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Writing Papers That Apply Sociological Theories or Perspectives

This document is intended as an additional resource for undergraduate students taking sociology courses at UW. It is not intended to replace instructions from your professors and TAs. In all cases follow course-specific assignment instructions, and consult your TA or professor if you have questions.

About These Assignments

Theory application assignments are a common type of analytical writing assigned in sociology classes.  Many instructors expect you to apply sociological theories (sometimes called "perspectives" or "arguments") to empirical phenomena. [1]   There are different ways to do this, depending upon your objectives, and of course, the specifics of each assignment. You can choose cases that confirm (support), disconfirm (contradict), [2]  or partially confirm any theory.   

How to Apply Theory to Empirical Phenomena

Theory application assignments generally require you to look at empirical phenomena through the lens of theory.  Ask yourself, what would the theory predict ("have to say") about a particular situation. According to the theory, if particular conditions are present or you see a change in a particular variable, what outcome should you expect? 

Generally, a first step in a theory application assignment is to make certain you understand the theory! You should be able to state the theory (the author's main argument) in a sentence or two.  Usually, this means specifying the causal relationship (X—>Y) or the causal model (which might involve multiple variables and relationships). 

For those taking sociological theory classes, in particular, you need to be aware that theories are constituted by more than causal relationships.  Depending upon the assignment, you may be asked to specify the following:

• Causal Mechanism: This is a detailed explanation about how X—>Y, often made at a lower level of analysis (i.e., using smaller units) than the causal relationship.
• Level of Analysis: Macro-level theories refer to society- or group-level causes and processes; micro-level theories address individual-level causes and processes.
• Scope Conditions: These are parameters or boundaries specified by the theorist that identify the types of empirical phenomena to which the theory applies.
• Assumptions: Most theories begin by assuming certain "facts." These often concern the bases of human behavior: for example, people are inherently aggressive or inherently kind, people act out of self-interest or based upon values, etc.

Theories vary in terms of whether they specify assumptions, scope conditions and causal mechanisms.  Sometimes they can only be inferred: when this is the case, be clear about that in your paper.

Clearly understanding all the parts of a theory helps you ensure that you are applying the theory correctly to your case. For example, you can ask whether your case fits the theory's assumptions and scope conditions.  Most importantly, however, you should single out the main argument or point (usually the causal relationship and mechanism) of the theory.  Does the theorist's key argument apply to your case? Students often go astray here by latching onto an inconsequential or less important part of the theory reading, showing the relationship to their case, and then assuming they have fully applied the theory.

Using Evidence to Make Your Argument

Theory application papers involve making a claim or argument based on theory, supported by empirical evidence. [3]   There are a few common problems that students encounter while writing these types of assignments: unsubstantiated claims/generalizations; "voice" issues or lack of attribution; excessive summarization/insufficient analysis.  Each class of problem is addressed below, followed by some pointers for choosing "cases," or deciding upon the empirical phenomenon to which you will apply the theoretical perspective or argument (including where to find data).

A common problem seen in theory application assignments is failing to substantiate claims, or making a statement that is not backed up with evidence or details ("proof").  When you make a statement or a claim, ask yourself, "How do I know this?"  What evidence can you marshal to support your claim? Put this evidence in your paper (and remember to cite your sources).  Similarly, be careful about making overly strong or broad claims based on insufficient evidence.  For example, you probably don't want to make a claim about how Americans feel about having a black president based on a poll of UW undergraduates.  You may also want to be careful about making authoritative (conclusive) claims about broad social phenomena based on a single case study.

In addition to un- or under-substantiated claims, another problem that students often encounter when writing these types of papers is lack of clarity regarding "voice," or whose ideas they are presenting.  The reader is left wondering whether a given statement represents the view of the theorist, the student, or an author who wrote about the case.  Be careful to identify whose views and ideas you are presenting. For example, you could write, "Marx views class conflict as the engine of history;" or, "I argue that American politics can best be understood through the lens of class conflict;" [4]  or, "According to Ehrenreich, Walmart employees cannot afford to purchase Walmart goods."

Another common problem that students encounter is the trap of excessive summarization.  They spend the majority of their papers simply summarizing (regurgitating the details) of a case—much like a book report.  One way to avoid this is to remember that theory indicates which details (or variables) of a case are most relevant, and to focus your discussion on those aspects.  A second strategy is to make sure that you relate the details of the case in an analytical fashion. You might do this by stating an assumption of Marxist theory, such as "man's ideas come from his material conditions," and then summarizing evidence from your case on that point.  You could organize the details of the case into paragraphs and start each paragraph with an analytical sentence about how the theory relates to different aspects of the case. 

Some theory application papers require that you choose your own case (an empirical phenomenon, trend, situation, etc.), whereas others specify the case for you (e.g., ask you to apply conflict theory to explain some aspect of globalization described in an article). Many students find choosing their own case rather challenging.  Some questions to guide your choice are:

• Can I obtain sufficient data with relative ease on my case?
• Is my case specific enough?  If your subject matter is too broad or abstract, it becomes both difficult to gather data and challenging to apply the theory.
• Is the case an interesting one? Professors often prefer that you avoid examples used by the theorist themselves, those used in lectures and sections, and those that are extremely obvious.

Where You Can Find Data

Data is collected by many organizations (e.g., commercial, governmental, nonprofit, academic) and can frequently be found in books, reports, articles, and online sources.  The UW libraries make your job easy: on the front page of the library website ( www.lib.washington.edu ), in the left hand corner you will see a list of options under the heading "Find It" that allows you to go directly to databases, specific online journals, newspapers, etc. For example, if you are choosing a historical case, you might want to access newspaper articles.  This has become increasingly easy to do, as many are now online through the UW library.  For example, you can search The New York Times and get full-text online for every single issue from 1851 through today!  If you are interested in interview or observational data, you might try to find books or articles that are case-studies on your topic of interest by conducting a simple keyword search of the UW library book holdings, or using an electronic database, such as JSTOR or Sociological Abstracts.  Scholarly articles are easy to search through, since they contain abstracts, or paragraphs that summarize the topic, relevant literature, data and methods, and major findings.  When using JSTOR, you may want to limit your search to sociology (which includes 70 journals) and perhaps political science; this database retrieves full-text articles. Sociological Abstracts will cast a wider net searching many more sociology journals, but the article may or may not be available online (find out by clicking "check for UW holdings").  A final word about using academic articles for data: remember that you need to cite your sources, and follow the instructions of your assignment.  This includes making your own argument about your case, not using an argument you find in a scholarly article.

In addition, there are many data sources online.  For example, you can get data from the US census, including for particular neighborhoods, from a number of cites. You can get some crime data online: the Seattle Police Department publishes several years' worth of crime rates.  There are numerous cites on public opinion, including gallup.com. There is an online encyclopedia on Washington state history, including that of individual Seattle neighborhoods ( www.historylink.org ). These are just a couple options: a simple google search will yield hundreds more.  Finally, remember that librarian reference desks are expert on data sources, and that you can call, email, or visit in person to ask about what data is available on your particular topic.  You can chat with a librarian 24 hours a day online, as well (see the "Ask Us!" link on the front page of UW libraries website for contact information).

[1] By empirical phenomena, we mean some sort of observed, real-world conditions. These include societal trends, events, or outcomes. They are sometimes referred to as "cases."   Return to Reading

[2] A cautionary note about critiquing theories: no social theory explains all cases, so avoid claiming that a single case "disproves" a theory, or that a single case "proves" a theory correct. Moreover, if you choose a case that disconfirms a theory, you should be careful that the case falls within the scope conditions (see above) of the given theory. For example, if a theorist specifies that her argument pertains to economic transactions, it would not be a fair critique to say the theory doesn't explain dynamics within a family. On the other hand, it is useful and interesting to apply theories to cases not foreseen by the original theorist (we see this in sociological theories that incorporate theories from evolutionary biology or economics).   Return to Reading

[3] By empirical evidence, we mean data on social phenomena, derived from scientific observation or experiment.  Empirical evidence may be quantitative (e.g., statistical data) or qualitative (e.g., descriptions derived from systematic observation or interviewing), or a mixture of both. Empirical evidence must be observable and derived from real-world conditions (present or historical) rather than hypothetical or "imagined".  For additional help, see the "Where You Can Find Data" section on the next page.   Return to Reading

[4] If your instructor does not want you to use the first-person, you could write, "This paper argues…"   Return to Reading

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1.3 Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section you should be able to:

• Describe the ways that sociological theories are used to explain social institutions.
• Differentiate between functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Sociologists study social events, interactions, and patterns, and they develop theories to explain why things work as they do. In sociology, a theory is a way to explain different aspects of social interactions and to create a testable proposition, called a hypothesis , about society (Allan 2006).

For example, although suicide is generally considered an individual phenomenon, Émile Durkheim was interested in studying the social factors that affect it. He studied social solidarity , social ties within a group, and hypothesized that differences in suicide rates might be explained by religious differences. Durkheim gathered a large amount of data about Europeans and found that Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than Catholics. His work supports the utility of theory in sociological research.

Theories vary in scope depending on the scale of the issues that they are meant to explain. Macro-level theories relate to large-scale issues and large groups of people, while micro-level theories look at very specific relationships between individuals or small groups. Grand theories attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change. Sociological theory is constantly evolving and should never be considered complete. Classic sociological theories are still considered important and current, but new sociological theories build upon the work of their predecessors and add to them (Calhoun, 2002).

In sociology, a few theories provide broad perspectives that help explain many different aspects of social life, and these are called paradigms . Paradigms are philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them. Three paradigms have come to dominate sociological thinking because they provide useful explanations: structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalism

Functionalism , also called structural-functional theory, sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of the individuals in that society. Functionalism grew out of the writings of English philosopher and biologist, Herbert Spencer, who saw similarities between society and the human body. He argued that just as the various organs of the body work together to keep the body functioning, the various parts of society work together to keep society functioning (Spencer, 1898). The parts of society that Spencer referred to were the social institutions , or patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs, such as government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy.

Émile Durkheim applied Spencer’s theory to explain how societies change and survive over time. Durkheim believed that society is a complex system of interrelated and interdependent parts that work together to maintain stability (Durkheim, 1893), and that society is held together by shared values, languages, and symbols. He believed that to study society, a sociologist must look beyond individuals to social facts such as laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashion, and rituals, which all serve to govern social life (Durkheim, 1895). Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955), a social anthropologist, defined the function of any recurrent activity as the part it played in social life as a whole, and therefore the contribution it makes to social stability and continuity (Radcliffe-Brown 1952). In a healthy society, all parts work together to maintain stability, a state called dynamic equilibrium by later sociologists such as Parsons (1961).

Durkheim believed that individuals may make up society, but in order to study society, sociologists have to look beyond individuals to social facts. . Each of these social facts serves one or more functions within a society. For example, one function of a society’s laws may be to protect society from violence, while another is to punish criminal behavior, while another is to preserve public health.

Another noted structural functionalist, Robert Merton (1910–2003), pointed out that social processes often have many functions. Manifest functions are the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated, while latent functions are the unsought consequences of a social process. A manifest function of a college education, for example, includes gaining knowledge, preparing for a career, and finding a good job that utilizes that education. Latent functions of your college years include meeting new people, participating in extracurricular activities, or even finding a spouse or partner. Another latent function of education is creating a hierarchy of employment based on the level of education attained. Latent functions can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful. Social processes that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society are called dysfunctions . In education, examples of dysfunction include getting bad grades, truancy, dropping out, not graduating, and not finding suitable employment.

One criticism of the structural-functional theory is that it can’t adequately explain social change even though the functions are processes. Also problematic is the somewhat circular nature of this theory: repetitive behavior patterns are assumed to have a function, yet we profess to know that they have a function only because they are repeated. Furthermore, dysfunctions may continue, even though they don’t serve a function, which seemingly contradicts the basic premise of the theory. Many sociologists now believe that functionalism is no longer useful as a macro-level theory, but that it does serve a useful purpose in some mid-level analyses.

Big Picture

A global culture.

Sociologists around the world look closely for signs of what would be an unprecedented event: the emergence of a global culture. In the past, empires such as those that existed in China, Europe, Africa, and Central and South America linked people from many different countries, but those people rarely became part of a common culture. They lived too far from each other, spoke different languages, practiced different religions, and traded few goods. Today, increases in communication, travel, and trade have made the world a much smaller place. More and more people are able to communicate with each other instantly—wherever they are located—by telephone, video, and text. They share movies, television shows, music, games, and information over the Internet. Students can study with teachers and pupils from the other side of the globe. Governments find it harder to hide conditions inside their countries from the rest of the world.

Sociologists research many different aspects of this potential global culture. Some explore the dynamics involved in the social interactions of global online communities, such as when members feel a closer kinship to other group members than to people residing in their own countries. Other sociologists study the impact this growing international culture has on smaller, less-powerful local cultures. Yet other researchers explore how international markets and the outsourcing of labor impact social inequalities. Sociology can play a key role in people’s abilities to understand the nature of this emerging global culture and how to respond to it.

Conflict Theory

Conflict theory looks at society as a competition for limited resources. This perspective is a macro-level approach most identified with the writings of German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, who saw society as being made up of individuals in different social classes who must compete for social, material, and political resources such as food and housing, employment, education, and leisure time. Social institutions like government, education, and religion reflect this competition in their inherent inequalities and help maintain the unequal social structure. Some individuals and organizations are able to obtain and keep more resources than others, and these “winners” use their power and influence to maintain social institutions. The perpetuation of power results in the perpetuation of oppression.

Several theorists suggested variations on this basic theme like Polish-Austrian sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909) who expanded on Marx’s ideas by arguing that war and conquest are the bases of civilizations. He believed that cultural and ethnic conflicts led to states being identified and defined by a dominant group that had power over other groups (Irving, 2007).

German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) agreed with Marx but also believed that, in addition to economic inequalities, inequalities of political power and social structure cause conflict. Weber noted that different groups were affected differently based on education, race, and gender, and that people’s reactions to inequality were moderated by class differences and rates of social mobility, as well as by perceptions about the legitimacy of those in power. A reader of Marx, Georg Simmel believed that conflict can help integrate and stabilize a society. He said that the intensity of the conflict varies depending on the emotional involvement of the parties, the degree of solidarity within the opposing groups, and the clarity and limited nature of the goals. Simmel also showed that groups work to create internal solidarity, centralize power, and reduce dissent. The stronger the bond, the weaker the discord. Resolving conflicts can reduce tension and hostility and can pave the way for future agreements.

In the 1930s and 1940s, German philosophers, known as the Frankfurt School, developed critical theory as an elaboration on Marxist principles. Critical theory is an expansion of conflict theory and is broader than just sociology, incorporating other social sciences and philosophy. A critical theory is a holistic theory and attempts to address structural issues causing inequality. It must explain what’s wrong in current social reality, identify the people who can make changes, and provide practical goals for social transformation (Horkeimer, 1982).

More recently, inequality based on gender or race has been explained in a similar manner and has identified institutionalized power structures that help to maintain inequality between groups. Janet Saltzman Chafetz (1941–2006) presented a model of feminist theory that attempts to explain the forces that maintain gender inequality as well as a theory of how such a system can be changed (Turner, 2003). Similarly, critical race theory grew out of a critical analysis of race and racism from a legal point of view. Critical race theory looks at structural inequality based on white privilege and associated wealth, power, and prestige.

Sociology in the Real World

Farming and locavores: how sociological perspectives might view food consumption.

The consumption of food is a commonplace, daily occurrence. Yet, it can also be associated with important moments in our lives. Eating can be an individual or a group action, and eating habits and customs are influenced by our cultures. In the context of society, our nation’s food system is at the core of numerous social movements, political issues, and economic debates. Any of these factors might become a topic of sociological study.

