Unit 2: Theoretical Perspective in Sociology

A perspective means one’s point of view; it is how objects appear in the eye of the viewer, the
choice of a context for opinions, beliefs, and experiences. In other words, a perspective is simply
a way of looking at the world i.e. world viewpoint.

Sociological Perspectives

Sociology is a social science that seeks to explain and examine the social system and to explain
and understand complex social systems sociology makes use of theories and perspectives, which
are called sociological perspectives. Peter Berger described the sociological perspective as
‘seeing the general in the particular.’ C. Wright Mills called this point of view the ‘sociological
imagination,’ claiming that it transforms personal troubles into public issues.
Sociological perspectives can be also described as:

 Seeing the general in particular: Society shapes our particular life experiences.
Sociologists seek out the general pattern in the behavior of particular people.
 Seeing strange in familiar: Challenging the familiar ideas we live our lives in terms of
what we decide.
 Seeing individuality in social context: How the power of society shapes individual
choices (individuality e.g. No. of children women have in the US fewer than 2, India 3,
S.A. 4, Nepal 3. Durkheim’s theory of suicide is another example.

Different perspectives have been developed in sociology to describe the operation of society. A
single perspective is not sufficient to study the complex society and therefore, various
perspectives have been developed based on various assumptions they entail. Some of the
important theoretical perspectives in sociology are: Functionalism or structural-functional theory,
Conflict Theory, Interactionism, and Postmodernism.

Functionalism/ Equilibrium Perspective:

According to the functionalist perspective, also called functionalism, each aspect of society is
interdependent and contributes to society's functioning as a whole. The government, or state,
provides education for the children of the family, which in turn pays taxes on which the state
depends to keep itself running. That is, the family is dependent upon the school to help children
grow up to have good jobs so that they can raise and support their own families. In the process,
the children become law‐abiding, taxpaying citizens, who in turn support the state. If all goes
well, the parts of society produce order, stability, and productivity. If all does not go well, the
parts of society then must adapt to recapture a new order, stability, and productivity. For
example, during a financial recession with its high rates of unemployment and inflation, social
programs are trimmed or cut. Schools offer fewer programs. Families tighten their budgets. And
a new social order, stability, and productivity occur.
Functionalists believe that society is held together by social consensus, or cohesion, in which
members of the society agree upon, and work together to achieve, what is best for society as a
whole. Emile Durkheim suggested that social consensus takes one of two forms:

 Mechanical solidarity is a form of social cohesion that arises when people in a society
maintain similar values and beliefs and engage in similar types of work. Mechanical
solidarity most commonly occurs in traditional, simple societies such as those in which
everyone herds cattle or farms. Amish society exemplifies mechanical solidarity.

 In contrast, organic solidarity is a form of social cohesion that arises when the people in
a society are interdependent, but hold to varying values and beliefs and engage in varying
types of work. Organic solidarity most commonly occurs in industrialized, complex
societies such those in large American cities like New York in the 2000s.

The American sociologist Talcott Parsons was best known for his ‘structural functionalism’ and
‘social action theory. As a functionalist, he was concerned with how society’s parts work (i.e.
function) together to maintain social order. Parsons believed that all societies needed a ‘value
consensus’ which is a shared agreement between society members to conform to certain norms
and values and this results in social solidarity and stability. Societies develop rules and norms
about how people should behave based upon this value consensus. To achieve the common goal
of social equilibrium and stability, individuals are socialized to accept the values and norms, and
society’s members learn to accept social norms and values through education. To support his
structural functionalism theory, he developed ‘social system theory’ and the ‘AGIL model’ and
they are discussed below:

According to Parsons, a social system is a system of action. Parsons considered “a social system
consists of a plurality of individuals, actors in interaction with others in a situation”. Unlike the
Marxists, who focused on the occurrence of radical change in society, Parsons focused on why
societies are stable and keep functioning. For example, education is a kind of social system
because it tries to unify people by providing standard education, which will allow them to
participate in and contribute to the economy, thus strengthening the society, and hence, society
exists.

