Theories of Society

Chapter 1 ended by noting that the Sociology article on Wikipedia names Durkheim, Marx and Weber as the principal architects of the subject, and that it lists functionalism, conflict and symbolic interactionism among the main traditions. This chapter takes those three traditions one at a time. The Sociological theory article describes a theory as "a supposition that intends to consider, analyze, and/or explain objects of social reality from a sociological perspective". The three theories here are not rival answers to one question so much as three different questions, and the same event can be looked at through each.

Why Sociologists Use Several Theories

The Sociological theory article says theories range from narrow accounts of a single social process to broad paradigms, and that a central theoretical problem is linking the micro, meso and macro levels. A macro view looks at large structures; a micro view looks at everyday interaction. It calls conflict theory "a macrosociological approach", and lists symbolic interactionism with Mead, Blumer and Goffman as its figures, with meaning arising from social interaction. Structural functionalism it ties to Durkheim and Parsons, and conflict theory to Marx and Weber.

The "main question" column is my own condensed wording of what each page describes (check).

Functionalism: Society as a System

The Structural functionalism article describes the approach as seeing society as a system "whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability". It says social phenomena are explained by their contribution to the whole, and that individuals matter mainly through their statuses and roles.

The page lists criticisms too: that the approach struggles to explain change and conflict, that it ignores inequalities of race, gender and class, that it has been called tautological, and that it gives individuals little agency. It says influence peaked in the 1940s and 1950s and fell sharply in the 1960s, and it quotes one sociologist calling functionalism "as dead as a dodo". It also mentions a possible revival through multilevel selection theory.

Conflict Theory: Society as Contest

The Conflict theories article says individuals and groups, especially social classes, interact through conflict rather than agreement, and that the theories focus on power differentials, power structures and social change. It also stresses that "conflict theory does not refer to a unified school of thought". It summarises Alan Sears's three assumptions as: people are self-interested, resources are perpetually scarce, and conflict is unavoidable within and between groups.

The Karl Marx article gives his dates as 5 May 1818 to 14 March 1883 and quotes the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". It describes the bourgeoisie as the "ruling class that controls the means of production" and the proletariat as the "working class" that sells its "labour power for wages". The conflict page adds Marx's idea of "false consciousness", in which the ruling class obscures exploitation.

The Max Weber article gives his dates as 21 April 1864 to 14 June 1920. The conflict page contrasts him with Marx by his emphasis on individuals' "social action". The Weber page calls social action "the central focus of Weber's sociology" and says he divided it into affectional, traditional, instrumental and value-rational types. It lists a "three-component theory of stratification" (class, party and status), but the part of the page I read does not explain it, so that is deferred to Chapter 7.

Symbolic Interactionism: Society as Conversation

The Symbolic interactionism article describes it as a framework rooted in American pragmatism that studies how shared language and symbols create meaning in face-to-face and internal communication. It says research is mostly qualitative, for example participant observation, and focuses on micro-level situations.

It gives Herbert Blumer's three premises. The first, quoted exactly, is "Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things." The second says that meaning is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction one has with others and the society. The third says meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process. The page names George Herbert Mead (born 1863, died 1931) as the figure many regard as the "true founder", whose students compiled Mind, Self and Society from class notes after his death, since he rarely published himself. It credits Charles Horton Cooley with co-conceiving the idea, and says Cooley's "looking-glass self" influenced Mead's theory of the self. Blumer, a student and interpreter of Mead, coined the term "symbolic interaction"; the page I read gives no date for that.

The criticisms the page lists are that its methods are seen as impressionistic, that it is a broad framework rather than a testable theory, that it gives limited attention to social structure, power and emotion, and that much of the criticism came in the 1970s, with Alvin Gouldner as a prominent critic.

Putting the Lenses Side by Side

Take a school as a case. A functionalist asks what it contributes to the whole, using manifest and latent functions. A conflict theorist asks whether it gives some groups advantages over others. An interactionist asks what happens between teacher and pupil that makes a child come to see themselves as "good at maths" or not. These three applications are my own, built from the questions in the table above (check). None of them is "the right one": each leaves things out, and the criticisms listed above are largely about what each one leaves out.

Where to Read More

• Pages used. This chapter draws on six Wikipedia pages: Structural functionalism, Conflict theories, Symbolic interactionism, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Sociological theory. The Conflict theories article appeared complete in the fetch. For the others the tool read only the first 100,000 characters: Structural functionalism (137,304 characters in all), Symbolic interactionism (115,469), Karl Marx (299,586), Max Weber (251,125) and Sociological theory (120,330). Later sections of those five are not reflected here.
• Not covered. I did not find on the pages I read an explanation of base and superstructure, so it is not described in this chapter.
• Primary texts. I have not read any of the original works; every description above comes from the Wikipedia pages.

Exercises