A structural-functional approach to the topic of food consumption might analyze the role of the agriculture industry within the nation’s economy and how this has changed from the early days of manual-labor farming to modern mechanized production. Another might study the different functions of processes in food production, from farming and harvesting to flashy packaging and mass consumerism.

A conflict theorist might be interested in the power differentials present in the regulation of food, by exploring where people’s right to information intersects with corporations’ drive for profit and how the government mediates those interests. Or a conflict theorist might examine the power and powerlessness experienced by local farmers versus large farming conglomerates, such as the documentary Food Inc., which depicts as resulting from Monsanto’s patenting of seed technology. Another topic of study might be how nutrition varies between different social classes.

A sociologist viewing food consumption through a symbolic interactionist lens would be more interested in microlevel topics, such as the symbolic use of food in religious rituals, or the role it plays in the social interaction of a family dinner. This perspective might also explore the interactions among group members who identify themselves based on their sharing a particular diet, such as vegetarians (people who don’t eat meat) or locavores (people who strive to eat locally produced food).

Just as structural functionalism was criticized for focusing too much on the stability of societies, conflict theory has been criticized because it tends to focus on conflict to the exclusion of recognizing stability. Many social structures are extremely stable or have gradually progressed over time rather than changing abruptly as conflict theory would suggest.

Symbolic Interactionist Theory

Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society. Communication—the exchange of meaning through language and symbols—is believed to be the way in which people make sense of their social worlds. Theorists Herman and Reynolds (1994) note that this perspective sees people as being active in shaping the social world rather than simply being acted upon.

George Herbert Mead is considered a founder of symbolic interactionism though he never published his work on it (LaRossa and Reitzes, 1993). Mead’s student, Herbert Blumer (1900-1987), coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and outlined these basic premises: humans interact with things based on meanings ascribed to those things; the ascribed meaning of things comes from our interactions with others and society; the meanings of things are interpreted by a person when dealing with things in specific circumstances (Blumer 1969). If you love books, for example, a symbolic interactionist might propose that you learned that books are good or important in the interactions you had with family, friends, school, or church. Maybe your family had a special reading time each week, getting your library card was treated as a special event, or bedtime stories were associated with warmth and comfort.

Social scientists who apply symbolic-interactionist thinking look for patterns of interaction between individuals. Their studies often involve observation of one-on-one interactions. For example, while a conflict theorist studying a political protest might focus on class difference, a symbolic interactionist would be more interested in how individuals in the protesting group interact, as well as the signs and symbols protesters use to communicate their message.

The focus on the importance of symbols in building a society led sociologists like Erving Goffman (1922-1982) to develop a technique called dramaturgical analysis . Goffman used theater as an analogy for social interaction and recognized that people’s interactions showed patterns of cultural “scripts.” He argued that individuals were actors in a play. We switched roles, sometimes minute to minute—for example, from student or daughter to dog walker. Because it can be unclear what part a person may play in a given situation, he or she has to improvise his or her role as the situation unfolds (Goffman, 1958).

Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective are more likely to use qualitative research methods, such as in-depth interviews or participant observation, because they seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which research subjects live.

Constructivism is an extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be. We develop social constructs based on interactions with others, and those constructs that last over time are those that have meanings which are widely agreed-upon or generally accepted by most within the society. This approach is often used to examine what’s defined as deviant within a society. There is no absolute definition of deviance, and different societies have constructed different meanings for deviance, as well as associating different behaviors with deviance.

One situation that illustrates this is what you believe you’re to do if you find a wallet in the street. In the United States, turning the wallet in to local authorities would be considered the appropriate action, and to keep the wallet would be seen as deviant. In contrast, many Eastern societies would consider it much more appropriate to keep the wallet and search for the owner yourself. Turning it over to someone else, even the authorities, would be considered deviant behavior.

Research done from this perspective is often scrutinized because of the difficulty of remaining objective. Others criticize the extremely narrow focus on symbolic interaction. Proponents, of course, consider this one of its greatest strengths.

Sociological Theory Today

These three approaches still provide the main foundation of modern sociological theory though they have evolved. Structural-functionalism was a dominant force after World War II and until the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, sociologists began to feel that structural-functionalism did not sufficiently explain the rapid social changes happening in the United States at that time. The women’s movement and the Civil Rights movement forced academics to develop approaches to study these emerging social practices.

Conflict theory then gained prominence, with its emphasis on institutionalized social inequality. Critical theory, and the particular aspects of feminist theory and critical race theory, focused on creating social change through the application of sociological principles. The field saw a renewed emphasis on helping ordinary people understand sociology principles, in the form of public sociology.

Gaining prominence in the wake of Mead’s work in the 1920s and 1930s, symbolic interactionism declined in influence during the 1960s and 1970s only to be revitalized at the turn of the twenty-first century (Stryker, 1987). Postmodern social theory developed in the 1980s to look at society through an entirely new lens by rejecting previous macro-level attempts to explain social phenomena. Its growth in popularity coincides with the rise of constructivist views of symbolic interactionism.

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What this handout is about

This handout introduces you to the wonderful world of writing sociology. Before you can write a clear and coherent sociology paper, you need a firm understanding of the assumptions and expectations of the discipline. You need to know your audience, the way they view the world and how they order and evaluate information. So, without further ado, let’s figure out just what sociology is, and how one goes about writing it.

What is sociology, and what do sociologists write about?

Unlike many of the other subjects here at UNC, such as history or English, sociology is a new subject for many students. Therefore, it may be helpful to give a quick introduction to what sociologists do. Sociologists are interested in all sorts of topics. For example, some sociologists focus on the family, addressing issues such as marriage, divorce, child-rearing, and domestic abuse, the ways these things are defined in different cultures and times, and their effect on both individuals and institutions. Others examine larger social organizations such as businesses and governments, looking at their structure and hierarchies. Still others focus on social movements and political protest, such as the American civil rights movement. Finally, sociologists may look at divisions and inequality within society, examining phenomena such as race, gender, and class, and their effect on people’s choices and opportunities. As you can see, sociologists study just about everything. Thus, it is not the subject matter that makes a paper sociological, but rather the perspective used in writing it.

So, just what is a sociological perspective? At its most basic, sociology is an attempt to understand and explain the way that individuals and groups interact within a society. How exactly does one approach this goal? C. Wright Mills, in his book The Sociological Imagination (1959), writes that “neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” Why? Well, as Karl Marx observes at the beginning of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), humans “make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” Thus, a good sociological argument needs to balance both individual agency and structural constraints. That is certainly a tall order, but it is the basis of all effective sociological writing. Keep it in mind as you think about your own writing.

Key assumptions and characteristics of sociological writing

What are the most important things to keep in mind as you write in sociology? Pay special attention to the following issues.

The first thing to remember in writing a sociological argument is to be as clear as possible in stating your thesis. Of course, that is true in all papers, but there are a couple of pitfalls common to sociology that you should be aware of and avoid at all cost. As previously defined, sociology is the study of the interaction between individuals and larger social forces. Different traditions within sociology tend to favor one side of the equation over the other, with some focusing on the agency of individual actors and others on structural factors. The danger is that you may go too far in either of these directions and thus lose the complexity of sociological thinking. Although this mistake can manifest itself in any number of ways, three types of flawed arguments are particularly common: 

• The “ individual argument ” generally takes this form: “The individual is free to make choices, and any outcomes can be explained exclusively through the study of their ideas and decisions.” While it is of course true that we all make our own choices, we must also keep in mind that, to paraphrase Marx, we make these choices under circumstances given to us by the structures of society. Therefore, it is important to investigate what conditions made these choices possible in the first place, as well as what allows some individuals to successfully act on their choices while others cannot.
• The “ human nature argument ” seeks to explain social behavior through a quasi-biological argument about humans, and often takes a form such as: “Humans are by nature X, therefore it is not surprising that Y.” While sociologists disagree over whether a universal human nature even exists, they all agree that it is not an acceptable basis of explanation. Instead, sociology demands that you question why we call some behavior natural, and to look into the social factors which have constructed this “natural” state.
• The “ society argument ” often arises in response to critiques of the above styles of argumentation, and tends to appear in a form such as: “Society made me do it.” Students often think that this is a good sociological argument, since it uses society as the basis for explanation. However, the problem is that the use of the broad concept “society” masks the real workings of the situation, making it next to impossible to build a strong case. This is an example of reification, which is when we turn processes into things. Society is really a process, made up of ongoing interactions at multiple levels of size and complexity, and to turn it into a monolithic thing is to lose all that complexity. People make decisions and choices. Some groups and individuals benefit, while others do not. Identifying these intermediate levels is the basis of sociological analysis.

Although each of these three arguments seems quite different, they all share one common feature: they assume exactly what they need to be explaining. They are excellent starting points, but lousy conclusions.

Once you have developed a working argument, you will next need to find evidence to support your claim. What counts as evidence in a sociology paper? First and foremost, sociology is an empirical discipline. Empiricism in sociology means basing your conclusions on evidence that is documented and collected with as much rigor as possible. This evidence usually draws upon observed patterns and information from collected cases and experiences, not just from isolated, anecdotal reports. Just because your second cousin was able to climb the ladder from poverty to the executive boardroom does not prove that the American class system is open. You will need more systematic evidence to make your claim convincing. Above all else, remember that your opinion alone is not sufficient support for a sociological argument. Even if you are making a theoretical argument, you must be able to point to documented instances of social phenomena that fit your argument. Logic is necessary for making the argument, but is not sufficient support by itself.

Sociological evidence falls into two main groups: 

• Quantitative data are based on surveys, censuses, and statistics. These provide large numbers of data points, which is particularly useful for studying large-scale social processes, such as income inequality, population changes, changes in social attitudes, etc.
• Qualitative data, on the other hand, comes from participant observation, in-depth interviews, data and texts, as well as from the researcher’s own impressions and reactions. Qualitative research gives insight into the way people actively construct and find meaning in their world.

Quantitative data produces a measurement of subjects’ characteristics and behavior, while qualitative research generates information on their meanings and practices. Thus, the methods you choose will reflect the type of evidence most appropriate to the questions you ask. If you wanted to look at the importance of race in an organization, a quantitative study might use information on the percentage of different races in the organization, what positions they hold, as well as survey results on people’s attitudes on race. This would measure the distribution of race and racial beliefs in the organization. A qualitative study would go about this differently, perhaps hanging around the office studying people’s interactions, or doing in-depth interviews with some of the subjects. The qualitative researcher would see how people act out their beliefs, and how these beliefs interact with the beliefs of others as well as the constraints of the organization.

Some sociologists favor qualitative over quantitative data, or vice versa, and it is perfectly reasonable to rely on only one method in your own work. However, since each method has its own strengths and weaknesses, combining methods can be a particularly effective way to bolster your argument. But these distinctions are not just important if you have to collect your own data for your paper. You also need to be aware of them even when you are relying on secondary sources for your research. In order to critically evaluate the research and data you are reading, you should have a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the different methods.

Units of analysis

Given that social life is so complex, you need to have a point of entry into studying this world. In sociological jargon, you need a unit of analysis. The unit of analysis is exactly that: it is the unit that you have chosen to analyze in your study. Again, this is only a question of emphasis and focus, and not of precedence and importance. You will find a variety of units of analysis in sociological writing, ranging from the individual up to groups or organizations. You should choose yours based on the interests and theoretical assumptions driving your research. The unit of analysis will determine much of what will qualify as relevant evidence in your work. Thus you must not only clearly identify that unit, but also consistently use it throughout your paper.

Let’s look at an example to see just how changing the units of analysis will change the face of research. What if you wanted to study globalization? That’s a big topic, so you will need to focus your attention. Where would you start?

You might focus on individual human actors, studying the way that people are affected by the globalizing world. This approach could possibly include a study of Asian sweatshop workers’ experiences, or perhaps how consumers’ decisions shape the overall system.

Or you might choose to focus on social structures or organizations. This approach might involve looking at the decisions being made at the national or international level, such as the free-trade agreements that change the relationships between governments and corporations. Or you might look into the organizational structures of corporations and measure how they are changing under globalization. Another structural approach would be to focus on the social networks linking subjects together. That could lead you to look at how migrants rely on social contacts to make their way to other countries, as well as to help them find work upon their arrival.

Finally, you might want to focus on cultural objects or social artifacts as your unit of analysis. One fine example would be to look at the production of those tennis shoes the kids seem to like so much. You could look at either the material production of the shoe (tracing it from its sweatshop origins to its arrival on the showroom floor of malls across America) or its cultural production (attempting to understand how advertising and celebrities have turned such shoes into necessities and cultural icons).

Whichever unit of analysis you choose, be careful not to commit the dreaded ecological fallacy. An ecological fallacy is when you assume that something that you learned about the group level of analysis also applies to the individuals that make up that group. So, to continue the globalization example, if you were to compare its effects on the poorest 20% and the richest 20% of countries, you would need to be careful not to apply your results to the poorest and richest individuals.

These are just general examples of how sociological study of a single topic can vary. Because you can approach a subject from several different perspectives, it is important to decide early how you plan to focus your analysis and then stick with that perspective throughout your paper. Avoid mixing units of analysis without strong justification. Different units of analysis generally demand different kinds of evidence for building your argument. You can reconcile the varying levels of analysis, but doing so may require a complex, sophisticated theory, no small feat within the confines of a short paper. Check with your instructor if you are concerned about this happening in your paper.

Typical writing assignments in sociology

So how does all of this apply to an actual writing assignment? Undergraduate writing assignments in sociology may take a number of forms, but they typically involve reviewing sociological literature on a subject; applying or testing a particular concept, theory, or perspective; or producing a small-scale research report, which usually involves a synthesis of both the literature review and application.

The critical review

The review involves investigating the research that has been done on a particular topic and then summarizing and evaluating what you have found. The important task in this kind of assignment is to organize your material clearly and synthesize it for your reader. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but looks for patterns and connections in the literature and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of what others have written on your topic. You want to help your reader see how the information you have gathered fits together, what information can be most trusted (and why), what implications you can derive from it, and what further research may need to be done to fill in gaps. Doing so requires considerable thought and organization on your part, as well as thinking of yourself as an expert on the topic. You need to assume that, even though you are new to the material, you can judge the merits of the arguments you have read and offer an informed opinion of which evidence is strongest and why.

Application or testing of a theory or concept

The application assignment asks you to apply a concept or theoretical perspective to a specific example. In other words, it tests your practical understanding of theories and ideas by asking you to explain how well they apply to actual social phenomena. In order to successfully apply a theory to a new case, you must include the following steps:

• First you need to have a very clear understanding of the theory itself: not only what the theorist argues, but also why they argue that point, and how they justify it. That is, you have to understand how the world works according to this theory and how one thing leads to another.
• Next you should choose an appropriate case study. This is a crucial step, one that can make or break your paper. If you choose a case that is too similar to the one used in constructing the theory in the first place, then your paper will be uninteresting as an application, since it will not give you the opportunity to show off your theoretical brilliance. On the other hand, do not choose a case that is so far out in left field that the applicability is only superficial and trivial. In some ways theory application is like making an analogy. The last thing you want is a weak analogy, or one that is so obvious that it does not give any added insight. Instead, you will want to choose a happy medium, one that is not obvious but that allows you to give a developed analysis of the case using the theory you chose.
• This leads to the last point, which is the analysis. A strong analysis will go beyond the surface and explore the processes at work, both in the theory and in the case you have chosen. Just like making an analogy, you are arguing that these two things (the theory and the example) are similar. Be specific and detailed in telling the reader how they are similar. In the course of looking for similarities, however, you are likely to find points at which the theory does not seem to be a good fit. Do not sweep this discovery under the rug, since the differences can be just as important as the similarities, supplying insight into both the applicability of the theory and the uniqueness of the case you are using.

