriage is less permanent. People get divorced faster. Most people wait longer to get married. If they decide to have children, they have fewer children than previous generations. There are homosexual marriages now legalized in most developed countries. Fathers are more involved in the rearing of the children and domestic activities. Mothers go out to work. There is less community life and there are more single-parent homes.
Families are plural. We went from looking at "the family" to studying "families". The theory mostly used in this approach is interactionism. We will need to understand how the economic structure of society influences the structure of modern families. How much does society influence the families, and how much do the families influence society?