Theoretical Perspectives: Functionalism
Key Ideas:
  • Purpose and Needs
  • Organismic Analogy
  • Consensus Theory (value consensus)
  • Social Structure (Macro approach)
  • Social Solidarity
  • Collective Conscience
  • Institutions (Functional interdependence)
  • Social system
  • Functional sub-systems: Economic. Political. Family/Kinship. Cultural
  • Functional Imperatives (GAIL):

    Goal Attainment
    Adaptation
    Integration
    Latency (Pattern maintenance)
  • Latent and Manifest functions (Merton)
  • Dysfunctions

Key Names: Durkheim, Parsons, Merton, Malinowski

Key Criticisms:

  • Supports political and economic status quo (everything has a function)
  • Over-emphasis upon the "beneficial" aspects of institutions, structures.
  • Difficult to explain rapid social change
  • Tautology (a statement that contains its own proof): "If something exists it has a function. It has a function because it exists…").
  • Error of reification (Belief that non-human things like "society" can have human qualities such as" needs and purposes").

Key Critics: Any Marxist sociologist, Radical Feminists, Marxist Feminists.
Theoretical Perspectives: Marxism

Key Ideas:

  • Traditional (Instrumental) and Neo-Marxist types
  • Social class (economic - Ownership of the means of production)
  • Class conflict
  • Ruling class / Subject classes (Exploitative social relationships)
  • Class consciousness and False Consciousness
  • Social Structure (Macro approach)
  • Institutions
  • Alienation
  • "Ideological State Apparatuses" (ISAs) - Althusser
  • "Repressive State Apparatuses" (RSAs) - Althusser
  • Hegemony
  • Economic base (or infrastructure) and Political / Ideological superstructure
  • Classes and class fractions
  • Critical of Capitalism

Key Names:Marx, Althusser, Gramsci, Poulantzas, Milliband, Hall, Taylor, Walton and Young.

Key Criticisms:

  • Unscientific (the "Faith of Marxism" - Popper)
  • Conspiracy theory (especially aimed at Instrumental Marxists)
  • Communism does not appear imminent
  • Left Functionalism (Jock Young: argues most "Marxism" is little more than form of Functionalism that replaces interests of "society" with "ruling class").
  • Subjective beliefs and interpretations of individuals ignored (Weber)
  • Economic determinism
  • Forms of (non-economic) conflict (gender, ethnic group) ignored in favour of economic conflicts
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Key Critics: Popper, Weber, Dahrendorf, Young ("Left Idealism"), Any New Right Theorist, Sociobiologists, Radical Feminists.
Theoretical Perspectives: Liberal Feminism

Key Ideas:

  • Focus on male / female relationships
  • Social change = evolutionary.
  • Laws needed / used to "redress" male / female power imbalance
  • Equality of Opportunity for women (parity with men)
  • Women not inferior to men (legal / political / economic and social equality)
  • Main weapon = legal system (outlaw sex discrimination)
  • Anti-discrimination legislation, equal pay, child-care facilities for working women (equal legal protection and social rights)
  • Women's dual role (family and work)
  • Patriarchal attitudes of society / men
  • Successful (UK, USA) in terms of anti-discrimination, equal pay and maternity rights

Key Names: Toynbee (journalist), Shirley Williams (politician)

Key Criticisms:

  • Women - like working class men - are at a fundamental economic disadvantage
  • Bourgeois / middle-class feminists
  • Ignores study of social structural factors (e.g. class)
  • Legal equality not same as status equality
  • Legal changes mainly benefited middle class women
  • Institutionalised sex inequality (part of fabric of Capitalist society)

Key Critics: New Right (politicians, journalists: Melanie Phillips, Patricia Morgan), Marxist, Socialist and Radical Feminists
Theoretical Perspectives: Marxist Feminism
Key ideas:
  • Social class more important than patriarchy
  • Class inequality = cause of female oppression, exploitation, discrimination
  • Patriarchal Ideology (justifies economic exploitation of women)
  • Women are not a "sex class" (only thing they have in common is their sex)
  • Family system benefits Capitalism and Men
  • Domestic Labour = form of exploitation (unpaid domestic labour)
  • Dual Female Role (family and work)
  • Reserve Army of Labour (McIntosh)
  • Gender Socialisation (feminine / masculine cultural roles)
  • Men socialised into exploitative relationships at work (carry this socialisation over into the home and their relationship to women).
  • Do not see men as the "enemy" of women (Radical Feminism)
  • Emancipation of women only through overthrow of Capitalism
  • Communist society = non-exploitation

Key Names: McIntosh, Coontz and Henderson, Benston, Dalla Costa, James.