You may also be asked to test a theory. Whereas the application paper assumes that the theory you are using is true, the testing paper does not makes this assumption, but rather asks you to try out the theory to determine whether it works. Here you need to think about what initial conditions inform the theory and what sort of hypothesis or prediction the theory would make based on those conditions. This is another way of saying that you need to determine which cases the theory could be applied to (see above) and what sort of evidence would be needed to either confirm or disconfirm the theory’s hypothesis. In many ways, this is similar to the application paper, with added emphasis on the veracity of the theory being used.

The research paper

Finally, we reach the mighty research paper. Although the thought of doing a research paper can be intimidating, it is actually little more than the combination of many of the parts of the papers we have already discussed. You will begin with a critical review of the literature and use this review as a basis for forming your research question. The question will often take the form of an application (“These ideas will help us to explain Z.”) or of hypothesis testing (“If these ideas are correct, we should find X when we investigate Y.”). The skills you have already used in writing the other types of papers will help you immensely as you write your research papers.

And so we reach the end of this all-too-brief glimpse into the world of sociological writing. Sociologists can be an idiosyncratic bunch, so paper guidelines and expectations will no doubt vary from class to class, from instructor to instructor. However, these basic guidelines will help you get started.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Cuba, Lee. 2002. A Short Guide to Writing About Social Science , 4th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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A Level Sociology Essays – How to Write Them

Table of Contents

Last Updated on November 10, 2022 by

This post offers some advice on how you might plan and write essays in the A level sociology exams. 

Essays will either be 20 or 30 marks depending on the paper but the general advice for answering them remains the same:

how to write sociology essays " data-image-caption data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/revisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/peec.jpg?fit=300%2C225&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/revisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/peec.jpg?fit=840%2C630&ssl=1" tabindex=0 role=button width=640 height=480 class="ezlazyload aligncenter wp-image-10399 size-full" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20width=%22640%22%20height=%22480%22%3E%3C/svg%3E" alt data-recalc-dims=1 ezimgfmt="rs rscb1 src ng ngcb1" data-ezsrc="https://revisesociology.com/ezoimgfmt/i0.wp.com/revisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/peec.jpg?resize=640%2C480&ssl=1"> how to write sociology essays " data-image-caption data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/revisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/peec.jpg?fit=300%2C225&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/revisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/peec.jpg?fit=840%2C630&ssl=1" tabindex=0 role=button width=640 height=480 class="aligncenter wp-image-10399 size-full" src="https://i0.wp.com/revisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/peec.jpg?resize=640%2C480&ssl=1" alt data-recalc-dims=1> How to write an A-level sociology essay

Skills in the a level sociology exam, ao1: knowledge and understanding.

You can demonstrate these by:

AO2: Application 

Ao3: analysis and evaluation.

NB ‘Assess’ is basically the same as Evaluation

You can demonstrate analysis by….

Use the item

Signposting.

For more exams advice please see my exams and essay advice page

Seven examples of sociology essays, and more advice…

The contents are as follows:.

Introductory Section

These appear first in template form, then with answers, with the skills employed shown in colour. Answers are ‘overkill’ versions designed to get full marks in the exam.

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How to Write a Sociology Essay

Table of Contents

Introduction to Sociology Essay Writing

What is a sociology essay.

A sociology essay is an academic piece that explores various aspects of society and social behavior. It examines patterns, causes, and effects of social interactions among individuals and groups. The purpose of such an essay is to provide a detailed analysis and interpretation of social phenomena, guided by theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence.

Importance of Sociological Inquiry and Critical Thinking

Sociological inquiry is vital as it fosters an understanding of the complexities of society and the various factors that shape human behavior. Critical thinking, on the other hand, is essential in sociology essay writing as it enables the evaluation of arguments, identification of biases, and development of coherent, evidence-based conclusions.

Understanding the Essay Question

Interpreting essay prompts.

To effectively respond to a sociology essay prompt:

• Read Carefully : Look for action words such as ‘discuss,’ ‘compare,’ or ‘analyze’ to understand what is expected.
• Highlight Keywords : Identify key themes, concepts, and sociological terms that are central to the question.

Identifying Key Themes and Concepts

• Break Down the Question : Dissect the question into smaller components to ensure all aspects are addressed.
• Relate to Sociological Theories : Connect the themes with relevant sociological theories and concepts.

Research and Preparation

Conducting sociological research.

• Start Broad : Gain a general understanding of the topic through reputable sources like academic journals and books.
• Narrow Focus : Hone in on specific studies or data that directly relate to your essay’s thesis.

Sourcing and Evaluating Literature

• Use Academic Databases : Access scholarly articles through databases such as JSTOR, Google Scholar, and Sociological Abstracts.
• Evaluate Sources : Check for the credibility, relevance, and timeliness of the literature.

Relevant Sociological Theories

• Theory Identification : Determine which sociological theories and theorists are pertinent to your essay topic.
• Application : Understand how these theories can be applied to the social issue or phenomenon you are examining.

Planning the Essay

Importance of essay structure.

Structuring an essay is crucial because it helps organize thoughts, supports the logical flow of ideas, and guides the reader through the arguments presented. A well-structured essay enhances clarity and readability, ensuring that each point made builds upon the last and contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the topic.

Basic Essay Structure

Introduction : This is where you introduce your topic, provide background information, and present your thesis statement. It sets the stage for your argument.

Thesis Statement : A concise summary of the main point or claim of the essay, usually located at the end of the introduction.

Body Paragraphs : Each paragraph should cover a single point that supports your thesis. Start with a topic sentence, followed by analysis, evidence, and then a concluding sentence that ties the point back to the thesis.

Conclusion : Summarize the key arguments made in the essay and restate the thesis in the context of the evidence presented. Finish with thoughts on the implications, limitations, or suggestions for future research.

Writing the Essay

Crafting a strong thesis statement.

• Specificity : Your thesis should clearly state your position and the aspects of the topic you will explore.
• Scope : Make sure it’s neither too broad nor too narrow to be adequately covered within the essay’s length.
• Assertiveness : Present your thesis confidently and as a statement that you will back up with evidence.

Writing Effective Body Paragraphs

• Topic Sentences : Begin with a clear statement of the paragraph’s main idea.
• Coherence : Use transition words and phrases to maintain flow and show the relationship between paragraphs.
• Evidence Integration : Include data, quotations, or theories from sources that support your argument, always linking them back to your thesis.

Integrating Evidence

• Relevance : Ensure all evidence directly relates to and supports the paragraph’s topic sentence and the overall thesis.
• Credibility : Choose evidence from reputable, scholarly sources.
• Analysis : Don’t just present evidence; interpret it and explain its significance to your argument.

Maintaining Objectivity and Critical Perspective

• Balanced Analysis : Consider multiple viewpoints and avoid biased language.
• Critical Evaluation : Question the methodologies, findings, and biases in the literature you cite.
• Reflective Conclusion : Assess the strengths and limitations of your argument.

Referencing and Citation Style

Importance of citations.

Citations are essential in academic writing as they give credit to the original authors of ideas and information, allow readers to verify sources, and prevent plagiarism.

Common Citation Styles in Sociology

• APA (American Psychological Association) : Commonly used in the social sciences for both in-text citations and reference lists.
• ASA (American Sociological Association) : Specifically designed for sociology papers, this style features a parenthetical author-date format within the text and a detailed reference list at the end.

Each citation style has specific rules for formatting titles, author names, publication dates, and page numbers, so it’s important to consult the relevant style guide to ensure accuracy in your references.

Editing and Proofreading

Strategies for reviewing and refining the essay.

• Take a Break : After writing, step away from your essay before reviewing it. Fresh eyes can catch errors and inconsistencies more effectively.
• Read Aloud : Hearing your words can help identify awkward phrasing, run-on sentences, and other issues that might be missed when reading silently.
• Peer Review : Have a classmate or friend review your essay. They may catch errors you have overlooked and provide valuable feedback.
• Multiple Rounds : Edit for different aspects in each round—for example, content in one, grammar and syntax in another, and citations in the last.

Checklist of Common Errors to Avoid

• Spelling and Grammar : Misused words, typos, subject-verb agreement errors, and incorrect verb tenses.
• Punctuation : Overuse or incorrect use of commas, semicolons, and apostrophes.
• Structure : Lack of clear thesis, poorly structured paragraphs, or missing transitions.
• Clarity : Vague statements, unnecessary jargon, or overly complex sentences.
• Consistency : Fluctuations in tone, style, or tense.
• Citations : Inaccurate references or inconsistent citation style.

Summarizing Arguments

• Restate Thesis : Begin by restating your thesis in a new way, reflecting on the evidence presented.
• Highlight Key Points : Briefly recap the main arguments made in your body paragraphs, synthesizing them to show how they support your thesis.
• No New Information : Ensure that you do not introduce new ideas or evidence in the conclusion.

Presenting Final Thoughts

• Implications : Discuss the broader implications of your findings or argument.
• Limitations : Acknowledge any limitations in your research or analysis and suggest areas for future study.
• Final Statement : End with a strong, closing statement that reinforces the significance of your topic and leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

By carefully editing and proofreading your essay, you can enhance its clarity and coherence, ensuring that it effectively communicates your analysis and insights on the sociological topic. The conclusion serves as the final opportunity to underscore the importance of your findings and to reiterate how they contribute to our understanding of social phenomena.

Appendix A: Example Essay Outlines

An essay outline serves as a roadmap for the writer, indicating the structure of the essay and the sequence of arguments. An appendix containing example outlines could include:

Thematic Essay Outline :

• Background Information
• Thesis Statement
• Summary of Themes
• Restatement of Thesis
• Final Thoughts

Comparative Essay Outline :

• Overview of Subjects Being Compared
• Aspect 1 Comparison
• Evidence from Subject A
• Evidence from Subject B
• Comparative Analysis
• Summary of Comparative Points

These outlines would be followed by brief explanations of each section and tips on what information to include.

Oxford University Press's Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Three top tips for writing sociology essays

The Craft of Writing in Sociology

• By Andrew Balmer and Anne Murcott
• September 19 th 2017

As the academic semester gets underway, we talked to three senior colleagues in Sociology at the University of Manchester to come up with their ‘pet peeves’ when marking student’s essays. Here are some of their comments, and some of our top tips to help you to improve your work.

First, lecturers said they were frustrated with the way that students write their opening paragraphs:

“A main peeve of mine in student writing is poor introductions. Three common errors regularly stand out: throat clearing sentences (e.g. ‘globalisation is an important topic’, ‘Marx was an important writer’); dictionary definitions for core sociological concepts; and introductions that merely restate the question. What I really want to see from an introduction is a brief account of how the student is approaching the question at hand, what key questions the essay will address, and what answer the student will come to at the end of the essay.” – Senior Lecturer in Sociology

This was a point on which our three colleagues agreed: students often waste the introduction. Here is top tip number one to help you improve your essays:

1. Give the reader a guide to your argument. Much as you would give someone directions in how to get to where they’re going, tell your reader what steps you will take, what the key turning points will be, why it is important to take this route and, ultimately, where you will end up. In other words, tell your reader exactly what you will conclude and why, right at the beginning.

Another point on which our colleagues agreed was that sociological essays can be imprecise, and are sometimes written in a style which is meant to sound intellectual, but which is more confusing than it is enlightening. As one senior lecturer put it:

“A pet peeve of mine is imprecise language, for example peppering an essay with terms like ‘however’, ‘therefore’, and ‘consequently’, but without attending to the logical relationship between sentences that those words are supposed to signal. If the logical connector is wrong then the argument fails. This kind of error is often motivated, I think, by students wanting their essays to ‘sound academic’, when often they would have been more convincing by using simpler language more precisely.” – Senior Lecturer in Sociology

It is worth planning the time needed to rework your essays because a good argument can be let down by poor presentation. Here is top tip number two:

2. Your written work should prioritise clarity and concision over entertainment and erudition when making an argument. Students often write in a style which they think makes their points sound important, but get lost in the meaning of what they are saying by doing so. It might be that you have quite a command of English and want to show off your knowledge of polysyllabic or unusual words, or it might be that you wish to imitate the sociological writers whom you admire. Whatever additional reasons you have for writing, there is none more important in a sociological essay than making your argument clear. Words such as ‘however’ and ‘moreover’ should be used to indicate how your ideas are linked together, not to start a sentence with a good word. Be sure that when you edit your work, you edit for the argument, prioritising the word choices which best help to make your point. Such decisions will reflect maturity and consideration in your written work, and it is these which will truly impress a reader.

A final element which our three colleagues all listed in their top pet peeves was poor structure:

“I am often frustrated by the poor structuring of an essay. In other words, with the order in which ideas are presented, either at the level of the whole essay or at paragraph level. Essays that ping-pong from one idea to another, and then back to the original idea, indicate that the student has not really thought their argument through. A trickier thing to get right is the structuring of paragraphs, and some students seem keen to cram in as many (often unconnected) points into one paragraph as possible.” – Senior Lecturer in Sociology

The key point to learn when it comes to structuring your work is to make your writing serve your argument. You should present the main turns of your argument clearly, so as to reach a natural conclusion. Here is top tip number three for improving your essays:

3. Redraft your work for your argument, before you edit and proof-read it. Students often write to tight deadlines and do not plan enough time for a good second draft of their work. Instead, they write a first draft and then edit it as they proof-read it. When writing the first draft of an essay you will still be working out what the argument is. This is because writing helps you to think, so as you write your full first draft you will be meandering around a little, finding the best route as you go. Instead of merely editing this and checking the grammar, you should seriously re-draft the essay in light of the argument you now know you wish to make. This will help you to write a good introduction, since you can now say clearly from the outset what you will go on to argue, and a good conclusion, for you will now be able to say exactly what you have argued and why. Re-drafting for the argument means taking out material, adding in material and ensuring that each paragraph has a main point to contribute. It is an essential step in producing a good essay, which must be undertaken prior to editing for sense and proof-reading for typographical mistakes.

These tips point you towards the most important part of learning to write good sociological essays: bringing everything you do into the service of producing an argument which responds to the question and provides a satisfying answer.

Featured image credit: meeting by Eric Bailey. CC0 Public Domain via Pexels .

Andrew Balmer is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester and member of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives. He is co-author of a new book, The Craft of Writing in Sociology: Developing the Argument in Undergraduate Essays and Dissertations , published by Manchester University Press. Andrew can be found on Twitter @AndyBalmer .

Anne Murcott is Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham and Honorary Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London. She is author of numerous books and edited collections, including The Craft of Writing in Sociology .

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Recent Comments

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1.1 The Sociological Perspective

Learning objectives.

• Define the sociological perspective.
• Provide examples of how Americans may not be as “free” as they think.
• Explain what is meant by considering individuals as “social beings.”

Most Americans probably agree that we enjoy a great amount of freedom. And yet perhaps we have less freedom than we think, because many of our choices are influenced by our society in ways we do not even realize. Perhaps we are not as distinctively individualistic as we believe we are.

For example, consider the right to vote. The secret ballot is one of the most cherished principles of American democracy. We vote in secret so that our choice of a candidate is made freely and without fear of punishment. That is all true, but it is also possible to guess the candidate for whom any one individual will vote if enough is known about the individual. This is because our choice of a candidate is affected by many aspects of our social backgrounds and, in this sense, is not made as freely as we might think.

To illustrate this point, consider the 2008 presidential election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. Suppose a room is filled with 100 randomly selected voters from that election. Nothing is known about them except that they were between 18 and 24 years of age when they voted. Because exit poll data found that Obama won 66% of the vote from people in this age group ( http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/ExitPolls ), a prediction that each of these 100 individuals voted for Obama would be correct about 66 times and incorrect only 34 times. Someone betting $1 on each prediction would come out $32 ahead ($66 – $34 = $32), even though the only thing known about the people in the room is their age.

