Note: If you think something here is wrong, feel free to let me know! I don't intend to spread misinformation, and would gladly correct a mistake or enter a dialogue over a difference of opinion. Or if you think this is too wordy for something that's supposed to be entry-level, let me know! Objectivity is easier when there's more than one opinion in your head.
Enjoy! Tomorrow at eight AM, as usual, for something new.
Intro to Sociology by Mackinley Clevinger, February 29, 2016
Born in the aftermath of the Industrial and French revolutions came a new science to the world, one that aimed its interests towards understanding society and its actions for the betterment of mankind. This science was called Sociology, which, for a science, had surprisingly religious thought-points in its origin. August Comte, the man credited with the founding of this now much expanded science, considered Sociologists to be a kind of priest for the new age, guiding society towards a better future and fixing the problems that had become inherent to a changing system of life. While these views are much exaggerated in the importance sociologists would play in developing and developed societies, the birth of this science led to a better understanding of the impact of certain events and activities on the structure and health of society, and has certainly become an interesting think-point to keep in mind when observing on-going events.
Given that the science was made up of people and developed by them, soon after its founding there arose many disagreements as to how to proceed with understanding society, some believing you had to take a very macro approach while others wanted to look at a micro one. Essentially, a large split in the path that would be taken for research and understanding came up over whether or not they should look at society as groups of people or as uncountable individuals, the former easier and the latter nigh-impossible. Again, because these early adopters of sociology were human, they further split into smaller groupings: Those people believing that society worked as interacting groups developing into two notable groups, Functionalists and Conflict Theorists, and those wanting to observe individual behavior coming to be known as Symbolic Interactionists. Many more groups exist than these three, and each have their own sub-classifications as well as every individual involved in these arts having their own ideas of what is the exact truth, but for a general look, these are the three categories that will be talked about.
Function, in Functionalism, is the idea that every part of a society contributes in some way to the whole, and that, if a service or group is still around after a long period of time and societal change, then it, in some way, is essential to the continuation of a society, kept around out of the necessity of its presence. On the face of it, it sounds quite logical, until you add the human element. An oft-used example is that of prostitution. It must serve some kind of a use for society, which is why it has carried on being a part of our societal make-up despite the continual conflict going on about whether it belongs in society or not. Functionalism’s logic says that prostitution does serve a purpose, in that it allows for a release of male sexual energy without emotional attachments, permitting a male to cheat on his family with less of a likelihood of being caught, thus ‘strengthening’ a family by not having that kind of dirty laundry thrown around. This is, of course, a controversial line of reasoning, as it also lauds the institutionalized dislike for homosexual relations and marriage as benefiting society by ensuring population is growing as quickly as possible, serving a function by rite of still being around after so much controversy and time.
Development is the idea that, as time goes on, society will grow and become better than it once was after meeting and dealing with minor problems known as dysfunctions, always trying to return to a state of equilibrium that all of society’s services and groups work towards maintaining. By solving problems and introducing new functions into a society or retiring old ones, a society grows stronger and more likely to survive, the cooperation of groups being the primary objective of the individual to keep society happy and healthy for everyone. If a society does not develop, or does not return to equilibrium, then it will wither and die, its groups broken apart and left to either die or try again at making society.
In contrast to the school of thought of social cooperation is one made popular by Karl Marx, called Conflict Theory. Karl Marx believed that society was, as a natural state of being, imbalanced; a rift always in place between those with power and those without¸ power largely coming from wealth. His own style of belief, known as Marxism, was that there was a constant struggle between the capitalist, who owned wealth and the means of production, and the proletariat, or the working class who were forced to sell their labor for money, and only with a great social upheaval could this imbalance be fixed. Conflict Theory is typically more expansive than just imbalances of power via wealth and ownership, taking into consideration gender, racial, and other imbalances.
This thought was born, also, from the industrial revolution, asking why, with so much wealth present in society, should only a few possess it while the majority had nothing? The idea of Conflict Theory was developed from this, believing that society was made up of groups that, instead of cooperating, competed with one another for power and wealth, working together at times but only for personal gain in the grand scheme of things. Society was not one of a balance and working together, but of conflict and competition that led it ever onward towards growth and development. When a deep imbalance of power was present in society, it would need an upheaval of societal structure to rebalance things so that the groups could compete once more and develop. By the thought process of a Conflict Theorist, prostitution is an example of an imbalance of power between the prostitute and her pimp, the pimp profiting off of the work of the prostitute just as the capitalist uses the proletariat. It also feeds into the power struggle of society between the unfair treatment of women in comparison to men, the women often jailed for their prostitution while the males propagating such a business rarely see the inside of a cell for any amount of time.
Both of these schools of thought, Functionalism and Conflict Theory, look at society as a system made up of large groups that offer different services and interact differently. This is a macro approach to viewing society, looking at things on a large-scale to explain why society does what it does, and what it is likely to do in the future. The micro approach, however, looks at society as an assemblage of many individuals, each with their own drives and interests that both conflict and contribute to themselves, society, and each other, this school of thought being known as Symbolic Interactionism. This idea of how society functions is born of the idea that the individual can have an immense impact on society, and you have to look at each person to figure out their drives, interests, and future potential, as opposed to viewing people as parts of a group that interacts with society.
Symbolic Interactionists study the people within a society, trying to understand their goals and motives and how those both impact and are caused by the society they exist within. This field of Sociology was founded by George Herbert Mead, believing that humans are dissimilar from animals in that we attribute special meanings to otherwise meaningless symbols to convey information and feelings to one another, these meanings taught to us by the society we develop in that is ultimately changed by our presence therein, creating a new definition of those symbols for the next generation in an infinite cycle, and that it is in how a person attributes special meaning to his environment and those around that we can better understand them. To use the prostitution analogy again, Symbol Interactionists believe that prostitution occurs because the people involved in it assign a positive emotion to the experience, excitement at doing something not globally accepted that makes the experience risky as well as satisfying certain needs from either side of the exchange; the woman receiving money and the male obtaining pleasure. (Note: Due to male prostitution being dissimilar to female prostitution in several ways, the analogies here are all in reference to males soliciting women for sex.) This line of thinking, looking for the emotional reaction and attached meanings to things, is how Symbolic Interactionism studies society and tries to understand it.
While these approaches may seem to differ largely, and hold vastly different world-views, they all serve the same purpose, ultimately; to try and better understand society and its people to be able to help society navigate the troubled waters of dysfunctions and issues that arise that throw the regular balance into disarray. They are all aspects of Sociology, which is an ever-changing and evolving science that seeks to serve society and make it better. It is not a stagnant field, holding the same views forever; in an earlier analogy in which Functionalism promoted anti-homosexual bigotry by the idea that it made sure that everyone was contributing to growing the population, the recent change of mind that much of the world has now had in being accepting of homosexuality can be seen as a response to a world-population that has grown too much and too quickly, homosexuality itself a function to ‘save’ humanity from overpopulation.
As society changes, so too will Sociology and each of its aspects – of which there are many more than just the three mentioned here – because, as society is the subject of its studies, the findings and studies performed will have to change too, leading to new results that change what understanding of society we have and what we end up doing with that knowledge. Sociology is coming to become a bigger and better science, capable of understanding much more than it once did on a scale that is ever-growing as it tries to keep up with the rapidly changing societies that it researches. Functionalism, Conflict Theory, or Symbolic Interactionism; these are simply different approaches towards understanding the same thing, none of them completely right or wrong in how they try to understand society, and all of them a step in the right direction towards helping society function for the good of itself and the people living within it.