Exploring Social Theories and Concepts: A Comprehensive Guide
Schools of Thought and Key Figures
Anthropology
Functionalism
Central Approach: To understand a culture, the functions of social institutions must be understood. According to functionalists, society’s issues arise from an inadequate attempt to satisfy the physical and psychological demands of the vast majority of its members. To maintain stability and meet the needs of its members, society creates and relies on social structures and institutions.
Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): Malinowski made his greatest contribution as an ethnographer. He emphasized the importance of studying social behaviour and social relations in their concrete cultural contexts through participant observation.
Cultural Materialism
Central Approach: Economic, ecological, and technological ideas shape beliefs in the culture. Physical materials, conditions, and economic activity within an environment determine how the ideas and ideology of a culture develop.
Three Levels of Social Systems: Infrastructure, structure, and superstructure.
Marvin Harris wrote The Rise of Anthropological Theory, which lays out the foundations of cultural materialism.
Sociology
Feminist Theory
Central Approach: Feminist theory has developed in three waves. The first wave focused on suffrage and political rights. The second focused on social inequality between the genders. The current, third wave emphasizes the concepts of globalization, postcolonialism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism.
Standpoint Theory: Standpoint theory is a feminist theoretical perspective that argues that knowledge stems from social position. The perspective denies that traditional science is objective and suggests that research and theory have ignored and marginalized women and feminist ways of thinking.
Liberal Feminism seeks individualistic equality of men and women through political and legal reform.
Socialist Feminism is the belief that women’s oppression has emerged historically through the development of class society and how it is still perpetuated by the capitalist system.
Radical Feminism calls for a radical reordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts.
Marxist Feminism analyzes the ways in which women are exploited through capitalism and the individual ownership of private property.
Dorothy Edith Smith: She founded the sociological sub-disciplines of feminist Standpoint theory and institutional ethnography.
Marxism
Central Approach: Economic production and material wealth constitute real power in society and are the basis for most relationships in society. Examines the effect of capitalism on labour, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favour of communism.
The Bourgeoisie (Capitalist Class) and the Proletariat (Working Class) define economic relations in a capitalist economy.
Karl Marx
Conflict Theory
Central Approach: Tensions and conflicts arise when resources, status, and power are unevenly distributed between groups in society, and these conflicts become the engine for social change.
Karl Marx: Conflict theory originated in the work of Karl Marx, who focused on the causes and consequences of class conflict between the bourgeoisie (the owners of the means of production and the capitalists) and the proletariat (the working class and the poor). Focusing on the economic, social, and political implications of the rise of capitalism in Europe.
Intersectionality
Central Approach: The examination and belief of how different forms of discrimination often overlap. (e.g., Race, gender, class, ability level, culture/ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical appearance, etc.). Emphasizes that the lives of people are multifaceted and that their realities are formed by various factors as well as social dynamics that operate together.
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw: Known for the introduction and development of intersectionality. Her scholarship was essential in the development of intersectional feminism and has since evolved to include other significant areas of discrimination.
Psych-Social Learning Theory
Central Approach: By controlling the ways humans learn, we can influence both behaviour and personality. Certain behaviours are based on childhood experiences and those are both predictable and modifiable.
Albert Bandura – Bobo Doll, 1961
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Central Approach: Incentives (especially monetary) and the opinion of others are effective in motivating people to behave contrary to what they believe, but most people are not influenced by the size of the incentive.
Leon Festinger: His theories and research are credited with renouncing the previously dominant behaviorist view of social psychology by demonstrating the inadequacy of stimulus-response conditioning accounts of human behaviour. Festinger is also credited with advancing the use of laboratory experimentation in social psychology.
James M. Carlsmith: Assisted Festinger.
Historical Theories
Cyclical Theory
(History Approach) Spengler & Toynbee: Patterns of social structure and culture that recur at regular intervals. Societies go through a life span, and certain patterns happen over again in life. (Social Approach) Karl Marx – Something that happened before could happen again in the future. Ex: Fashion trend might come back into style after some time has passed.
Challenge & Response Theory
Central Approach: The theory is based on the idea that civilizations respond to challenges from their environment and that this response is the major factor in their development. A civilization responds to a challenge by either creating a solution or going into decline. He argued that a civilization’s success or failure is determined by the quality of its response to the challenge. It states that when a society is faced with a challenge, it will respond in some way. This response can produce either positive or negative results. This is seen as the key to understanding the rise and fall of civilizations.
Arnold Toynbee: He is best known for his 12-volume work A Study of History, in which he argued that civilizations rise and fall in a cyclical pattern due to the responses of societies to challenges. He also suggested that societies could be studied in terms of their creative responses to challenges.
Definitions
- Social Change: Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society, which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours, or social relations.
- Cultural Lag: Culture takes time to catch up with technological innovations, and the resulting social problems that are caused by this lag.
- Paradigm Shift: A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline.
- Demographics: Statistics that describe populations and their characteristics.
- Push and Pull Factors: Push people away from a home and pull people into a home. Ex: Economic, political, cultural, or environmental.
- Deviance: Deviance or the sociology of deviance explores the actions and/or behaviours that violate social norms across formally enacted rules as well as informal violations of social norms.
- Prejudice: Preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
- Conformity: The act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours to group norms, politics, or being like-minded.
- Alienation: People feel disconnected or estranged from some part of their nature or from society. Ex: Workers competing for their job.
- Globalization: Makes the structuration of new forms and types of groups and social relationships a key conceptual problem for sociology. Greater economic growth, improved productivity, and job creation.
- Industrialization: The development of industries in a country or region on a wide scale.