Young people were especially likely to vote for Barack Obama in 2008, while white men tended, especially in Wyoming and several other states, to vote for John McCain. These patterns illustrate the influence of our social backgrounds on many aspects of our lives.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY 3.0; Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Now let’s suppose we have a room filled with 100 randomly selected white men from Wyoming who voted in 2008. We know only three things about them: their race, gender, and state of residence. Because exit poll data found that 67% of white men in Wyoming voted for McCain, a prediction can be made with fairly good accuracy that these 100 men tended to have voted for McCain. Someone betting $1 that each man in the room voted for McCain would be right about 67 times and wrong only 33 times and would come out $34 ahead ($67 – $33 = $34). Even though young people in the United States and white men from Wyoming had every right and freedom under our democracy to vote for whomever they wanted in 2008, they still tended to vote for a particular candidate because of the influence of their age (in the case of the young people) or of their gender, race, and state of residence (white men from Wyoming).

Yes, Americans have freedom, but our freedom to think and act is constrained at least to some degree by society’s standards and expectations and by the many aspects of our social backgrounds. This is true for the kinds of important beliefs and behaviors just discussed, and it is also true for less important examples. For instance, think back to the last class you attended. How many of the women wore evening gowns? How many of the men wore skirts? Students are “allowed” to dress any way they want in most colleges and universities, but notice how few students, if any, dress in the way just mentioned. They do not dress that way because of the strange looks and even negative reactions they would receive.

Think back to the last time you rode in an elevator. Why did you not face the back? Why did you not sit on the floor? Why did you not start singing? Children can do these things and “get away with it,” because they look cute doing so, but adults risk looking odd. Because of that, even though we are “allowed” to act strangely in an elevator, we do not.

The basic point is that society shapes our attitudes and behavior even if it does not determine them altogether. We still have freedom, but that freedom is limited by society’s expectations. Moreover, our views and behavior depend to some degree on our social location in society—our gender, race, social class, religion, and so forth. Thus society as a whole and our own social backgrounds affect our attitudes and behaviors. Our social backgrounds also affect one other important part of our lives, and that is our life chances —our chances (whether we have a good chance or little chance) of being healthy, wealthy, and well educated and, more generally, of living a good, happy life.

The influence of our social environment in all of these respects is the fundamental understanding that sociology —the scientific study of social behavior and social institutions—aims to present. At the heart of sociology is the sociological perspective , the view that our social backgrounds influence our attitudes, behavior, and life chances. In this regard, we are not just individuals but rather social beings deeply enmeshed in society. Although we all differ from one another in many respects, we share with many other people basic aspects of our social backgrounds, perhaps especially gender, race and ethnicity, and social class. These shared qualities make us more similar to each other than we would otherwise be.

Does society totally determine our beliefs, behavior, and life chances? No. Individual differences still matter, and disciplines such as psychology are certainly needed for the most complete understanding of human action and beliefs. But if individual differences matter, so do society and the social backgrounds from which we come. Even the most individual attitudes and behaviors, such as the voting decisions discussed earlier, are influenced to some degree by our social backgrounds and, more generally, by the society to which we belong.

In this regard, consider what is perhaps the most personal decision one could make: the decision to take one’s own life. What could be more personal and individualistic than this fatal decision? When individuals commit suicide, we usually assume that they were very unhappy, even depressed. They may have been troubled by a crumbling romantic relationship, bleak job prospects, incurable illness, or chronic pain. But not all people in these circumstances commit suicide; in fact, few do. Perhaps one’s chances of committing suicide depend at least in part on various aspects of the person’s social background.

In this regard, consider suicide rates—the percentage of a particular group of people who commit suicide, usually taken as, say, eight suicides for every 100,000 people in that group. Different groups have different suicide rates. As just one example, men are more likely than women to commit suicide ( Figure 1.1 “Gender and Suicide Rate, 2006” ). Why is this? Are men more depressed than women? No, the best evidence indicates that women are more depressed than men (Klein, Corwin, & Ceballos, 2006) and that women try to commit suicide more often than men (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008). If so, there must be something about being a man that makes it more likely that males’ suicide attempts will result in death. One of these “somethings” is that males are more likely than females to try to commit suicide with a firearm, a far more lethal method than, say, taking an overdose of sleeping pills (Miller & Hemenway, 2008). If this is true, then it is fair to say that gender influences our chances of committing suicide, even if suicide is perhaps the most personal of all acts.

Figure 1.1 Gender and Suicide Rate, 2006

Source: Data from U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2010 . Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab .

In the United States, suicide rates are generally higher west of the Mississippi River than east of it ( Figure 1.2 “U.S. Suicide Rates, 2000–2006 (Number of Suicides per 100,000 Population)” ). Is that because people out west are more depressed than those back east? No, there is no evidence of this. Perhaps there is something else about the western states that helps lead to higher suicide rates. For example, many of these states are sparsely populated compared to their eastern counterparts, with people in the western states living relatively far from one another. Because we know that social support networks help people deal with personal problems and deter possible suicides (Stack, 2000), perhaps these networks are weaker in the western states, helping lead to higher suicide rates. Then too, membership in organized religion is lower out west than back east (Finke & Stark, 2005). Because religious beliefs help us deal with personal problems, perhaps suicide rates are higher out west in part because religious belief is weaker. Thus a depressed person out west is, all other things being equal, at least a little more likely than a depressed person back east to commit suicide.

Although suicide is popularly considered to be a very individualistic act, it is also true that individuals’ likelihood of committing suicide depends at least partly on various aspects of their social backgrounds.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Figure 1.2 U.S. Suicide Rates, 2000–2006 (Number of Suicides per 100,000 Population)

Source: Adapted from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Violence Prevention. (2009). National suicide statistics at a glance. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/suicide_map.html .

Key Takeaways

• According to the sociological perspective, social backgrounds influence attitudes, behavior, and life chances.
• Social backgrounds influence but do not totally determine attitudes and behavior.
• Americans may be less “free” in their thoughts and behavior than they normally think they are.

For Your Review

• Do you think that society constrains our thoughts and behaviors as the text argues? Why or why not?
• Describe how one aspect of your own social background has affected an important attitude you hold, a behavior in which you have engaged, or your ability to do well in life (life chances).

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2008). Suicide: Facts at a glance. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/Suicide-DataSheet-a.pdf .

Finke, R., & Stark, S. (2005). The churching of America: Winners and losers in our religious economy (2nd ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Klein, L. C., Corwin, E. J., & Ceballos, R. M. (2006). The social costs of stress: How sex differences in stress responses can lead to social stress vulnerability and depression in women. In C. L. M. Keyes & S. H. Goodman (Eds.), Women and depression: A handbook for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences (pp. 199–218). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Miller, M., & Hemenway. D. (2008). Guns and suicide in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 359, 989–991.

Stack, S. (2000). Sociological research into suicide. In D. Lester (Ed.), Suicide prevention: Resources for the millennium (pp. 17–30). New York, NY: Routledge.

Sociology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

95 Sociological Perspectives Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best sociological perspectives topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on sociological perspectives, 📌 simple & easy sociological perspectives essay titles.

• 🔎 Most Interesting Sociological Perspectives Topics to Write abouts
• Difference Between Structuralism and Post-structuralism In its turn, the post-structuralism movement criticizes strict adherence to theoretical foundations and focuses more on the study of the object, as well as on knowledge that is directly associated with the object produced. Specifically, […]
• Functionalism, Conflict and Interactionism in Sociological Theories According to the views of the conflict theory, the main purpose of education in the society is maintaining social inequality as well as the power of those who rule in the society.
• The Role of Structuralism in Linguistics However, the works by Ferdinand de Saussure remain to be the most significant sources which define the nature of structuralism and the development of structural linguistics.
• Alice in Wonderland: Theory and Post-Structuralism Examples Post-structuralism theory is one of those that is perfectly applied to the Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland by means of pure relation between language and social organization, between different kinds of feminism and power, and the […]
• Sociological Perspectives on the Mass Media In the conflict theory, it is stated that the mass media may appear autonomous but it is really focused on the capitalists who have monopolized media houses. Functionalism, interactionism and conflict theories all accept that […]
• Youth Crime in Functionalism and Conflict Theories The analysis will focus on determining factors contributing to youth engagement in criminal acts, examining the types of delinquencies they are likely to commit, and establishing the socio-psychological facets associated with the teenagers in the […]
• Sociological perspectives of Gender Inequality The events taking place in the modern world and the occurrence of the feminist movements during the past few decades can be used to offer a deeper understanding on the subject of gender inequality and […]
• Emile Durkheim’s Theory of Functionalism A change in any part is seen as leading to a certain degree of imbalance, which in turn results in changes in other parts of the system and, to some extent, to a reorganization of […]
• Structuralism and Post-Structuralism in Media The simple meaning in such settings shows that the head of state is the president, followed down to the ordinary citizen.
• Society in Terms of Structural Functionalism Approach According to the theory, the society is taken as a living organism, with different organs, which are mandated to perform different duties for the general welfare of the community.
• Inequality in Society: Conflict and Functionalism Theories Functionalism theory views inequality as unavoidable and important to the society while conflict theory considers inequality to result from conflict and coercion in the social system.
• Structuralism, Functionalism and Cognitive Theory in Psychology This was done by Ferdinand de Saussure, the French psychologists firmly believed that the theory of Structuralism was not restricted to linguistics alone and later this theory was also applied to various other subjects. Structuralism […]
• Symbolic Interactionism on Drug Addiction Genetic factors in addiction include the number of receptors in the brain that influence the perception of drugs and other substances.
• The Connection Between Totemism and Structuralism For instance, according to the biological linkages, kinship systems are constructed from the relationship between the father and the son, the mother and the daughter, and the father and the mother.
• Todorov’s View on Structuralism In this article, Todorov argued that the manifestation of the “repetition and difference” aspect of the narrative requires the application of a specific formula.
• Development of Structuralism as a Systemic Movement in Psychology However, in his attempts to expand the ideology, Titchener deviated from some of his mentor’s teachings and misrepresented some parts of it.
• Comparison of Structural-Functionalism and Critical Sociology Really as members of the community work together to meet the needs of society, culture exists to satisfy the fundamental requirements of its members.
• Apple’s Advertisements From Sociological Perspectives In this case, a group of individuals argues that not everyone can access the iPhone and television for social stability. Through businesses and entertainment, a society is made, thus symbolizing the positivity of this advertisement.
• Sociological Perspectives and Their Approaches to Research For example, in capitalism, the social conflict stems from the inequalities between the working class and the bourgeoisie, and it is assumed to lead to social change in the future.
• Views on Graffiti From Sociological Perspectives He intimates that graffiti drawing is a sign of deviance and has a corroding effect on the character of an individual.
• Functionalism School of Psychology John Dewey, the founder of functionalism, was the first to apply functionalism to social education and addressing social problems. James Angel, a student of Dewey, studied the functions of the mind and mental processes.
• Sociological Perspectives: Employer/Employee Relations In addition, such issues determine not only the success of the individual employees of the organization but also the success of the whole society.
• Durkheim’s Functionalism and Marx’s Conflict Theory According to Durkheim, there is vital interconnectivity of all the elements of any society that share common ideas and principles, and the sum of these elements is not as great as the society itself.
• “On Functionalism and Materialism” by Paul Churchland That being the case, the concept mainly focuses on the relationships between outputs and the targeted inputs. This knowledge explains why the two aspects of materialism will make it easier for individuals to redefine their […]
• How Durkheim’s Functionalism May Help with Violence The first example is internal, and the second is external, but both of them are social facts, as they are formed and maintained by societal structure.
• Social Issue: Concepts of Sociological Imagination and Sociological Perspectives Sociology is a subject that offers insight into behavior of individuals and groups of people in a society and its scope covers established relationships between people in a society, the effects of such relationships on […]
• The Adoption of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism Basics in Feminist Cultural Theory On the contrary, post structuralism is opposite to such an assumption and uses the concept of deconstruction in order to explain the relations and the position of women in the society.
• Functionalism, Social Exchange and Rational Choice The functionalist theory seeks to analyze the significance of each of the constituents of the society and establish the purpose they serve to ensure that social stability is maintained.
• Post Structuralism in Modern Day Society Post structuralism in teaching can be regarded as critical in the modern world since it is diversified and ideas are used in respect to the way they are expressed or brought to existence.
• Structural Functionalism and Symbolic Interactionism Structural functionalism and symbolic interactionism are concepts that enable comprehension of the nature of the interaction between society and the individual and explain the educational process.
• Medical Care Crisis From Conflict Perspective The ways that these diseases are managed by the healthcare systems across the board, such as quarantine and social distancing measures, result in the deteriorated mental health state of the patients.
• The Functionalism Theory Assumptions of Terrorism The functionalism theory echoes the candid assumptions of terrorism and further resonates with the evolving terrorism threat. As Barkan outlines, the functionalism perspective postulates that terrorism creates social bonding and solidarity within societies at war.
• Institution of Marriage: The Sociological Perspectives However, sociological studies played a pivotal role in defining the main tendencies of marriage as a social institute development from the end of World War II to the current realities.
• Sociological Perspectives: Functional, Conflict, or Symbolic Interaction The conflict perspective examines inequalities among those groups, and the most common criteria of the analysis on that topic are psychological and social.
• Symbolic Interactionism and Freud’s Theory of Personality According to Mead, the self, being a part of one’s personality, consists of self-image and self-awareness and results from social experience.
• Sociological Perspectives on Crimes of Power: Enron Selfish ambitions of people are dangerous to the organization because this will lead to the downfall of the company in the long run as it happened with Enron.
• How Sociological Perspectives Approach Social Problems Family breakups are a threat to the society and in an effort to seek for corrective measures; the sociologists can employ the three approaches.
• Sociological Imagination, Functional Analysis, and Sociological Perspectives It could also be seen in terms of the fact whether the visitors are seriously intended on the purchase or just to look around the place and spend time.
• Sociological Perspectives in Organizational Set-Up The interest of the owners lies in maintaining their authority and control over economic decisions, whereas the interest of the workers lies in overthrowing that class in order to be able to reap the profits […]
• Symbolic Interactionism and Socialization These basic functions initiate from our biological life cycle, and fulfil the necessity to be fully utilised to that extent where they are useful to the members of any society who teach the young how […]
• Conflict Perspective of the Immigrants Most of the immigrants are required to learn new languages or culture and these requirements are too tasking for some of the immigrants and they prefer to stay in foreign lands only for a particular […]
• Functionalism Today in Putnam’s Perspectives Nowadays, millions of people are interested in developing discussions about the role of the philosophy of mind in human behaviour, the quality of the relationships between mind and brain, and the way of how the […]
• Structuralism and Its Principles in Psychology The given paper delves into the basic principles of structuralism and the impact it has on the analysis and understanding of certain issues.
• Marketing Theories: Symbolic Interactionism and Looking Glass Self According to Reynolds and Herman-Kinney, symbolic interactionism theory explains that people behave in accordance to the ascribed meanings of the products. For instance, symbolic interactionism theory helps MacDonald Company to design products that match the […]
• European Integration: Intergovernmentalism and Neo-functionalism The formation of the Council of Europe among Western European countries in 1949 marked the beginning of the establishment of the European Union.
• Structural Functionalism and Social Conflict Theories This paper discusses the structural functionalism and social conflict theories to give a detailed explanation of the controversial understandings of human life about the role taken by the environment in creating social cohesion in the […]
• Inflation Causes: Structuralism and Monetarism One of the features of this kind of inflation is a rapid rise in the price level with the currency loosing its value.
• Income Inequality in Marxism, Structuralism, Neoliberalism, and Dependency Theory The peculiar features of every country’s development should be discussed from the point of the character of the economic relations within the country and from the point of the country’s position within the global economic […]
• Definition of the Functionalism Theory in Society The underlying principle behind the functionalism theory is to relate the working of a society as one whole being that depends on several other organs and sub-organs for a complete compatibility and functioning of a […]
• Sociological Perspectives on Religion Poor members of the society cling to religion and the political systems may tend to support it so as to acquire social control.
• Impact of Functionalism, Conflict, and Interactionism on a Social Institution The laws ought to protect the property of those who are in power at the same time control the behavior of those who do not conform to the needs of the elite of the society.
• Home Schooling and Its Sociological Perspectives
• Gays and Hate Crimes From Sociological Perspectives
• Same-Sex Marriages and Its Sociological Perspectives
• Explaining the Sociological Perspectives in Health and Social Care
• Understanding War Through Sociological Perspectives
• Youth and New Sociological Perspectives on Youth Experiences
• Family Through the Different Sociological Perspectives
• Major Theoretical Sociological Perspectives: Similarities and Differences
• Explaining the Principle of Sociological Perspectives
• Deviance and Crime From a Sociological Perspective
• Sociological Perspectives and How Despite Their Differences, They Are Use
• Application of Sociological Perspectives in the Practice of Social Service Professionals
• Gangs From Different Sociological Perspectives and Theories
• Deviance and the Three Sociological Perspectives
• Differences Between Three Sociological Perspectives: Functionalism, Marxism, and Symbolic Interactionism
• Sociological Perspectives of Sexual Orientation and Inequality
• Comparing Different Sociological Perspectives on Religion
• The Meaning of the Sociological Perspective and the Sociological Theories
• Hostile Behavior From Sociological Perspectives
• Explaining Crime and Deviance Using Sociological Perspectives