Key Criticisms:

  • Patriarchy predates Capitalism
  • Capitalism merely an extension of Patriarchal ideology / exploitation.
  • Over emphasis on economic class relationships
  • Over emphasis on Capitalist forms of exploitation.
  • Under emphasises patriarchal forms of exploitation
  • Assumes men and women have similar interests (overthrow of Capitalism)
  • Communism as "solution" to female exploitation = very unlikely
  • Denies that women have common interests (sex class)

Key Critics: Radical Feminists (Firestone, Millet, Delphy, etc.), New Right (politicians, journalists).
Theoretical Perspectives: Radical Feminism
Key ideas:
  • Patriarchy / Patriarchal Ideology: All societies; Pre-dates Capitalism
  • Patriarchal relationships paved the way for Capitalist forms of economic and gender exploitation
  • Gender inequality and (male) exploitation.Examples:

Female biology - Men exploit incapacity through pregnancy
Marriage (Institutionalised oppression - Bouchier).
Heterosexual relationships.

  • Institutionalised sexual inequality (equality by legal means = impossible
  • Sex class (common interest = freedom from male oppression)
  • Men are enemy of women (advocate lesbian relationships / female support groups)
  • Public sphere (work) and Private sphere (the home) = dual form of female exploitation not experienced by men
  • Technology (e.g. freedom from childbirth) = way emancipation can be achieved

Key Names: Firestone, Millet, Bouchier, Delphy

Key Criticisms:

  • Are women a "sex class"? (experiences and life chances of upper class / females significantly different to those of working class females)
  • Downplays importance of concepts like class, age and ethnicity
  • Unproven assumptions about male and female psychological differences
  • Over-state the significance of psychological / biological differences
  • Not all gender relationships characterised by oppression / exploitation
  • General position of women in society has improved / changed over time
  • Is matriarchal society superior and preferable to a patriarchal society?
    •

Key Critics: New Right (politicians, journalists), Marxist / Socialist Feminists (Barratt, Oakley, etc.), Liberal Feminists.
Theoretical Perspectives: Interactionism

Key ideas:

  • The Self ("I" and the "Me" - Self concept).
  • Meanings and Interpretations
  • Negotiated reality
  • Symbolic universe of meaning
  • Social context (relativity, Definition of a situation)
  • Social construction of reality (Subjective sociology)
  • Social Action approach (Micro, small-scale)
  • Society actively constructed through Social Interaction
  • Labelling theory (master labels, categorisation, stereotyping)
  • Role Play (ascription and achievement)
  • "Society" has no objective existence (society = "elaborate fiction")
  • Interpretivist methodology
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    Key Names: Mead, Cooley, Becker, Berger and Luckmann, Goffman, Garfinkel.

    Key Criticisms:

    • Focus on small-scale, relatively trivial, aspects of social life
    • Over-emphasis on "the individual" (little sense of social structure)
    • Too much focus on individuals (and their "common sense", subjective, interpretations)
    • Doesn't explain how or why societies change
    • Questions of social order and social change not adequately explained
    • Social Structures (doesn't explain why these may be important)
    • How do structures affect individual perceptions, meanings and interpretations?
    • Power relationships (where does power come from?).
    • Relativity:

      Are there objective features of society?
      Is all knowledge relative?

