Advanced Theories Flashcards
Advanced functionalism- AGIL
Parsons- society is a system w its own needs, but what are the systems needs, identifies the AGIL schema
Adaption- social systems must cope with external boundary conditions like their physical environment, economic activity serves to solve the problems of adaptation (Instrumental)
Goal attainment- goals of societies have to be defined, political activity organises and directs the goal attainment of modern social systems (Instrumental)
Integration- different parts of the system must be integrated together to pursue shared goals, role of education, media and religion (Expressive)
Latency- encultured patterns of behaviour required by social system must be maintained, tensions must be managed and cultural patterns must be maintained, role of family (Expressive)
By carrying out their respective functions, four subsystems ensure that all societys needs are met and social stability is maintained
Advanced functionalism- Social change
Parsons identifies two types of society- trad and modern, modern is individual self interest and universalistic standards
for parsons, change is a gradual, evolutionary process of increasing complexity, organic analogy is relevant here- changed from single amoebas to complex organisms
in trad society, a single institution (family) performs many functions, organises production and consumption (adaptation), provides political leadership (goal attainment) etc. as societies develop they lose these functions to other sub systems, parsons calls it structural differentiation, also sees gradual change occurring through dynamic equilibrium- change occurs in one part of system and so produces compensatory change in another
Advanced functionalism- Internal critique: Merton
criticises three key assumptions of Parsons:
Indispensability- Parsons assumes everything in society is functionally indispensable in its existing form, for example he assumes primary socialisation is best performed by nuclear family but others may do it better
Functional unity- he assumes all parts of society are tightly integrated into single unity and each part is functional for the rest, some parts may actually be independent from the others
Universal functionalism- assumes everything in society performs positive function for society as a whole, some things may acc be dysfunctional for the others
Advanced functionalism- External critiques: Logical and Postmodernist
Logical- argue functionalism is teleological (idea that things exist bc of their effect or function), functionalist claim that family exist bc children need to be socialised is teleological, real explanation of something is one that identifies its cause and logically a cause must come before its effect, also is unscientific as it is not falsifiable
Postmodernist- assumes society is stable so cannot account for the diversity and instability of todays postmodern society, functionalism is example of meta narrative but society today is too fragmented
Advanced functionalism- External critiques: Conflict perspective
Marxists- unable to explain conflict and change, society is not harmonious as a whole and is based on exploitation and divided into classes w conflicting interests and unequal power, stability result of ruling class using coercion to inhibit change
conflict theorists see functionalism as conservative ideology, does not focus on change and conflict which justifies social order as inevitable
Advanced functionalism- External critiques: Action perspective
Wrong- functionalism too deterministic and sees humans as shaped by society, action perspective sees that individuals create society by their interactions
functionalism reifies society- treats it as a distinct thing above individuals, with its own needs, action approach argues that society is not a thing and is constructed
Advanced marxism
structural perspective that sees society as based on class conflict, bourgeoisie exploit proletariat and maintain position through repressive state apparatus and ideology and hegemony, revolution leading to communist society is inevitable
had an early classless society called primitive communism, as forces of production grow, different types of class society come and go, had three types of successive class societies - ancient society (exploitation of slaves), fuedal (exploitation of serfs) and capitalist (exploitation of free wage labourers)
Advanced marxism- Internal criticism: Gramsci
humanist marxist- introduces concept of hegemony, how the ruling classes implant idea that capitalism is legitimate to the WC, proletariat must develop own counter hegemony to win leadership of society, maintain dominance through coercion and consent (hegemony)
hegemony of ruling class never fully complete bc the ruling class are a minority- need to create a power bloc by making alliances w other groups like MC and the WC have dual consciousness- ideas influence by both ruling class ideology but also material conditions of their life, can see through dominant ideology to some degree
ruling class hegemony has chance to be undermined but will only lead to revolution if they can make counter hegemonic bloc- have to offer moral and ideological leadership to society
Advanced marxism- Internal criticism: Gramsci- Criticisms
accused of overemphasising the role of ideas and underemphasises role of state coercion and economic factors, may be fearful to overthrow bc of unemployment
Advanced marxism- Internal criticism: Althusser, criticism of marx
structural marxist, rejects economic determinism and humanism
in marx’s og base-superstructure model, societys economic base determines its superstructure of institutions, ideologies and actions, contradictions in the base cause changes in superstructure and bring downfall of capitalism. althusser rejects this model for a more complex one Craib- structural determinism where capitalist society has three levels- economic, political and ideological. in base-superstructure there is one way causality where economic level determines everything abt the other two levels, in althussers model the other two levels have relative autonomy and can affect what happens to the economy and so we have two way causality
Advanced marxism- Internal criticism: Althusser, criticism of humanism
our sense of free will and choice is illusion, everything abt us is product of underlying social structures, humanists believe that ppl use their creativity and free will to change society. Althusser argues that our free will is simply false consciousness produced by ISA, we are merely products of social structures that determine everything abt us
revolution will instead come about from crisis of capitalism bc of over determination- contradiction in the three structures resulting in whole collapse of the system
Advanced marxism- Internal criticism: Althusser- Criticisms
discourages political activism by stressing the role of structural factors that individuals can do little to affect
ignores the fact it is the active struggles of the WC that can change society, he is elitist
Advanced feminism- Liberal
laws and policies can secure equal opportunities for women, also call for cultural change in terms of prejudices and stereotypes