🔎 Most Interesting Sociological Perspectives Topics to Write about

• Explanation for Criminality from a Sociological Perspective
• Comparing and Evaluating the Sociological Perspectives on the Role of Education
• The Sociological Perspectives on Crime Prevention
• Gender Roles Analyzed Through Four Major Sociological Perspectives
• Explaining the Key Sociological Perspectives
• Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives
• The Three Major Sociological Perspectives: Functionalism, Symbolic Interactionism, and Conflict Theory
• Explaining Teen Pregnancy From a Sociological Perspective
• Quest for Alternative Sociological Perspectives on Corporate Social and Environmental Reporting
• Explaining the Four Sociological Perspectives: Functionalist, Conflict Theory, Interactionism, and Feminism
• Sociological Perspectives and the Education System
• Sociological Perspectives and the Social Institution of the Family
• Psychological and Sociological Perspectives on Smoking
• Neoclassical and Sociological Perspectives on Segmented Labor Markets
• The Causes of Prejudice and Discrimination From Sociological Perspectives
• The Functions of Mass Media From the Sociological Perspective
• Observing Different Sociological Perspectives of Deviance
• Nursing Shortage: Three Sociological Perspectives
• Comparing of Sociological Perspectives and the Functionalist Perspectives
• Sociological Perspectives and Research Governing Sex and Gender
• Transcendentalism Research Topics
• Behaviorism Research Ideas
• Structuralism Essay Topics
• Libertarianism Research Topics
• Conflict Research Topics
• Feminism Questions
• Neoclassicism Topics
• Social Engineering Essay Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Understanding the Sociological Perspective

How Sociologists Use Historical Context to Examine the Modern World

• Key Concepts
• Major Sociologists
• News & Issues
• Research, Samples, and Statistics
• Recommended Reading
• Archaeology
• Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
• M.A., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
• B.A., Sociology, Pomona College

Sociology is the study of society, but in practice, it is much more. It is a way of seeing the world through evaluating social structures and forces. This field uses historical context to examine the present day in a society constantly in flux. At its core, sociology fosters critical thinking, poses analytical questions, and pursues solutions. An understanding of social theory is necessary to grasp the sociological perspective and the research sociologists conduct.

Examining Social Relationships

When sociologists examine the world to understand it better, they look for relationships between individuals and social groups they belong to based on race , class, and gender , among others. They also consider people's ties to communities and institutions, whether religious, educational, or municipal, such as a church, school, or police department. In sociology, the individual aspects of social life are known as the micro, and the large-scale groups, relationships, and trends that make up society are known as the macro .

Social Structures and Forces

Sociologists look for relationships between the micro and macro to recommend ways to address the trends and problems that arise in society. The recognition that social structures and forces shape a person’s beliefs, values, norms , and expectations lies at the heart of sociology. These forces influence our experiences, interactions with others , and ultimately, the outcomes of our lives .

While most people remain unaware of how social structures affect them, they are likely to recognize these forces while taking a critical look at society. Introducing students to the field, Peter Berger wrote, “It can be said that the first wisdom of sociology is this—things are not what they seem.” Hence, the sociological perspective urges students to ask unasked questions about "normal" things to illuminate the underlying social structures and forces at work.

Asking Sociological Questions

Sociologists seek complex answers to what many would consider simple questions. Berger asserted that four key questions allow sociologists to see the connections between everyday life and the overarching social structure and forces that shape it. They are:

• What are people doing with each other here?
• What are their relationships to each other?
• How are these relationships organized in institutions?
• What are the collective ideas that move men and institutions?

Berger suggested that asking these questions transforms the familiar into something otherwise unseen, leading to “a transformation of consciousness.” C. Wright Mills called this transformation “ the sociological imagination .” When individuals examine the world this way, they see how their present-day experiences and personal biographies sit within the trajectory of history. Using the sociological perspective to examine our own lives, we might question how social structures, forces, and relationships have given us certain privileges , like access to wealth and prestigious schools. We might also consider how social forces like racism might disadvantage us in comparison with others.

The Importance of Historical Context

The sociological perspective always includes historical context, because if we want to understand why things are the way they are, we have to understand how they got there. Sociologists often take the long view, looking at the shifting nature of the class structure over time, the evolution of the relationship between the economy and culture , and the limited access to rights and resources that continue to impact historically marginalized people today.

The Sociological Perspective

Mills believed the sociological imagination could empower people to change their lives and society because it allows us to see perceived “personal troubles," like not making enough money to support ourselves , in context. Rather than personal problems, these troubles are public issues that stem from social structure flaws such as inadequate wages .

The sociological imagination points to the crux of the sociological perspective—that society is a social product, and, as such, its structures and institutions are changeable. Just as social structures and forces shape our lives, our choices and actions influence the nature of society. Throughout our daily lives, our behavior either validates society or challenges it to improve. The sociological perspective allows us to see how both outcomes are possible.

• Famous Sociologists
• How Do I Know If a Sociology Major Is Right For Me?
• Definition of the Sociological Imagination and Overview of the Book
• What You Can Do With a Degree in Sociology
• Applied and Clinical Sociology
• The Sociology of Consumption
• Biography of Journalist C Wright Mills
• A Biography of Erving Goffman
• The Life of Talcott Parsons and His Influence on Sociology
• Four Things That Set Americans Apart and Why They Matter
• What is a Norm? Why Does it Matter?
• Introduction to Sociology
• Sociology Of Religion
• Sociology of Deviance and Crime
• Why We Selfie
• The Challenges of Ethical Living in a Consumer Society

How to write a sociological analysis: Examples

Sociological Analysis Introduction: Sociology is a systematic and scientific study of society. It focuses on different parts of society, and how it contributes to the entire equilibrium of society. Sociologists look into society from a different perspective and they analyze society in different ways. Some took a conflict perspective to view society, some took functionalists perspective. All these analyses are done scientifically and systematically as other natural scientists do. Sociologists are the scientists of society, who arrive at solutions to social issues and problems.

Types of sociological analysis

There are different ways of looking into society. There is no specific way to analyze society. We have to choose the most suitable way according to the problem that we choose to analyze. There are four main types of sociological analysis. Sociologists sometimes choose multiple types of analysis in a topic.

Step to write a sociological analysis

The first step to a sociological analysis is to choose a topic. We have to choose a topic or a problem to analyze. Choose a topic that interests you. You have to choose a topic that is relevant and needs to analyze. The main aim is to choose a topic that serves the sociologists to contribute to the changes and evolution of society. You can choose topics related to social life. For example rural social life, urban social life, marriage , religion, etc.

The next step is to write down your objectives. That is after you select the topic, you must concentrate on the main areas that you want to analyze within a topic. You have to take a general objective as well as specific objectives. Objectives are the driving factor of sociological analysis. For example, if we take marriage among Christians as a topic; we have to choose our general objective and that will be to analyze the marriage among Christians (in a particular area). And after this general objective, we have to choose our specific objectives. We may take, to study the marriage customs among Christian, to study the socio-economic factors of the respondents, to study the spacial factors involve in marriage, etc.

You can also add variables. There are two kinds of variables dependent and independent variables. After choosing variables you have to connect these two variables. For example, if the wage is an independent variable and gender is a dependent variable, you can relate how does the gender result in variation in a person’s wage or income. You have to relate the relationship between gender and wage.

We have to choose a theory that relates to our topic. Sociologists choose different types of theory as their choice. For a powerful sociological analysis, we have to choose a theory. Without a theory, sociological analysis is not complete.

The following are the main sociological theoretical perspectives;

For example, if we look at culture as a topic. For functionalist culture is a way of life of people. It differs from one society to another. American culture is differing from Indian culture. According to the functionalists, Culture had various elements or parts that are related to one another. These interdependent parts can be named as norms, values, folklores, habits, lifestyles, customs, rituals, morals, etc. Famous anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski took a functionalist view to analyze society. He views the function that plays by different parts of society and how it maintains the overall stability of society. The people who share the same language, lifestyle, and values have a consensus and harmony.

Conflict theories are one of the main theories used by sociologists to analyze the issues or contradictions in society. It views society as progressed through contradictions between people in society. And it is a continuous struggle between people to seek control over the resources and the overall society.

The famous sociologists Karl Marx took a conflict perspective to view society. We can put Marx theory to understand society. He opines that cultural values and ideas are created and sustained by the privileged groups to maintain their control over society. Marx views ideas are created by culture. That is the higher class use this ideology to perpetuate their needs. By doing this they maintain their dominance over the weaker section of society.

For example, if we put symbolic interactive perspective to culture. This view took culture as a product of continuous interactions between people. They not only view the interactions but how we interpret those interactions. In which there are many symbols and processes like myths, rituals, and habits by which we assign different meanings to them. Symbols are the main driving factor in culture. These symbols may be how we greet others, our facial expressions, gestures, words, etc and how others interpret our symbols. For example, we shake hands to greet others. For example, we can study the relationship between manager and supervisor in a company through symbolic interaction theory.  

5. Use proof in your analysis

In every sociological writing, you have to write concluding marks. In conclusion, you have to write your major findings. It has to be a brief explanation of your topic, analysis, interpretation, data used, theory to support your evidence. It includes your all analysis in a nutshell. You can make suggestions in your conclusion. And also urge future sociologists to research your topics. You can even pose a question to the readers. That will motivate them to conduct other research in this field.

Sociological analysis is a well-structured process that is followed in an organized and systematic way. It has to be followed by different steps and clear. It will help the readers to understand the sociological perspective of different trends, issues. And it also contributes to the systematic analysis of society.

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Chapter 1. An Introduction to Sociology

1.3. Theoretical Perspectives

Sociologists study social events, interactions, and patterns. They then develop theories to explain why these occur and what can result from them. In sociology, a theory is a way to tentatively explain different aspects of social interactions and create testable propositions about society (Allan, 2006). For example, Durkheim’s proposition that differences in suicide rate can be explained by differences in the degree of social integration in different communities is a theory.

As this brief survey of the history of sociology suggests, there is considerable diversity in the theoretical approaches sociology takes to studying society. Sociology is a multi-perspectival science : a number of distinct perspectives or paradigms offer competing explanations of social phenomena. Perspectives or paradigms are frameworks or models used within a discipline to tie different concepts, analyses, explanations, and ways of formulating problems together (Drengson, 1983). Sociologists use these models to pose or address research questions.

Talcott Parsons’ reformulation of Durkheim’s and others work as structural functionalism in the 1950s is an example of a paradigm because it provides a general model of analysis applicable to an unlimited number of research topics. As a framework for research, it can generate numerous specific theories or explanations. Parsons proposed that any identifiable social structure (e.g., roles, families, religions, or states) could be explained by the particular function it performed in maintaining the operation of society as a whole. Historical materialism and symbolic interactionism are two other examples of sociological paradigms which formulate explanatory frameworks and research problems differently.

The variety of paradigms and methodologies makes for a rich and useful dialogue among sociologists. It is also sometimes confusing for students who expect that sociology will have a unitary, scientific approach like that of the natural sciences. However, the key point is that the subject matter of sociology is fundamentally different from that of the natural sciences. The existence of multiple approaches to the topic of society and social relationships makes sense given the nature of the subject matter of sociology. The “contents” of a society are never simply a set of objective qualities like the chemical composition of gases or the forces operating on celestial spheres. For the purposes of analysis, the contents of society can sometimes be viewed in this way, as in the positivist perspective, but positivists and other schools of thought in sociology recognize that social reality is more complex. It is imbued with social meanings, historical contexts, political struggles, and human agency.

This makes social life a complicated, moving target for researchers to study, and the outcome of the research will be different depending on where and with what assumptions the researcher begins. Even the elementary division of experience into an interior world, which is “subjective,” and an exterior world, which is “objective,” varies historically, cross-culturally, and sometimes moment-by-moment in an individual’s life. From the phenomenological perspective in sociology, this elementary division, which forms the starting point and basis of the “hard” or “objective” sciences, is in fact usefully understood as a social accomplishment sustained through social interactions. People actively divide the flow of impressions through their consciousness into socially recognized categories of subjective and objective, and they do so by learning and following social norms and rules. The division between subjective impressions and objective facts is natural and necessary only in the sense that it has become what Schutz (1962) called the “natural attitude” for people in modern society. Therefore, this division performs an integral function in organizing modern social and institutional life on an ongoing basis. People assume that the others they interact with view the world through the natural attitude. Confusion ensues when they do not. But other societies have been based on different ways of being in the world.

Despite the differences that divide sociology into multiple perspectives and methodologies, its unifying aspect is the systematic and rigorous nature of its social inquiry. If the distinction between “soft” and “hard” sciences is useful at all, it refers to the degree of rigour and systematic observation involved in the conduct of research rather than the division between the social and the natural sciences per se . Sociology is based on the scientific research tradition which emphasizes two key components: empirical observation and the logical construction of theories and propositions.  Science is understood here in the broad sense to mean the use of reasoned argument, the ability to see general patterns in particular incidences, and the reliance on evidence from systematic empirical observation of social reality. However, as noted above, the outcome of sociological research will differ depending on the initial assumptions or perspective of the researcher. Each of the blind men studying the elephant in Figure 1.16 are capable of producing an empirically true and logically consistent account of the elephant, albeit limited, which will differ from the accounts produced by the others. While the analogy that society is like an elephant is tenuous at best, it does exemplify the way that different schools of sociology can explain the same factual reality in different ways.

Within this general scientific framework, sociology can be broken into the same divisions that separate the forms of modern knowledge more generally. As Jürgen Habermas (1972) describes, by the time of the European Enlightenment in the 18th century, the unified perspective of Christendom had broken into three distinct spheres of knowledge: the natural sciences, hermeneutics (or the interpretive sciences like literature, philosophy, and history), and critique. In many ways the three spheres of knowledge are at odds with one another and reveal a different aspect of the world, but each serves an important human interest or purpose. The natural sciences are oriented to developing a technical knowledge useful for controlling and manipulating the natural world to serve human needs. Hermeneutics is oriented to developing a humanistic knowledge useful for determining the meaning of texts, ideas, and human practices in order to create the conditions for greater mutual understanding and consensus. Critique is oriented to developing activist knowledge useful for challenging entrenched power relations in order to enable human emancipation and freedoms.