Parsons gave the model AGIL, which represents the functional pre-requisites (i.e. four basic
functions) that all social systems must achieve to survive:

 Adaptation: Involves securing sufficient resources from the environment and then
distributing these throughout the system to maintain equilibrium which is the goal of the
social system
 Goal Attainment: Refers to setting priorities among system goals and mobilizing
resources for their attainment.
 Integration: Refers to maintaining solidarity or coordination among the parts of the
system.
 Latency: Refers to ensuring that actors in the social system display the appropriate
characteristics i.e. pattern maintenance and tension management in the social system.
Major Assumptions or Postulates of Functionalism:

 Society is as a whole is differentiated into various smaller parts or units. Each traits or
units perform certain functions assigned to them.
 Culture is means for the satisfaction of human needs. Culture is made by the humans
themselves.
 Though different elements or parts of culture play different functions they are
interdependent and interrelated in culture as a whole.
 In certain parts fail to perform its function than the whole system is negatively affected or
disturbed. Sometimes whole system or society may collapse.
 The function is the contribution of partial activities to total activity of which it is part.
 Cooperation, coordination, consensus are they key of any society for its stability and
survival.
 There are manifest and latent functions operated for smooth function of society.

Weakness / Limitations/ Criticism:

 Very ideal and one sided.

 Grossly ignored the reality of conflict.
 More imaginative, normative and poetic rather than practical.
 Over emphasis on consensus, solidarity, order, harmony, and integrated.

The conflict perspective

This conflict perspective/theory to understand and analyze society is influenced by Marxist

theoretical assumptions. It rejects the assumption put forward by the structural-functional
perspective. This perspective views society as a dynamic system.
Social change is a core concept for this perspective. Society goes on changing and involving
through different conflicts. Classes that emerge through time, the interest of those classes, and
unification or conflicts between and among those classes propel society forward and transform it.
This perspective views the economy as a major factor in social change.

In sociology, the main followers of the conflict perspective are Karl Marx, C.W. Mills, Randall
Collins, etc. According to these analysts unequal access, oppression, exploitation, limited
resources, etc. are responsible for the emergence of conflict and due to these conflicts society
undergoes changes. They believe that since there’s no society without conflict, the only reliable
way to study society is from the perspective of the conflict.

The conflict theorist assumes that societies are in a constant state of change in which the conflict
is the permanent feature. Conflict does not necessarily imply ought right violence. It involves
tension, hostility, severe competition, and conflict over goals and values. Conflict is not deemed
as an occasional event that disturbs the smooth functioning of the system. It is viewed as a
continuous process and an inevitable part of social life.
Conflict theorists see conflict not merely as a class phenomenon but as a part of everyday life in
all societies. Thus in inquiring about any culture, organization, or social group, sociologists want
to know, “who benefits, who suffers, and who dominates at the expense of others”. They are
concerned with the conflict between women and men, parents and children, cities and villages,
rich and poor, upper caste and lower caste, and so on. Conflict theorists are concerned with how
society’s institutions including the family, government, religion, education, and media mad help
to maintain the privileges of some groups and keep others in a subordinate position.

Key Assumptions:

1. Society is not a system in equilibrium but a nebulous (blurry) structure of imperfectly

coordinated elements which are held together by the coercion of some elements and the subject
of others.
2. Society and its elements are in the process of incessant (continuous) change although at
varying degrees; change and conflict are continuous and normal features of human society.
3. Society is a stage populated with living, struggling and competing actors; the social universe is
the setting within which the conflicts of life are acted out.
4. Social conflicts are inherent in the very nature of social structure, the distinct between
exogenous and endogenous conflicts is valid only in the analytical sense. 5. The inherent
predilections to change in society vary in scope, nature, intensity and degree of velocity; they
may be latent or manifest, gradual or destructive.
6. Endogenous conflicts arise out of mal- integration or differential articulation of structural
concomitants (coexisting), incompatibility of the interest groups and individuals, differential
distribution of rewards, and the imperatives of super-orientation and subordination and the lack
of valueconsensus.
7. Dahrendorf has summarized the essential elements of conflict theory as follows: • Every
society is subjected at every moment to change; social change is ubiquitous (universal).
• Every society experience at every moment social conflict; social conflict is ubiquitous.
• Every element in society contributes to its change.
• Every society rests on constraint of some of its members by others.