    Key Critics: Gouldner, Structuralist sociologists (Marxists, Functionalists).
    Theoretical Perspectives: Weberian
    Key ideas:
    • Structuration (Social Action and Social Structure)
    • Pluralism
    • Market position (economic dimension of stratification)
    • Conflict (across class, gender, age, ethnicity, region, etc.).
    • Class (Market position), Status and Party (organised power) = basis for stratification
    • Life Chances
    • Status groups and Interest groups
    • Bureaucracy
    • Modernisation and Rationalisation
    • Power (coercive and authority types)
    • Objectivity (personal) and Subjectivity (Verstehen or "empathy")
    • Multi-causal analysis (e.g. Religion and Capitalism)
    • Meanings and Interpretations
    • Ideal Type
    • Value freedom

    Key Names: Weber, Dahrendorf, Giddens, Haralambos, Goldthorpe / Lockwood

    Key Criticisms:

    • Over-emphasis on motives, interpretations of individuals
    • Emphasis on subjective interpretations of individuals downgrades importance of social structures
    • Theoretical separation between Structure and Action not empirically justifiable
    • Impossible to clearly identify social classes
    • Fatalistic view of materialism, bureaucracy and Capitalism (successful Communist revolution impossible)
    • Can social structures be reduced to individual actions and motivations?
    • Over-emphasis on cultural conditions and changes at expense of economic conditions and changes.

    Key Critics: Newby and Lee, Crompton, Marshall, Abercrombie and Urry.
    Theoretical Perspectives: Post-Modernism
    Key Ideas:
    • Culture and Identity (especially identities relating to gender, age, ethnicity)
    • Centred and Decentred individuals
    • Critical of Meta-Narratives (Grand Theories of Society like Marxism)
    • Rejection of positivism (science as ideology)
    • Post-Fordist production techniques
    • Deindustrialisation
    • Consumerism / Consumer Culture
    • Class analysis "irrelevant" / "outdated"
    • In-groups and out-groups ("One of Us or One of Them")
    • Social Construction of reality (Subjective realities not objective realities)
    • Reject ideology of "progress"
    • New Social Movements
    • Post-Industrial society / Post-Structuralism
    • Globalisation
    • Hyper-realities (media)

    Key Names: Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Bauman, Lyotard, McRobbie, Bell.

    Key Criticisms:

    • In Sociology, modern twist on (old) Interactionist ideas
    • If all knowledge is relative (has same status) why should anyone believe views of post-modern writers?
    • Post-Modern society is ideology invention (does not exist)
    • Over-emphasis on individuals, consumers, choice, etc.
    • Under-emphasis on how "choice" is socially-created / produced
    • No empirical evidence to support post-modernist "theories"
    • Ignores power structures in society
    • Capitalism does not produce empowered, knowledgeable, consumers
    • Social class clearly related to life chances
    • "Science" is not simply an ideology (describes empirical reality)

    Key Critics: Gellner, Giddens, Habermas, Hall. (In addition, criticism has come from various sociological / non-sociological perspectives - Marxism, Feminism, New Right).
    Theoretical Perspectives: New Right

    Key ideas:

    • Economic freedom (Market Liberalism)
    • Rationality (of individuals) / Consumer choice
    • Cost / Benefit analysis
    • Free Capitalist Markets (Market Economies)
    • Individual superior to the Collective (Anti-Collectivism - e.g. Anti- Union)
    • Underclass theory (Murray)
    • Welfare dependency / Dependency culture
    • Limited role of State / Government (Defence, Public Order)
    • State as "oppressive of individual freedom"
    • Traditional family roles / gender relationships
    • Anti-socialist / Pro-Capitalist
    • Capitalism is highest form of economic organisation / society possible
    • Nature (biology / genes) more important than Nurture (environment)
    • Libertarianism
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    Key Names: Hayek, Friedman, Thatcher, Reagan, Wilson, Van Den Haag. P.Morgan, Phillips.

    Key Criticisms:

  • Over-emphasis on Individuals at expense of social structures
  • Ignores inequalities of class, gender, status, power
  • Double Moral Standards (economic freedom but strict control of family life)
  • Political propaganda rather than analysis
  • New Right Realism (Deviance) - ignores white-collar crime / crimes of powerful
  • Are human beings "naturally selfish / self-seeking"?
  • Ignores role of culture in the shaping of social identities
  • Total "freedom of action for individual" impossible in modern, complex, societies
  • Dependency Culture = unproven assertion
  • Underclass theory not proven
  • Little or no empirical research / evidence to support New Right theories
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    Key Critics: All variants of Feminism, Marxism (Traditional and Neo).
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