Sociology is similarly divided into three types of sociological knowledge, each with its own strengths, limitations, and practical purposes:  positivist sociology focuses on generating types of knowledge useful for controlling or administering social life; interpretive sociology focuses on types of knowledge useful for promoting greater mutual understanding and consensus among members of society, and critical sociology focuses on types of knowledge useful for challenging power relationships and emancipating people from conditions of servitude. Each type of knowledge is useful for changing and improving the world. Within these three types of sociological knowledge, six paradigms of sociological thinking are discussed below : quantitative sociology, structural functionalism , historical materialism , feminism , symbolic interactionism and social constructivism .

1. Positivism

The positivist perspective in sociology — introduced above with regard to the pioneers of the discipline, August Comte and Émile Durkheim — is most closely aligned with the forms of knowledge associated with the natural sciences. The emphasis is on empirical observation and measurement (i.e., observation through the senses), the value of neutrality or objectivity, and the search for law-like statements about the social world (analogous to Newton’s laws of gravity for the natural world). On this basis, sociology is conceived as a predictive science: given a set of initial conditions, it makes predictions about  possible future outcomes. For Durkheim, for example, measurably less social integration predicts measurably higher suicide rates. Since mathematics and statistical operations are the main forms of logical demonstration in the natural scientific explanation, positivism relies on translating human phenomena into quantifiable units of measurement. It regards the social world as an objective or “positive” reality, in no essential respects different from the natural world. Positivism is oriented to developing a knowledge useful for controlling or administering social life, which explains its ties to the projects of social engineering going back to Comte’s original vision for sociology. The outcome of Durkheim’s analysis, for example, might be to prevent suicides by finding ways to increase the quantity and quality of people’s social ties, or to find more inclusive ways of organizing institutions like the family or school.

Two forms of positivism have been dominant in sociology since the 1940s: quantitative sociology and structural functionalism .

Quantitative Sociology

In contemporary sociology, positivism is based on four main “rules” that define what constitutes valid knowledge and what types of questions may be reasonably asked (Bryant, 1985):

• The rule of empiricism: Scientists can only know about things that are actually given in experience. They cannot validly make claims about things that are invisible, unobservable, or supersensible like metaphysical, spiritual, or moral truths.
• The rule of value neutrality: Scientists should remain value-neutral in their research because it follows from the rule of empiricism that “values” have no empirical content that would allow their validity to be scientifically tested.
• The unity of the scientific method rule: All sciences have the same basic principles and practices, whether their object is natural or human.
• The rule of law-like statements: The type of explanation sought by scientific inquiry is the formulation of general laws (like the law of gravity) to explain specific phenomena (like the falling of a stone).

Much of what is referred to today as quantitative sociology fits within this paradigm of positivism. Quantitative sociology uses statistical methods such as surveys with large numbers of participants to quantify relationships between social variables. In line with the “unity of the scientific method” rule, quantitative sociologists argue that the elements of human life can be measured and quantified — described in numerical terms — in essentially the same way that natural scientists measure and quantify the natural world in physics, biology, or chemistry.  Researchers analyze this data using statistical techniques to see if they can uncover patterns or “laws” of human behaviour that predict future outcomes. Law-like statements concerning relationships between variables are often posed in the form of statistical relationships or multiple linear regression formulas. These mathematically formulate the degree of influence different causal or independent variables have on a particular outcome or dependent variable, usually in terms of statistical probabilities. (Independent and dependent variables will be discussed in Chapter 2. Sociological Research. ) For example, the degree of religiosity of an individual in Canada, measured by the frequency of church attendance or religious practice, can be predicted by a combination of different independent variables such as age, gender, income, immigrant status, and region (Bibby, 2012; See Chapter 15. Religion ). This approach is value neutral for two reasons: firstly because the quantified data is the product of methods of systematic empirical observation that seek to minimize researcher bias, and secondly because “values” per se are human dispositions towards what “should be” and therefore cannot be observed like other objects or processes in the world. Quantitative sociologists might be able to survey and quantify what people say their values are, but they cannot determine through quantitative means what is valuable or what should be valuable.

Structural Functionalism

Structural Functionalism also falls within the positivist tradition in sociology due to Durkheim’s early efforts to describe the subject matter of sociology in terms of objective social facts  — “social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual” (Durkheim, 1895/1997) — and to explain them in terms of their social functions, independently of the subjective understandings that individual members of society might have.

Following Durkheim’s insight, structural functionalism therefore sees society as composed of different social structures that perform specific social functions to maintain the operation of society as a whole. Structures are simply regular, observable patterns of behaviour or organized social arrangements that persist through time. Institutional arrangements that define roles and interactions in the family, workplace, or church, etc. are structures, for example. Functions refer to how the various social and biological needs of a society are satisfied. The continuity of society requires children to be properly socialized, food and resources to be distributed, and belief systems to be commonly shared. The family, the economy, and religious institutions perform these social functions. Different societies have the same basic functional requirements, but they meet them using different configurations of social structure (i.e., different types of kinship systems, economy, or religious practice). Thus, society is seen as a system not unlike the human body or an automobile engine. With respect to a system, when one structure changes, the others change as well. According to American sociologist Talcott Parsons (1881–1955), in a healthy society, all of these parts work together to produce a stable state called dynamic equilibrium (Parsons, 1961).

In fact, the English philosopher and biologist Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) likened society to a human body. Each structure of the system performs a specific function to maintain the orderly operation of the whole (Spencer, 1898). When they do not perform their functions properly, the system as a whole is threatened. The heart pumps the blood, the vascular system transports the blood, the metabolic system transforms the blood into proteins needed for cellular processes, etc. When the arteries in the heart get blocked, they no longer perform their function. The heart fails, and the system as a whole collapses. In the same way, the family structure functions to socialize new members of society (i.e., children), the economic structure functions to adapt to the environment and distribute resources, and the cultural structure functions to provide common beliefs to unify society, etc. Each structure of society provides a specific and necessary function to ensure the ongoing maintenance of the whole. However, if the family fails to effectively socialize children, or the economic system fails to distribute resources equitably, or culture fails to provide a credible belief system, repercussions are felt throughout the system. The other structures have to adapt, causing further repercussions. Spencer continued the analogy to the body by pointing out that societies evolve from simple to complex forms just as the bodies of humans and other animals do (Maryanski and Turner, 1992).

Part of the power of structural functionalism is its ability to provide explanations of social phenomena that can predict outcomes independently of the specific goals and intentions of individuals. In a system, there is an interrelation of component parts where a change in one component affects the others regardless of the perspectives of individuals. Noted structural functionalist, Robert Merton (1910–2003), pointed out for example that social processes can have more than one function. Manifest functions are purposes or goals that are consciously sought or anticipated in a social process or institution, while latent functions are the unsought consequences or purposes of a social process or institution.

A manifest function of university education, for example, includes gaining knowledge, preparing for a career, and finding a good job that utilizes that education. But students often wonder why universities make these goals so difficult to accomplish. They get distracted by the lure of partying, they get overworked by unexpected course loads, they find it easier to cheat or learn information by rote and forget it after exams, or they get trained in knowledges that do not have immediate or practical value in the work place, etc. These contradictions can be partially explained by the latent functions of the university, which are byproducts of its manifest purposes and can often exist at cross-purposes with them. One latent function is providing an institutional venue of social solidarity for young adults in their first fledging outside the family: meeting new people, participating in extracurricular activities, or even finding a spouse or partner. This liminal period of freedom and adulthood can easily lead to excesses. On the other hand, the obligation for students to discipline their work habits, intensify their use of time and focus on minutiae, has a latent function of providing individual efficiency and self-autonomy that employers in the knowledge economy value and can exploit. The credentialism that requires advanced certificates and degrees for jobs that do not actually need them is a latent function of the increasing numbers of university graduates since the 1960s, creating a hierarchy of employment and limiting access to it.

Latent functions can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful. Social processes that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society are called dysfunctions . Each of the latent functions of university education can be pursued to excess, for example, with a detrimental effect on the ability of the university to perform its manifest function of preparing students to participate in society: over-partying as a product of excessive social solidarity might lead to dropping out, cheating as a product of excessive concern with grades might lead to learning nothing, anxiety as a product of excessive overwork might lead to chronic mental illness, or over-education as a product of excessive academic rigour might lead to boredom with respect to job requirements. These dysfunctions are products of a system which has failed to integrate its component parts and has become dysfunctional.

Making Connections: Classic Sociologists

The agil schema: a sociological explanation of everything.

Talcott Parsons was a key figure in systematizing Durkheim’s views in the 1940s and 1950s. He argued that a sociological approach to social phenomena must emphasize the systematic nature of society: the relation of definable structures to their functions in relation to the needs or maintenance of the system. This system quality could be observed at all levels of social existence, from the micro to the macro. He noted that all systems have a limited number of needs or “functional requisites” which have to be satisfied in order for the society to be viable or to achieve “stable equilibrium” (Parsons, 1951). Parsons reduced these universal functional requisites to “four spheres of activity that any society must accomplish in order to maintain itself”: namely, Adaptation, Goal attainment, Integration, and Latent pattern maintenance. This became known in sociology as Parsons’ “AGIL” schema.

Because systems can be observed in phenomena from the micro-scale to the universal, his AGIL schema provided a useful analytical grid for sociological theory in which an individual, an institution, or an entire society could be seen as a system composed of structures that satisfied these four primary functions:

• Adaptation (A) : how the system adapts to its environment;
• Goal attainment (G) : how the system determines what its goals are and how it will attain them;
• Integration (I) : how the system integrates its members into harmonious participation and social cohesion;
• (Latent) Pattern Maintenance (L) : how basic cultural patterns, values, belief systems, etc. are regulated and maintained.

So, for example, the social system as a whole relied on the economy to produce and distribute goods and services as its means of adaptation to the natural environment, on the political system to make decisions as its means of goal attainment , on social roles and norms to regulate social behaviour as its means of social integration , and on cultural institutions to reproduce and circulate social values as its means of latent pattern maintenance . Following Durkheim, Parsons argued that explanations of social functions had to be made at the level of systems and system requirements and not simply as the sum of individuals’ wants and needs. The whole is more than the sum of its parts because it is a system. In a system, there is an interrelation of component parts where a change in one component affects the others regardless of the specific biographical details of the lives of individuals.

In this way, sociology promised to be the explanation of everything.  Any enduring feature of society must perform a function, which could be understood as part of a larger system of interrelated parts and functional requisites. The AGIL functions were universal properties of any system. No matter the variation in societies historically or cross-culturally, every society was a system and had the same universal functional requisites that had to be satisfied to be able to operate and survive through time.

Criticisms of Positivism

The main criticisms of both quantitative sociology and structural functionalism have to do with whether social phenomena can truly be studied like the natural phenomena of the physical sciences. Critics challenge the way in which social phenomena are regarded as objective social facts. On one hand, interpretive sociologists suggest that the quantification of variables in quantitative sociology reduces the rich complexity and ambiguity of social life to an abstract set of numbers and statistical relationships that cannot capture the meaning it holds for individuals. Measuring someone’s depth of religious belief or “religiosity” by the number of times they attend church in a week explains very little about the religious experience itself. Similarly, interpretive sociology argues that structural functionalism , with its emphasis on macro-level systems of structures and functions tends to reduce the individual to the status of a sociological “dupe,” assuming pre-assigned roles and functions without any individual agency or capacity for self-creation.

On the other hand, critical sociologists challenge the conservative tendencies of quantitative sociology and structural functionalism. Both types of positivist analysis represent themselves as being objective, or value-neutral, whereas critical sociology notes that the context in which they are applied is always defined by relationships of power and struggle for social justice. In this sense sociology cannot be neutral or purely objective. The context of social science is never neutral.

For critical sociologists, both types of positivism also have conservative assumptions built into their basic approach to social facts. The focus in quantitative sociology on observable facts and law-like statements presents an ahistorical and deterministic picture of the world that cannot account for the underlying historical dynamics of power relationships of class, gender, or other struggles. One can empirically observe the trees but not see the forest, so to speak. Similarly, the focus on the needs and the smooth functioning of social systems in structural functionalism supports a conservative viewpoint because it relies on an essentially static model of society. The functions of each structure are understood in terms of the needs of the social system as it exists at a particular moment in time. Each individual has to fit the function or role designated for them. Change is not only dysfunctional or pathological, because it throws the whole system into disarray, it also is very difficult to understand why change occurs at all if society is functioning as a system.

Therefore, structural functionalism has a strong conservative tendency, which is illustrated by some of its more controversial arguments. For example, Davis and Moore (1944) argued that inequality in society is necessary because it functions as an incentive for people to work harder. Talcott Parsons (1954) argued that the gender division of labour in the nuclear family between the husband/breadwinner and wife/housekeeper is necessary because the family will function coherently only if each role is clearly demarcated. In both cases, the order of the system is not questioned, and the historical sources of inequality are not analyzed. Inequality, in fact, performs a useful function for those who hold power in society. Critical sociology challenges both the social injustice and the practical consequences of social inequality. In particular, social equilibrium and function must be scrutinized closely to see whose interests they serve and whose interests they suppress.

2. Interpretive Sociology

The interpretive perspective in sociology is aligned with the hermeneutic traditions of the humanities like literature, philosophy, and history. The focus in interpretative sociology is on understanding or interpreting human activity in terms of the meanings that humans attribute to it. In contrast to the deterministic and functionalist models of explanation, interpretive sociology emphasizes human agency to capture the way that individuals actively construct a world of meaning that affects the way people experience the world and conduct themselves within it. The world evidently has a reality outside of these meanings, but interpretive sociology focuses on analyzing the processes of collective meaning construction that give people access to it.

Max Weber’s Verstehende (understanding) sociology is often cited as the origin of this perspective in sociology because of his emphasis on the centrality of meaning and intention in social action:

Sociology… is a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects. In “action” is included all human behaviour when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to it…. [Social action is] action mutually oriented to that of each other (Weber, 1922).

This emphasis on the meaningfulness of social action — action to which individuals attach subjective meanings and interpret those of others — is taken up later by phenomenology, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism and various contemporary schools of social constructivism. The interpretive perspective is concerned with developing a knowledge of social interaction from the point of view of the meanings individuals attribute to it. Social interaction is a meaning-oriented practice. As a result of its research, interpretive sociology works toward greater mutual understanding and the possibility of consensus among members of society.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism is one of the main paradigms of interpretive sociology. It provides a theoretical perspective that helps scholars examine how relationships between individuals in society are conducted on the basis of shared understandings and where these understandings come from. This perspective is centered on the notion that communication — or the exchange of meaning through language, gestures and symbols — is how people make sense of their social worlds. As pointed out by Herman and Reynolds (1994), this viewpoint also sees people as active in shaping their world, rather than as entities who are acted upon by society. This approach looks at society and people from a micro-level perspective where the processes of communication and meaning generation occur on an ongoing basis.

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is considered one of the founders of symbolic interactionism. His work in Mind, Self and Society (1934) on the “self” and the stages of child development as a sequence of role-playing capacities provides the classic analyses of the perspective. This textbook discusses Mead further in Chapter 5. Socialization , but Mead’s key insight is that the self develops only through social interaction with others. The individual is not separate from society. The individual self is a thoroughly social being. People learn to be themselves by the progressive incorporation of the attitudes of others towards them into their concept of self.

His student Herbert Blumer (1900–1987) synthesized Mead’s work and popularized the theory. Blumer coined the term “symbolic interactionism” to emphasize that humans make meaning and interact by exchanging symbols like language or gestures.  He identified three basic premises:

• Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things.
• The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others and the society.
• These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things they encounter (Blumer, 1969).

In other words, human interaction is not determined in the same cause and effect manner as natural events. Symbolic interactionism focuses on how individuals interpret reality and reach common definitions of the situation in which they are involved. Through the back and forth of mutual interactions and communication (i.e., symbolic interaction), individuals move from ambiguous or undefined situations to those characterized by mutually shared meanings. On the basis of shared meanings, a common and coordinated course of action can be pursued.