Weakness
 Conflict theory is criticized for focusing so narrowly on the issues of competition and
change.
 It fails to come to grips with the more orderly, stable, and less politically controversial
aspects of social reality.
 It also overlooks the stability of societies, where change is not always necessary. E.g.
many primitive societies of the world are still very little changed.
 Conflict theorists failed to distinguish between positive conflict and negative conflict or
forms of conflict.

Symbolic Interactionism / Interpretative 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. This
perspective sees people as being active in shaping the social world rather than simply being acted
upon.

It is essentially a social-psychological perspective that is particularly relevant to sociological

enterprise. Instead of dealing with abstract social structures, concrete forms of behaviour or
inferred psychic characteristics, symbolic interactionism focusses on the nature of interaction,
the dynamic patterns of social action and social relationship. Interaction is taken as unit of
analysis and attitudes are relegated to the background.

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is considered a founder of symbolic interactionism though he

never published his work on it. Mead’s student, Herbert Blumer, 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.

Key Assumptions

1. Human beings unlike lower animals are endowed with the capacity for thought.

2. The capacity for thought is shaped by social interaction.

3. In social interaction people learn the meanings and the symbols that allow them to exercise
their distinctly human capacity for thought.

4. Meaning and symbols allow people to carry on distinctly human action and interaction.

5. People are able to modify or alter the meanings and symbols that they use in action and
interaction on the basis of their interpretation of the situation.

6. People are able to make these modifications and alternations because in part of their ability to
interact with themselves, which allows them to examine possible courses of action, assess their
relative advantages and disadvantages and then choose them.

7. The intertwined patterns of action and interaction make up groups and societies.

Critics of this theory claim that symbolic interactionism neglects the macro level of social
interpretation. In other words, symbolic interactionists may miss the more significant issues of
society by focusing too closely on the “trees” rather than the “forest.” The perspective also
receives criticism for slighting the influence of social forces and institutions on individual
interactions. In the case of smoking, the functionalist perspective might miss the powerful role
that the institution of mass media plays in shaping perceptions of smoking through advertising,
and by portraying smoking in film and television. In the cases of race and gender, this
perspective would not account for social forces like systemic racism or gender discrimination,
which strongly influence what we believe race and gender mean.

Post Modernism:

Postmodernism is an intellectual movement that became popular in the 1980s, and the ideas
associated with it can be seen as a response to the social changes occurring with the shift from
modernity to postmodernity. Postmodernists claim that the classic social thinkers took their
inspiration from the idea that history has a shape – it ‘goes somewhere’ and is progressive. Jean
Francois Lyotard argues that this idea has now collapsed and there are no longer any
‘metanarratives’ – overall conceptions of history or society – that make any sense.

The postmodern world is not destined, as Marx hoped, to be a harmonious socialist one, and thus
Marxism (along with Functionalism and Feminism) and its promise of a better future are no
longer relevant to the more complex and less predictable post-modern age.

Similarly, Lyotard argues that scientific research is no longer done purely to uncover knowledge
to make the world a better place (like the original Enlightenment thinkers thought was the case),
but simply to empower those with the money who fund it. This could explain why we have
nuclear weapons but no cure for cancer.

Moreover, it seems that the pursuit of scientific knowledge (and especially its application) has in
some ways made the world a riskier, more dangerous place – nuclear weapons and global
warming are both the products of science, for example.

Democracy has spread around the world, but in many developed political systems voters are
apathetic and politicians reviled. In short, for many postmodern theorists, the grand project of
modernity has run into the sand.

Assumptions of Post Modernism:

 Postmodernism assumes that there is no underlying objective reality that means no prime
objective reality (Either physical or spiritual).
 Postmodernism assumes that everything is subjective and relative to individual views,
perception and values which varies from one person to another person.
 Postmodernism assumes that there is no absolute preference point to judge between right
and wrong; true or false; real and unreal; good and evil, etc .
 Postmodernism assumes that universe is an open system, hence natural laws are not fixed
or we can say reality and time are not fixed realities.
 Postmodernism assumes that there is no knowledge apart from language ie; human beings
construct meaning through language and may differ from one person to another.
 Postmodernism assumes that unlike modernism it is open, unbounded and concerned with
process and becoming.
Jean Baudrillard and post modernism.

