The United States leads the entire world in the number of incarcerations, there are approximately 2 million people behind bars at this time, that means that a wrongful conviction rate of 1% would translate to 20,000. Though we do not have a steady percentage of falsely accused individuals, simply 1% is still a large amount of innocent citizens. The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and hopes to adjust the criminal justice system to prevent future cases of injustice. Their website contains hundreds unethical incarcerations and convictions, including Cathy Woods and Kathy Gonzalez, two of the only women in their entire database.
Finally, the three sociological perspectives can be seen. Functionalist can be observed in the way
Functionalism is a theory about the nature of mental states. A mental status is not what something it is made of but what it does. Functionalism was a major influence on the education system. It is believed that the functionalist perspective functions just like an organism. This meaning that each
Around the world, sociologists have researched on human behavior, observing people’s daily decisions and choices, which ultimately causes an effect to the rest of the society. The sociological perspective is how sociologists see the world, a perspective on human behavior and the connections between the behavior of the individual people and structures of society in which we live in. Although there is an overarching view in the sociological perspective, there still lies the different levels and interpretations of it. The three notable sociological perspectives are: symbolic interactionism, functionalism and conflict theory. While symbolism focuses on the face-to-face interactions, functionalism and conflict theory work more on a macro level,
In sociology, there are three theoretical perspectives; symbolic interactionism, functional analysis and conflict theory. The major point of symbolic interactionism is to use symbols to help understand how we as a society view the world, and how we communicate with one another. In functional analysis, the major point is to look at society as a whole, constructed of various parts, or groups, that all have their own function. Lastly, conflict theory is the opposite of functional analysis. In this perspective, society is viewed as different groups, each competing for power, or dominance.
The three major paradigms are functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist. Sociologists use each paradigm to ask different questions about an observation. The questions will differ between each of the three paradigms. From a functionalist stand point, some questions that might be asked are: What do the players of a team have in common? What beliefs and behaviors do all athletes share?
The Catholic church has been highly respected for centuries throughout the world. But during the 16th century, a German monk named Martin Luther challenged the Catholic church of their holiness and revealed to the world the real truth behind their saintliness. He wanted to let the world know that the so-called righteous were not really as they seemed; they were as identical as the fraudsters we have today. Martin Luther made a clear assertion in his text “The Freedom of a Christian” alleging that the ones who were seen as the godliest, were actually the deceivers. Just because they wore the sacred robes and dwelt in sacred places performing the necessary religious duties didn’t mean that they were the holiest among the holies.
In reference of sociological approaches and the one that captivated my attention in almost all chapters of text was of the Interactionalist. I analyze that while functionalists and conflict theorists study behavioral patterns on a large scale and throughout society, theorists who adopt the interactionist perspective “make generalizations about everyday forms of interaction to understand society as a whole” (Schaefer 16). The roots of the interactionist perspective was developed in the United States and the founder was George Herbert Mead (Schaefer 16). Importance is given to the consequences of the interaction, these are what define the group and the aspects related to the structure or social organization of the group. Interactions with certain members over a period of time and frequency can become stabilized and acquire a pattern.
Sociology is the study of the society and human behavior whereas, the word perspective can be defines as a view of things in their true connection or importance. Hence, the social perspectives provide standpoints used to look at human behavior and interaction as they relate to individuals and groups within society. The social perspective emphasizes that to understand humans for not what is inside of them, but what’s influencing them that should be observed. There are four theoretical perspectives used to understand society and human behavior. The four discussed here are structure functional, consensus and conflict, the gender problem and symbolic interaction.
Sociologists argue that the sociological perspective gives them the ability to make significant contributions toward an understanding of human social behavior. A theorist from the structural-functionalism perspective in a college classroom would observe the characteristics that creates a classroom as whole. The theorist would observe the students as an induvial that are focused towards a common goal. That end goal willing to get educated and attain a degree. If this was not the case there would not be a functioning classroom.
This divides sociology into four fairly distinct paradigm clusters. There is internal consistency under each paradigm, in terms of assumptions about individuals, groups, societies, goals of study and accepted forms of evidence. However, each cluster neglects, excludes or opposes some the insights generated under other paradigms. A ? Functionalist (Regulation-Objective): Societies are the coming together of populations with shared civic values who establish social order which on the whole benefits everybody.
Sociologists analyze social phenomena at different levels using different perspectives. Sociologists study everything—from the micro level of analysis of small social patterns to the macro level analysis of large social patterns. Sociological perspective includes three (3) approaches: The Symbolic Interactionism which involves the micro level of analysis using symbols and face to face interactions; the Functionalism perspective which involves the macro level of analysis and gives emphasis on the relationship between parts of society and how the aspects of the society becomes functional; and the Conflict Theory using the macro level of analysis which focuses on the competition for scarce resources and how elites control the poor and weak (“Three Major Perspectives in Sociology,” 2015). With the given differences, Weber can be closely related to being a ‘Conflict Structuralist’. In Weber’s perspective that his sociological analysis focused as to how people’s relationship influence people’s behavior.
Theoretical Framework: Conflict Perspective: Conflict perspective focuses their attention on society as a whole. Conflict theorists see society as in a continuous sate of conflict between groups and classes. He struggle for power and income is a continuous process but one in which many categories of people appear as opponents-classes, races, nationalities and even the sexes. Society is held together through the power of dominant groups or classes. The shared values, which functionalist see as glue for holding society together, do no realty form rue consensus; instead this is an artificial consensus in which the dominant groups or classes impose their values and rules upon rest of the people.
While studying sociology, every individual will have a distinct perspective and depending on the particular subject, not everyone will have the same viewpoint on the topic at hand. With this, Sociology consists of many different approaches, commonly known as “Sociology theories” These theories are distinctive and diverse, providing a different perspective for understanding different situations in society. With there being a wide variety of approaches such as “Feminist,” “Labelling,” and “Critical,” for instance, the top three major approaches representing Sociology are, “Structural Functionalism,” “Conflict Theory,” and “Symbolic Interactionism.” This paper will be comparing the differences and similarities between “Structural-Functionalism” approach and the “Symbolic Interactionism” approach. To start
2.3 Sociological perspective: Macionis (), analyzed that sociology is efficient study of human society. Society refers to public who live in a defined region and share a way of existence. Sociology’s analysis of society is a special point of view called a sociological perspective. To define the sociological perspective there is an additional way to define that is considering the general in the particular. It tells that that sociologist look for common pattern in particular human’s behavior.