In this way, people are able to decide how to help a friend diagnosed with cancer, how to divide up responsibilities at work, or even how to agree to disagree when an irresolvable conflict arises. The passport officer at the airport makes a gesture with her hand, or catches a passenger’s eye, which the passenger interprets as a signal to step forward in line and pass her their passport so she can examine its validity. Together the officer and passenger create a joint action — “checking the passport to cross a border” — which is just one symbolic interaction in a sequence that travelers typically link together in pursuing the sociological phenomenon known as “going on a vacation.” Randall Collins (2005) argues that all social life can be seen as the stringing together or aligning of multiple joint actions like these into interaction ritual chains . Symbolic interactionism emphasizes that individuals and groups have the freedom and agency to define their situations in potentially numerous ways but often find themselves following well-worn chains of interaction.

Social scientists who apply symbolic-interactionist thinking look for patterns of interaction between individuals. Their studies often involve observation of one-on-one interactions. For example, Howard Becker (1953) argued in his classic study of marijuana users that becoming a marijuana user has less to do with its physiological effects in the body than with the process of communication (or symbolic interaction) about the meaning of the effects. New marijuana users need to go through three stages to become a regular user: they need to learn from experienced smokers how to identify the effects, how to enjoy them, and how to attach meaning to them (i.e., that the experience is funny, strange or euphoric, etc.). Becker emphasizes, therefore, that marijuana smoking is a thoroughly social process and that the experience of “being high” is as much a product of mutual interactions as it is a purely bio-chemical process. In a sense, smoking marijuana could be experienced in numerous ways because the individuals involved exercise agency. No fixed reality of effects, physiological or otherwise, pre-exists the mutual interactions of the users.

Symbolic interactionism has also been important in bringing to light the experiences and worlds of individuals who are typically excluded from official accounts of the social order. Howard Becker’s Outsiders (1963) for example described the process of labeling in which individuals come to be characterized or labelled as deviants by authorities. The sequence of events in which a young person, for example, is picked up by police for an offense, defined by police and other authorities as a “young offender,” processed by the criminal justice system, and then introduced to criminal subcultures through contact with experienced offenders needs to be understood as a process of mutual definitions that create a new identity. Breaking the law does not automatically mean one becomes a “deviant.”  Individuals are not born deviant or criminal, but become criminal through an institutionalized symbolic interaction with authorities. As Becker says, deviance is not simply a social fact, as Durkheim might argue, but the product of a process of definition by moral entrepreneurs, authorities, and other privileged members of society:

… social groups create deviance by making rules whose infraction creates deviance , and by applying those roles to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by other of rules and sanctions to an “offender.” The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label (1963).

Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective are more likely to use qualitative research methods, such as in-depth interviews or participant observation, rather than quantitative methods because they seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which research subjects live. Only on this basis can an adequate explanation of their behaviour be proposed.

Social Constructivism

Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge that holds that the categories, facts, world views and cosmologies that make up knowledge are dependent on their social, cultural and historical context. For example, characteristics typically thought to be immutable or solely biological — such as gender, race, class, physical ability, and sexuality — are products of human definition and interpretation shaped by specific cultural and historical factors (Subramaniam, 2010). As such, social constructionism highlights the ways in which cultural categories — like “men,” “women,” “black,” “white”— are not “things” per se , but concepts created, changed, and reproduced through historical processes within institutions and culture. This approach differs from symbolic interactionism by the scale of the analysis. Whereas symbolic interactionists focus on micro-level inter-personal interactions of individuals in particular social settings, social constructivists are interested in large-scale social processes like the development of scientific classification systems, the formation of religious or moral categories, the circulation of images and representations in the media, and the interventions of social movements.

For example, human bodies exist independently of social categories, but that does not mean that social categories do not affect how bodies are perceived or lived in. Social constructivists examine how social categories based on selected bodily features are constructed, how meanings are attached to these categories, and how people are then placed into these categories and treated accordingly. By the “one-drop rule,” (i.e., one drop of African blood), regardless of their appearance, individuals with any African ancestor are considered Black in the United States (see Chapter 11. Race and Ethnicity ). In contrast, racial conceptualization and thus racial categories are different in Brazil, where many individuals with African ancestry are considered to be white. This shows how identity categories are not based on strict biological characteristics, but on the social perceptions and meanings that are assumed. Modern biology itself, and biological ways of thinking, were themselves invented in the 19th century, and not without controversy. Categories are not “natural” or fixed and the boundaries around them are always shifting — they are contested and redefined in different historical periods and across different societies. Therefore, the social constructionist perspective is concerned with how meaning is created and given authority through processes by which groups of people, experience, and reality are defined and categorized in specific cultural and historical contexts.

Social constructionist approaches to understanding the world challenge the essentialist understandings that typically underpin contemporary “common sense” ways in which people think about race, gender, and sexuality. Essentialism is the idea that the characteristics of persons or groups are significantly influenced by an underlying human nature, and are therefore largely similar in all human cultures and historical periods. A key assumption of essentialism is that “a given truth is a necessary natural part of the individual and object in question” (Gordon and Abbott 2002). In other words, an essentialist understanding of sexuality would argue that not only do all people have a sexual orientation, but that the range of  sexual orientations do not vary across time or place. In this example, “sexual orientation” is a pre-given truth about individuals — it is thought to be inherent, biologically determined, and essential to the nature of their being.

In response to essentialism, social constructivism firstly makes apparent how even the things commonly thought to be “natural” or “essential” in the world are socially constructed. Understandings of “nature” change through history and across place according to systems of human knowledge. Secondly, the social construction of essences and the differences between them occurs within relations of power and privilege. Sociologist Abby Ferber (2009) argues that these two aspects of the social construction of difference cannot be separated, but must be understood together. Discussing the construction of racial difference, she argues that inequality and oppression actually produce ideas of essential racial difference, (i.e. not the other way around as in many biological determinist arguments). The racial categories that are thought to be “natural” or “essential” are created within the context of racialized power relations— in the case of African-Americans in the United States, that includes slavery, laws regulating interracial sexual relationships, lynching, and white supremacist discourse. Social constructionist analyses seek to better understand the processes through which racialized, gendered, or sexualized differentiations occur, in order to untangle the power relations within them.

Because social constructionist analyses examine categories of difference as fluid, dynamic, and changing according to historical and geographical context, a social constructionist perspective suggests that existing inequalities are neither inevitable nor immutable.

Criticisms of Interpretive Sociology

From the point of view of positivism and critical sociology, one of the problems of interpretive paradigms that focus on micro-level interactions is that it is difficult to generalize from very specific situations, involving very few individuals, to make social scientific claims about the nature of society as a whole. The danger is that, while the rich texture of face-to-face social life can be examined in detail, the results will remain purely descriptive without any explanatory or analytical strength. In discussing the rich detail of the rituals and dynamics of authority in a street gang, can a sociologist make conclusions about the phenomenon of street gangs in general, or determine the social factors that lead individuals to join street gangs? Can one go from a particular observation to a general claim about society? For critical sociologists moreover, it is very difficult to get at the historical context or the societal relations of power and deprivation that structure or condition face-to-face, symbolic interactions of gang members.

In the case of Becker’s marijuana users, for example, it is difficult to go from Becker’s analysis of symbolic interaction between individuals to a strong explanation for the reasons why marijuana was made illegal in the first place, how the underground trade in marijuana works (and contextualizes the experience of the beginning user), or what the consequences of criminalization are on political discourses, the criminal justice system, and the formation of subcultures (i.e., like the jazz musician subculture Becker studied in the 1950s). Essential aspects of the political context of specific symbolic interactions fall outside the scope of the analysis, which is why, from a critical perspective, the insights of microsociology need to be broadened through the use of the sociological imagination.

A second issue for positivists, specifically, is the emphasis on meanings of social behaviour and the use of empathy to understand these meanings. If “meaning” is, strictly speaking, unobservable and therefore not verifiable through empirical methods, how can anything definitive be said about it? Carl Hempel (1965) argues for example that empathic understanding does not guarantee a sound explanation for a social behaviour because there is a danger of “reading into” it an interpretation that is incorrect or has little predictive value. A psychological factor like empathy is too variable to serve as a standard in assessing worth of an explanation. Empathic understandings “lack cognitive significance unless supplemented by testable explanatory principles in the form of laws or theories” (Hempel, 1965).

For positivists, the social constructivist emphasis on the constructed nature of social reality makes it difficult to formulate law-like relationships between variables or to predict outcomes given certain initial conditions. As the ability to predict is key to the validity of scientific claims, positivists have difficulty with the fluid, processual nature of social reality proposed by social constructivists. The positivist position is typically aligned more with forms of essentialism.

On the other hand, critical sociologists are more in agreement with social constructivism. Social constructivist sociology largely comes from the critical tradition, with its attention to how constructed categories of race, sexuality, gender are used in organizing relationships of power.  As Kang et al. (2017) explain:

This perspective is especially useful for the activist and emancipatory aims of feminist movements and theories. By centering the processes through which inequality and power relations produce racialized, sexualized, and gendered difference, social constructionist analyses challenge the pathologization of minorities who have been thought to be essentially or inherently inferior to privileged groups. Additionally, social constructionist analyses destabilize the categories that organize people into hierarchically ordered groups through uncovering the historical, cultural, and/or institutional origins of the groups under study. In this way, social constructionist analyses challenge the categorical underpinnings of inequalities by revealing their production and reproduction through unequal systems of knowledge and power.

3. Critical Sociology

The critical perspective in sociology has its origins in social activism, social justice movements, revolutionary struggles, and radical critique. As Karl Marx put it, its focus is the “ruthless critique of everything existing” (Marx, 1843). The key elements of this analysis are the critique of power relations and the understanding of society as historical — i.e., subject to change, struggle, contradiction, instability, social movement, and radical transformation. Rather than objectivity and value neutrality, the tradition of critical sociology promotes practices of liberation and social change in order to achieve universal social justice. As Marx stated, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it” (1845). This is why it is misleading to call critical sociology “conflict theory” as some introductory textbooks do. While conflict is certainly central to the critical analyses of power and domination, the focus of critical sociology is on developing types of knowledge and political action that enable emancipation from power relations (i.e., from the conditions of conflict in society). Historical materialism, feminism, environmentalism, anti-racism, queer studies, and poststructuralism are all examples of the critical perspective in sociology.

One of the outcomes of systematic analyses, such as these, is that they generate questions about the relationship between people’s everyday life and issues concerning social justice and environmental sustainability. In line with the philosophical traditions of the Enlightenment, critical sociology is sociology with an “emancipatory interest” (Habermas, 1972); that is, a sociology that seeks not simply to understand or describe the world, but to use sociological knowledge to change and improve the world, and to emancipate people from conditions of servitude.

What does the word critical mean in this context? Critical sociologists argue that it is important to understand that the critical tradition in sociology is not about complaining or being “negative.” Nor is it about adopting a moral position from which to judge people or society. It is not about being “subjective” or “biased” as opposed to “objective.” As Herbert Marcuse put it in One Dimensional Man (1964), critical sociology involves two value judgments:

• That human life is worth living, or rather that it can be and ought to be made worth living; and
• In a given society, specific possibilities exist for the amelioration of human life and the specific ways and means of realizing these possibilities.

Critical sociology therefore rejects the notion of a value-free social science, but does not thereby become a moral exercise or an individual “subjective” value preference as a result. Being critical in the context of sociology is about using objective, empirical knowledge to assess the possibilities and barriers to improving or “ameliorating” human life.

Historical Materialism

The tradition of historical materialism that developed from Karl Marx’s work is one of the central frameworks of critical sociology. Historical materialism concentrates on the study of how people’s everyday lives are structured by the connection between history, relations of power and economic processes. The basis of this approach begins with the macro-level question of how specific relations of power and specific economic formations have developed historically. These form the context in which the institutions, practices, beliefs, and social rules (norms) of everyday life are situated. The elements that make up a culture — a society’s shared practices, values, beliefs, and artifacts — are structured by the society’s economic mode of production : the different historical ways human societies have acted upon their environment and its resources in order to use them to meet their needs. Hunter-gatherer, agrarian, feudal, and capitalist modes of production have been the economic basis for very different types of society throughout world history (see Chapter 4. Society and Modern Life ).

It is not as if this relationship is always clear to the people living in these different periods of history, however. Often the mechanisms and structures of social life are obscure. For example, it might not have been clear to the Scots, who were expelled from their ancestral lands in Scotland during the Highland clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, and who emigrated to the Red River settlements in Rupert’s Land (now Manitoba), that they were living through the epochal transformation from feudalism to capitalism. This transition was nevertheless the context for the decisions individuals and families made to emigrate from Scotland and attempt to found the Red River Colony. It might also not have been clear to them that they were participating in the development of colonial power relationships between the Indigenous peoples of North America and the Europeans that persist up until today. Through contact with the Scots and the French fur traders, the Cree and Anishinabe were gradually drawn out of their own Indigenous modes of production and into the developing global capitalist economy as fur trappers and provisioners for the early European settlements. It was a process that eventually led to the loss of control over their lands, the destruction of their way of life, the devastating spread of European diseases, the imposition of the Indian Act (1876), the establishment of the residential school system, institutional and everyday racism, and an enduring legacy of intractable social problems.

In a similar way, historical materialism analyzes the constraints that define the way individuals review their options and make their decisions in present-day society. From the types of career to pursue to the number of children to have, the decisions and practices of everyday life must be understood in terms of the 20th century shift to corporate ownership, and the 21st century context of globalization in which corporate decisions about investments are made.

The historical materialist approach can be called dialectical. Dialectics in sociology proposes that social contradiction, opposition, and struggle in society drive processes of social change and transformation. It emphasizes four components in its analysis (Naiman, 2012). The first is that everything in society is related — it is not possible to study social processes in isolation. The second is that everything in society is dynamic (i.e., in a process of continuous social change). It is not possible to study social processes as if they existed outside of history. The third is that the gradual accumulation of many social changes eventually create a qualitative transformation or social turning point.

For example, the self-immolation of the street vender Mohamed Bouazizi, in 2010, lead to the Tunisian revolution of 2011 because it “crystallized” the multitude of everyday incidences in which people endured the effects of high unemployment, government corruption, poor living conditions, and a lack of rights and freedoms. It is not possible to examine quantitative changes independently of the qualitative transformations they produce, and vice versa.

The fourth analytical component of the dialectical approach is that the tensions that form around relationships of power and inequality in society are the key drivers of social change. In the language of Marx, these tensions are based on “contradictions” built into the organization of the economic or material relationships that structure people’s livelihoods, their relationships to each other, their relationship to the environment, and their place within the global community. The capitalist class and the working class do not simply exist side by side as other social groups do (e.g., model boat enthusiasts and Christian fundamentalists), but exist in a relationship of contradiction. Each class depends on the other for its existence, (i.e., the owners “provide” employment for workers; the worker’s exploited labour “provides” profit for the owners), but their interests are fundamentally irreconcilable, (i.e., owners need to cut wages to compete; workers need more wages to survive), and therefore the relationship is fraught with tension and conflict. Social tensions and contradictions in society may simmer or they may erupt in struggle, but in either case it is not possible to study social processes as if they were independent of the historical formations of power that both structure them and destabilize them.

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

“wanna go for a coffee”.

A good example of the dialectical approach to everyday social life would be to think about all the social relationships that are involved in meeting a friend for a cup of coffee. This is a common everyday event that usually passes without a great deal of sociological reflection. On the one hand, it might offer the sociologist numerous opportunities to study the social aspects of this event in isolation or at a micro-level: conversation analysis, the dynamics of friend relationships, addiction issues with caffeine, consumer preferences for different beverages, beliefs about caffeine and mental alertness, etc. In this regard, a symbolic interactionist might ask: Why is drinking coffee at the center of this specific interaction? What does coffee mean for the friends who meet to drink it?