Baudrillard in his book simulations seems pessimistic about the consequences brought by the
post modernism he regard change a kind of trap from which escape is impossible. The central
importance of buying and selling of material good has now replaced by buying and selling of
sign and images which have relationship to material reality. The images are everything reality
nothing. The sign passes through four main stages, the sign in post modern world breaks no
relation to any reality so it is own simulacrum. Simulacrum is an image of something that does
not exist and has never existed modern society is based on the production and exchange of
simulacrum. Signifies have no connection with anything real that is signified. The science and
technology, TV culture, internet, email and social media etc have destroyed. The originality of
culture TV culture, have capture nothing but images of things which never existence or have
already been destroyed.

If it has become impossible to grasp reality, it is also impossible to change it. Society has
imploded and become like a black hole in which nothing can escape the exchange of sign with
no real meaning in his view power is no longer inequality distributed , it has just disappeared
nobody can exercise power to change thing. With the end of real and its substitution by
simulacra and the end of effective power, we all are trapped in the kind of position, deprived
over freedom to change things and condemned to the interminable exchange of meaningless sign.
He discuss about the dissolution of life into TVs and says TV watches us, TV alienates us, TV
manipulates us, TV inform us, TV is primarily responsible for ushering us in a situation where
image and reality can no longer be distinguish . Meaning is created by words rather than external
reality.

Michael Foucault

He attempted to illustrate shift of understanding which separate thinking in our modern world
formed that as an earlier ages. He has analyzed the emergence of modern institutions such as,
prisons, hospitals and schools that have played an increasing role in controlling and monitoring
the social population. He has advance important ideas about the relationship between power,
ideology and discourse. Modern societies have created discourses. Modern societies have created
discourses for the controlling of society through mediculization of traditional knowledge.

Power works through discourse to save popular attitudes towards phenomena such as, crime,
madness or sexuality. Knowledge becomes a force to control. Knowledge and power are linked
to technology of surveillance, enforcement and discipline. The notion of sexuality has not always
existed but has been created through process of social development. JorgenHavre mass has
discussed about the democracy and public sphere. He regards modern communication like.TV
and newspapers are dominated by commercial interest, they do not provide focus on democratic
discussion. Ulrich Beck regard we are not living beyond the modern but moving to the second
modernity which refers to the fact that modern institutions are becoming global while everyday
life is breaking free from the hold of tradition and custom. We are too living in a risk society full
of chaos, lack of pattern.

Anthony Giddiness regard post modern world as a runaway a world mark by new risk and
uncertainties in the world of rapid transformation, traditional forms of trust tend to become
dissolve. Living in an informational age increases in social reflexivity. Social reflexivity refers to
the fact that we constantly think about or reflect upon the circumstances in which we live our
life.

Criticism

 Post modernism is an ideological movement based on the study and analysis of society
and culture. This movement or the theoretical perspectives have some inadequacies or
irrelevant, some of the criticisms of this perspective are as mentioned below
 Post modernism is not a theory but an ideological movement and synthesis of ideas.
There is no logical ground to verify this idea.
 It has superciliously criticized the modern art, literature including science and entire
social science theories.
 Post modernism was developed in Europe and America as a fashion.
 It is anarchic ideas.
 Constructing theory of further society is the indication of haste which cannot explain the
present today.
 Post modernism would be more fruitful if it were developed as a motor of transforming
society. But, it has association only with modernism, and the development of society is
ongoing.
 It cannot be taken as an approach, method and theory of society and culture. It lacks
method, rules and arguments.
 Post modernism rejects the structuralism, Marxism and functionalism. But social reality
can be explored studying societies based on these theories. These theories can be
criticized but cannot be rejected.
 Modern society is criticized and rejected. But present modern society
 Is the best, civilized and developed society of human history?
 Post modernism is not successful in coordinating the sociological and anthropological
theories.

FREDRIC JAMESON,

in his magisterial work, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991),
has offered us a particularly influential analysis of our current postmodern condition. Jameson is
highly critical of our current historical situation; indeed, he paints a rather dystrophic picture of
the present, which he associates, in particular, with a loss of our connection to history. What we
are left with is a fascination with the present. According to Jameson, post modernity has
transformed the historical past into a series of emptied-out stylizations (what Jameson terms
pastiche) that can then be commodified and consumed. The result is the threatened victory of
capitalist thinking over all other forms of thought.

