Exploring Theoretical Perspectives in Modern Sociology

In the modern-day sociology has grown to be a large field with many different concepts and theories. However, the ways sociology is shaped can be narrowed down to three theoretical perspectives; the first of these perspectives being known as “symbolic interactionism”. The basic meaning of this lies in the idea that everything and everyone we know in life we symbolize in the way it relates to ourselves. So, for instance the way you see a best friend or even a father in your life is only a symbol or representation orchestrated by the society you’ve been raised in. Another common perspective is the idea of “functional analysis”. This entails that society is made up of one body with every standard or thought process being a separate part that must

Symbolic interactionism was widely influenced by the men, Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead (although it’s actual creation can be traced back to Max Weber). Mead did much of his work at the University of Chicago, and made the claim “that human beings do not react directly to events [instead responding] based on their interpretation of the meaning of events” (Mork, 2016) . Another sociologist by the name of Robert Merton contributed greatly toward functional analysis, although he denied the concept of society being any type of “body”. Merton created a system much like the ones in math subjects, defining his key terms as “functions”, each one filling different roles of benefit and loss. Probably the most well know of these sociological contributors, Karl Marx founded and widely made use of his conflict theory methods. Karl Marx created this theory through his prediction of lower-class workers rising up in a revolution against the upper-class aristocrats. Even though the sociologists listed may have been the more major creators of these theories, many contributors have come after them with many more expansions that have made these perspectives what they

Another very important factor however is through which lens you see the world. The way you analyze your material; there are two ways that we can go about this. The first way that we see the world is through the lens of globality. This lens focuses more on what is known as the macro level, looking at the big picture of what’s going on. When examining functional analysis and conflict theory this method plays a major role as the macro level, or the society as a whole, is what matters the most. For instance, you can’t look at how one New York gang is in competition with another and say this must be the case for all of society. You must see all of society collaborated together. The opposite point of view would be in seeing the world on a micro level. Looking a bit closer, smaller, rather than at the big picture. This plays as a much larger variable in symbolic interactionism. A social researcher studying the terms we use for a family could not just look at the most used term in the USA and base their study off that. They would have to study different families in different regions and cities to really grasp how we symbolize our very