On the other hand, if one was to take a more systematic and critical sociological view of the activity of coffee drinking, one would note how the practice also embeds people in a series of relationships to others and the environment that are not immediately apparent if the activity is viewed in isolation (Swift, Davies, Clarke and Czerny, 2004). When a person purchases a cup of coffee, they enter into a relationship with the growers in Central and South America. They are involved with their working conditions and with the global structures of private ownership and distribution that make selling coffee a profitable business. They are also involved with the barista at the counter who works in the coffee shop for a living; with the fluctuations of supply, demand, competition, and market speculation that determine the price of coffee; with the marketing strategies that lead people to identify with specific beverage choices and brands; and with the modifications to the natural environment where the coffee is grown, through which it is transported, and where, finally, the paper cups and other waste are disposed of, etc.

Ultimately, over a cup of coffee, people find themselves in the midst of a long political and historical process that is part of the formation of low wage or subsistence farming in Central and South America, the transfer of wealth to North America, and recently, various forms of resistance to this process like the fair trade movement. Despite the fact that people can be largely unaware of the web of relationships that they have entered into when they sit down to coffee with a friend, a systematic analysis would emphasize that their casual chat over coffee is just the tip of a vast iceberg composed of the activities and circumstances of countless individuals, including the activities and work relationships people themselves engage in to earn the money to pay for the coffee. These relationships involve people in dialectical economic and political processes every time they have a cup of coffee. One question for sociologists is therefore about how modern life can be so structured that people typically remain unaware of this vast network of economic relationships and catastrophes?

Another major school of critical sociology is feminism. From the early work of women sociologists like Harriet Martineau, feminist sociology has focused on the power relationships and inequalities between women and men. How can the conditions of inequality faced by women be addressed? As Harriet Martineau put it in Society in America (1837):

All women should inform themselves of the condition of their sex, and of their own position. It must necessarily follow that the noblest of them will, sooner or later, put forth a moral power which shall prostrate cant [hypocrisy], and burst asunder the bonds (silken to some but cold iron to others) of feudal prejudice and usages. In the meantime is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race? If so, what is the ground of this limitation?

Feminist sociology focuses on analyzing the grounds of the limitations faced by women when they claim the right to equality with men.

Inequality between the genders is a phenomenon that goes back at least 4,000 years (Lerner, 1986). Although the forms and ways in which it has been practiced differ between cultures and change significantly through history, its persistence has led to the formulation of the concept of patriarchy. Patriarchy refers to a set of institutional structures (like property rights, access to positions of power, relationship to sources of income) that are based on the belief that men and women are dichotomous and unequal categories. Key to patriarchy is what might be called the dominant gender ideology toward sexual differences: the assumption that physiological sex differences between males and females are related to differences in their character, behaviour, and ability (i.e., their gender). These differences are used to justify a gendered division of social roles and unequal access to rewards, positions of power, and privilege. The question that feminists ask therefore is: How does this distinction between male and female, and the attribution of different qualities to each, serve to organize institutions and to perpetuate inequality between the sexes? How is the family, the law, the occupational structure, the religious institutions, and the division between public and private spheres of life organized on the basis of inequality between the genders?

Feminism is a distinct type of critical sociology. There are considerable differences between types of feminism, however; for example, the differences often attributed to the first wave of feminism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the second wave of feminism from the 1950s to the 1970s, and the third wave of feminism from the 1980s onward. Despite the variations between the different types of feminist approach, there are four characteristics that are common to the feminist perspective:

• Gender differences are the central focus or subject matter.
• Gender relations are viewed as a social problem: the site of social inequalities, strains, and contradictions.
• Gender relations are not immutable: they are sociological and historical in nature, subject to change and progress.
• Feminism is about an emancipatory commitment to change: the conditions of life that are oppressive for women need to be transformed.

One of the keen sociological insights that emerged with the feminist perspective in sociology is that “the personal is political.” Many of the most immediate and fundamental experiences of social life — from childbirth to who washes the dishes to the experience of sexual violence — had simply been invisible or regarded as unimportant politically or socially. Dorothy Smith’s development of standpoint theory was a key innovation in sociology that enabled these issues to be seen and addressed in a systematic way (Smith, 1977). Smith recognized from the consciousness-raising exercises and encounter groups initiated by feminists in the 1960s and 1970s that many of the immediate concerns expressed by women about their personal lives had a commonality of themes. These themes were nevertheless difficult to articulate in sociological terms let alone in the language of politics or law.

Part of the issue was sociology itself. Smith argued that instead of beginning sociological analysis from the abstract point of view of institutions or systems, women’s lives could be more effectively examined if one began from the “actualities” of their lived experience in the immediate local settings of everyday/everynight life. She asked, what are the common features of women’s everyday lives? From this standpoint, Smith observed that women’s position in modern society is acutely divided by the experience of dual consciousness . Every day women crossed a tangible dividing line when they went from the “particularizing work in relation to children, spouse, and household” to the abstract, institutional world of text-mediated work, or in their dealings with schools, medical systems, or government bureaucracies. In the abstract world of institutional life, the actualities of local consciousness and lived life are “obliterated” (Smith, 1977). While the standpoint of women is grounded in bodily, localized, “here and now” relationships between people — due to their obligations in the domestic sphere — society is organized through “relations of ruling,” which translate the substance of actual lived experiences into abstract bureaucratic categories. Power and rule in society, especially the power and rule that constrain and coordinate the lives of women, operate through a problematic “move into transcendence” that provides accounts of social life as if it were possible to stand outside of it. Smith argued that the abstract concepts of sociology, at least in the way that sociology was taught in the 1960s and 1970s, only contributed to the problem.

Criticisms of Critical Sociology

Whereas critical sociologists often criticize positivist and interpretive sociology for their conservative biases, the reverse is also true. In part the issue is about whether sociology can be “objective,” or value-neutral, or not. At a deeper level the criticism is often aimed at the radical nature of critical analyses. Marx’s critique of capitalism and the feminist critique of patriarchy for example lead to very interesting insights into how structures of power and inequality work, but from a point of view that sees only the most radical, revolutionary transformation of society as a solution.

Critical sociology is also criticized from the point of view of interpretive sociology for overstating the power of dominant groups to manipulate subordinate groups. For example, media representations of women are said to promote unobtainable standards of beauty or to reduce women to objects of male desire. This type of critique suggests that individuals are controlled by media images rather than recognizing their independent ability to reject media influences or to interpret media images for themselves. In a similar way, interpretive sociology challenges critical sociology for implying that people are purely the products of macro-level historical forces and struggles rather than individuals with a capacity for individual and collective agency. To be fair, Marx did argue that “Men make their own history;” it is just that they “do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances encountered, given, and transmitted from the past” (Marx, 1851).

Theoretical Approaches Summary

To get a clearer picture of how these three sociological perspectives differ, it is helpful to map them out using a diagram. As noted above, the sociological perspectives differ according to the initial assumptions of the researcher. One way to show this is to position them along two axes according to (a) whether they view society as governed by agreed-upon norms ( normative ) or by power relations and conflict ( conflictual ), and (b) whether individuals are subject to structures beyond their control (structure) or are agents who act and change the conditions of their existence ( agency ). The emphasis of positivism on generating law-like statements suggests that individuals are not agents, but rather are subject to scientific laws ( structure ); moreover, its focus on empirical observation relies on the assumption that an underlying consensus exists about the meaning of observed behaviours. That is, there is no essential difficulty in understanding what one is “seeing,” and the agreement between the observer and the observed with respect to the meaning of the observed behaviours (normative) can be taken for granted. Interpretive sociology also emphasizes the importance of shared meanings that guide human behaviour (normative), but at the same time — especially in the tradition of symbolic interactionism — focuses on how these shared meanings are created through the mutual interactions of agents in concerted action (agency). Critical sociology does not assume that an underlying agreement or consensus exists about the norms governing society; rather, the accent is on analyzing relations of power and conflict (conflictual). Some perspectives in critical sociology like Marxism and feminism emphasize the agency of collective actors like the working class or women’s movements in praxis or struggles for change (agency), whereas other perspectives like poststructuralism emphasize the way in which subjects or agents are themselves constructed within relations of power (structure).

Overall, since social reality is complex and multi-faceted, the possibility of fundamental disagreement exists between the different theoretical approaches in sociology. Is society characterized by conflict or consensus? Is human practice determined by external social structures or is it the product of choice and agency? Does society have a reality over and above the lives of individuals or are the lives of individuals the only reality? Is human experience unique because it revolves around the meanings of social action, or is it essentially no different than any other domain studied by science? The answer to each of these questions is: it is both. Similar to the problem in physics about whether light is a particle or a wave, society appears in one guise or another depending on the perspective one takes or the research tool that one adopts. Using Habermas’ framework discussed above, sociology takes different forms depending on whether it is to be used for the purposes of administration (e.g., positivism), mutual understanding (e.g., interpretive sociology), or social justice (e.g., critical sociology). However, just like the wave/particle uncertainty in physics, the fundamental ambiguity in determining which sociological perspective to adopt does not prevent brilliant insights into the nature of social experience from being generated.

Media Attributions

• Figure 1.15 Freedom Convoy 2022, Ottawa, Canada, February 12, 2022  by Maksim Sokolov, via Wikimedia Commons, is used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
• Figure 1.16   Blindmen #1 , Blindmen #2, and Blindmen #3 , by MIke Kline, via Flickr, is  used under a CC BY 2.0   licence.
• Figure 1.17 Jürgen Habermas at a discussion in Munich, 2007 by Wolfram Huke, via Wikimedia Commons, is used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 licence. 
• Figure 1.18   Talcott Parsons  by unknown source, via Wikipedia, is used under Fair Dealing provisions of the Canadian Copyright Act.
• Figure 1.19   The Last of the Clan by Thomas Faed, 1865, via Wikimedia Commons is in the public domain .
• Figure 1.20 Coffee [cropped] by duncan c. via Flickr,  is used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 licence.
• Figure 1.21 Theoretical Approaches Summary by William Little and TRU Media.

Introduction to Sociology – 3rd Canadian Edition Copyright © 2023 by William Little is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Essays on Sociology

Sociology is the study of human society and its structures, institutions, and interactions. Essays about sociology serve an essential purpose in examining and understanding the complexities of social behavior, cultural dynamics, and societal issues. Crafting essays on this topic contributes to broader discussions about the human experience, social change, and the impact of various factors on individuals and communities. One of the primary goals of essays about sociology is to analyze and interpret various social phenomena. These essays can explore topics such as social inequality, deviance, gender roles, family structures, and more. By examining these phenomena, readers gain insights into the underlying mechanisms that shape societies. Essays about sociology often delve into the cultural diversity that exists within societies. These essays can discuss the impact of cultural norms, values, and traditions on behavior, interactions, and societal norms. By studying cultural diversity, readers gain a deeper understanding of the complex tapestry of human societies. Societal institutions such as education, religion, government, and family play crucial roles in shaping behavior and interactions. Essays about sociology can examine how these institutions influence individuals’ lives, values, and opportunities, as well as their roles in maintaining social order.

Writing Tips for Sociology Essays:

Choose a Specific Focus: Narrow down your topic to a specific aspect of sociology that interests you, such as a particular social issue, theory, or phenomenon. Thesis Statement: Begin with a clear thesis that outlines the main argument or question you will address in your essay. Empirical Evidence: Support your arguments with relevant empirical evidence, data, case studies, and real-life examples. Contextualize Your Analysis: Situate your analysis within relevant historical, cultural, and societal contexts to provide a comprehensive understanding. Use Sociological Theories: Incorporate sociological theories to provide a theoretical framework for your analysis and interpretation. Critical Reflection: Engage in critical reflection and analysis of the implications of your findings for individuals and society. References: Properly cite sources using the appropriate citation style (e.g., ASA, APA) to give credit to authors and avoid plagiarism.

Essays about sociology serve as windows into the intricate web of human interactions, behavior, and societal structures. By crafting and studying these essays, readers can gain insights into the mechanisms that shape societies, the challenges they face, and the potential for positive change.

What Makes You You: Unraveling the Complexities of Identity

Identity is a concept both profound and enigmatic, encompassing the intricate web of characteristics, experiences, and beliefs that define who we are as individuals. This essay embarks on a journey to explore the multifaceted nature of identity, delving into the interplay of genetics, culture, personal...

World War Ii: the Role of Propaganda

World War II was a global conflict of unprecedented scale and devastation, marked by the widespread use of propaganda as a tool of persuasion, manipulation, and mobilization. Propaganda played a crucial role in shaping public opinion, bolstering morale, and advancing the agendas of the warring...

The Role of Logos in an Essay

Logos, one of Aristotle's three modes of persuasion, holds a central and indispensable place in essay writing. Derived from the Greek word for "reason," logos involves using logic, evidence, and rational arguments to persuade and inform readers. This essay explores the significance and multifaceted role...

The American Dream: is It Still Achievable for Everyone

The American Dream, a concept deeply rooted in the nation's history and identity, has long been associated with the idea that hard work, determination, and opportunity can lead to success and prosperity. However, in recent years, questions have arisen about the accessibility of the American...

What is Family in Modern America

The concept of family in America has undergone significant changes in recent decades, reflecting shifts in societal norms, demographics, and cultural diversity. In this essay, we will explore the evolving definition of family in modern America, considering various family structures, roles, and the impact of...

What is America for Me: Identity and Belonging

For centuries, America has been a land of dreams and aspirations for people from all corners of the globe. It is a nation founded on ideals of freedom, opportunity, and equality. However, the question, "What is America for me?" can yield a myriad of answers,...

Critical Race Theory: Understanding the Framework

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a theoretical framework that emerged in the United States in the late 20th century. It seeks to examine and understand the ways in which race and racism intersect with various aspects of society, including law, politics, education, and culture. This...

What It Means to Be an American: then and Now

The identity of an American has evolved over centuries, shaped by historical events, cultural diversity, and shifting societal values. What it means to be an American now differs in many ways from what it meant in the past. In this essay, we will explore the...

Logos, Ethos, and Pathos in Political Speeches

Political speeches are powerful tools used by leaders to persuade, inspire, and mobilize their audiences. Central to the art of effective political oratory are the persuasive techniques of logos, ethos, and pathos. These rhetorical strategies are employed to appeal to the audience's logic, ethics, and...

National Junior Honor Society: Its Values and Significance

The National Junior Honor Society (NJHS) is a prestigious organization that recognizes and celebrates the outstanding achievements of middle school students in the areas of leadership, scholarship, character, and service. In this essay, we will explore the significance of the NJHS, its core values, the...

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• Communication
• Interpersonal Relationship
• Race and Ethnicity
• Sociological Theories
• Millennial Generation
• Social Justice
• Observation
• Discourse Community
• Cultural Identity
• American Identity
• Social Class
• Homosexuality
• Masculinity
• Animal Cruelty
• Peer Pressure
• Same Sex Marriage
• Teacher-Student Relationships
• American Dream
• Racial Profiling
• Cultural Diversity
• Native American
• Citizenship
• Cultural Relativism
• Intersectionality
• National Honor Society
• Stereotypes
• Gender Roles
• Sociological Imagination
• Distracted Driving
• Hierarchy of Power
• Mass Hysteria
• Adaptability
• Cell Phones and Driving
• Comparison of Racial Equality Movements
• Deviant Behavior
• Divorce Rate
• Emile Durkheim
• Gender Differences
• Gender Performativity
• Gender Stereotypes
• Growing Gulf Between Rich and The Rest of Us
• Human Evolution
• Information Age
• Mass Incarceration
• Personal Qualities
• Portrayal of People With Disabilities
• Sects in Society
• Sex, Gender and Sexuality
• Social Care
• Social Change
• Social Darwinism
• Social Death
• Social Imagination
• Social Networking
• Social Norms
• Social Observation Report
• Social Research Methods
• Social Stratification
• Sociological Perspective
• Thinking Sex
• Untouchability in Nepal and India

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