Jameson contrasts this postmodern situation with the modernist situation that has been
superceded. Whereas modernism still believed in "some residual zones of 'nature' or 'being,' of
the old, the older, the archaic" and still believed that one could "do something to that nature and
work at transforming that 'referent'" (ix), postmodernism has lost a sense of any distinction
between the Real and Culture. For Jameson, postmodernity amounts to "an immense dilation of
[culture's] sphere (the sphere of commodities), an immense and historically original acculturation
of the Real" (x). Whereas "modernism was still minimally and tendentially the critique of the
commodity and the effort to make it transcend itself," postmodernism "is the consumption of
sheer commodification as a process" (x). That apparent victory of commodification over all
spheres of life marks postmodernity's reliance on the "cultural logic of late capitalism."
Following from this economic base for thinking about postmodernity, Jameson proceeds to
pinpoint a number of symptoms that he associates with the postmodern condition:

1) the weakening of historicity. Jameson sees our "historical deafness" (xi) as one of the
symptoms of our age, which includes "a series of spasmodic and intermittent, but desperate,
attempts at recuperation (x). Postmodern theory itself Jameson sees as a desperate attempt to
make sense of the age but in a way that refuses the traditional forms of understanding (narrative,
history, the reality obscured by ideology). For postmodernists, there is no outside of ideology or
textuality; indeed, postmodern theory questions any claim to "truth" outside of culture; Jameson
sees this situation as itself a symptom of the age, which in turn plays right into the hands of
capitalism: "postmodernism is not the cultural dominant of a wholly new social order..., but only
the reflex and the concomitant of yet another systemic modification of capitalism itself" (xii).
Jameson calls instead for the return of history; hence, his mantra: "always historicize!" Jameson
pinpoints a weakening of history "both in our relationship to public History and in the new forms
of our private temporality, whose 'schizophrenic' structure (following Lacan) will determine new
types of syntax or syntagmatic relationships in the more temporal arts" (Postmodernism 6). As
Jameson explains, the schizophrenic suffers from a "breakdown of the signifying chain" in
his/her use of language until "the schizophrenic is reduced to an experience of pure material
signifiers, or, in other words, a series of pure and unrelated presents in time"
(Postmodernism 27). Our loss of historicity, according to Jameson, most resembles such a
schizophrenic position.

2) a breakdown of the distinction between "high" and "low" culture. As Jameson puts it, the
various forms of postmodernism "have, in fact, been fascinated precisely by this whole
'degraded' landscape of schlock and kitsch, of TV series and Reader's Digest culture, of
advertising and motels, of the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film, of so-called
paraliterature, with its airport paperback categories of the gothic and the romance, the popular
biography, the murder mystery, and the science fiction or fantasy novel: materials they no long
simply 'quote,' as a Joyce or a Mahler might have done, but incorporate into their very substance"
(Postmodernism 3).
 3) "a new depthlessness, which finds its prolongation both in contemporary 'theory' and in a
whole new culture of the image or the simulacrum" (Postmodernism 6). This depthlessness is, of
course, supported by point # 5. The depthlessness manifests itself through literal flatness (two
dimensional screens, flat skyscrapers full of reflecting windows) and qualitative superficiality. In
theory, it manifests itself through the postmodern rejection of the belief that one can ever fully
move beyond the surface appearances of ideology or "false consciousness" to some deeper truth;
we are left instead with "multiple surfaces". One result is "that our daily life, our psychic
experience, our cultural languages, are today dominated by categories of space rather than by
categories of time, as in the preceding period of high modernism"

4) "the waning of affect" "a whole new type of emotional ground tone—what I will call
'intensities'—which can best be grasped by a return to older theories of the sublime". The general
depthlessness and affectlessness of postmodern culture is countered by outrageous claims for
extreme moments of intense emotion, which Jameson aligns with schizophrenia and a culture of
(drug) addiction. With the loss of historicity, the present is experienced by the schizophrenic
subject "with heightened intensity, bearing a mysterious charge of affect", which can be
"described in the negative terms of anxiety and loss of reality, but which one could just as well
imagine in the positive terms of euphoria, a high, an intoxicatory or hallucinogenic intensity".

5) a whole new technology (computers, digital culture, etc.), though Jameson insists on
seeing such technology as "itself a figure for a whole new economic world system". Such
technologies are more concerned with reproduction rather than with the industrial production of
material goods.