sexist attitudes are culturally constructed and transmitted through socialisation so must change societys socialisation patterns
evaluation- over optimistic, ignore possibility of deep rooted structures causing womens oppression
Advanced feminism- Radical
patriarchy is universal, men are womens main enemy, all men oppress all women
patriarchal oppression is direct and personal, see the personal as political, personal relationships are political as one person dominates over another, refer to these power relationships as sexual politics
patriarchy constructs sexuality to satisfy mens desires
three ways to change oppression:
Separatism- living apart from men and so free from patriarchy, Greer- matrilocal households
Consciousness-raising- sharin experiences in women only groups
Political lesbianism- lesbianism is only non oppressive form of sexuality
evaluation- class is main form of inequality not patriarchy (marxists), no explanation as to why female subordination takes diff forms in diff societies
Webers social action theory
saw both structural and action theories as necessary to understand human behaviour, adequate sociological explanations involves the level of cause (structural factors that shape peoples behaviour) and level of meaning (subjective meanings individuals attach to their actions), identifies 4 types of actions based on meaning for actor- instrumentally rational, value rational, traditional and affectual
evaluation- valuable corrective to the over emphasis on structural factors in marxism and functionalism
Schutz- too individualistic and doe not explain shared nature of meanings
difficult to apply
Labelling theory- symbolic interactionism
use interactionist concepts:
definition of the situation- definition of something is a label for that thing, Thomas- if people define a situation as real then it will have real consequences, belief in something will affect how we act
looking glass self- Cooley- describes how we develop our self concept, it arises out of our ability to take the role of the other, by taking the role of the other we come to see ourselves as they see us, leads to SFP bc we become what we want others to see us as
career- Becker- extends concept to apply to groups like medical students, weed smokers, things become our master status
voluntaristic theory that emphasises free will and choice, accused of being deterministic
Goffmans dramaturgical model- symbolic interactionism
describes how we actively construct our self by manipulating peoples impressions of us, uses analogies w drama as framework for analysing social interaction, we are all actors w scripts and props with the aim to give convincing performance of the role we have adopted, we seek to present a particular image of ourselves to audiences so must control impression our performance gives- study audience to see how they react, we are not really the roles we play
Evaluation of symbolic interactionism
loose collection of descriptive concepts than explanatory theory, ignores wider social structures, cannot explain consistent patterns we observe in peoples behaviour, not all action is meaningful
Symbolic interactionism
Mead- behaviour is not shaped by instincts, we respond to the world by giving meaning to the things that are significant to us, have to interpret meaning before we can choose a response, we show our meanings through symbols (language, gestures etc), need to take the role of the other person to interpret their meaning, this develops through social interaction, to function as members of society we need the ability to see ourselves as others see us
Blumer- three key principles: our actions are based on meanings we give to events, these meanings arise from interaction process, meanings we give to situations are result of interpretive procedures we use
blumer strongly contrasts w structural theories as it does not see people as puppets of society and we have choice in how we perform our functions
Ethnomethodology
Garfinkel- stems from phenomenology and rejects idea of society as a real objective structure, interested in how social order is achieved, argues social order is created from the bottom up, social order is something members actively construct everyday using their commonsense knowledge, interested in methods we use to produce meanings in the first place while interactionists look at how meanings affect people
EM sees meaning as always potentially unclear- indexicality, nothing has a fixed meaning and everything is up to interpretation which is threat to social order, cannot be huge problem as society carries on bc we have tools to deal with ambiguous meaning- reflexivity which is commonsense knowledge. Language most important in achieving reflexivity, as we describe something we create it which removes ambiguity
evaluation- denies existence of wider society seeing it as shared fiction, ignores wider structures of inequality, uncover obvious things
Giddens structuration theory
duality of structure, structure and action cannot exist without the other, through our actions we produce and reproduce structures which is what makes our actions possible in the first place, illustrates this with language- language is a structure, made up of a set of rules of grammar that dictate how we use it to express meanings, action (communication) depends on existence of structure (language rules)
action generally reproduces structure bc of rules and resources, societys rules have knowledge on how to live our lives but we need resources to execute it which reproduces existing structure of society, can also change structures by monitoring our actions
evaluation- underestimates capacity of structures to resist change, doesnt actually explain what happens in society
Postmodern vs modern society
postmodernism is relativist, there is no one truth, reject any theory that suggests meta narrative bc society is too diverse
Lyotard language games- if there is no true knowledge then what is there, many diff versions of the truth that compete against each other, winner of this (dominant discourse) is one who can argue their case the best and so all there is is language games
Advantages and disadvantages of meta narratives and diverse truths
adv MN- provides certainty bc there is only one truth so stronger value consensus, simple
adv DT- takes everyones diff experiences into account, allows for change
disadv MN- does not account for diff experiences so how can there be only one truth, lack of choice, stops change
disadv DT- causes confusion as how can there be many truths, weak value consensus, easiest argued choice may not acc be the best one
Postmodernity- simulacra and hyper reality
as we have departed from grand truths the concept of core knowledge is increasingly fuzzy, knowledge now is often fictitious and not bearing to reality and have entered a world of hyper reality, hyper reality is made up of symbols and signs that stand for something that is not reality but made up and we end up believing these are real
Baudrillard- calls such signs simulacra, signs appear more real than reality itself, critical of television
