Functionalism

Characteristics
1. Value consensus

2. Social solidarity Durkheim

3. Own function
Parsons

4. Meritocracy
Parsons

Explanation

Example

Counter arguments/ similarities

The idea that we all have the

same shared norms and values
which we use and live by in
everyday life.
The idea that we all work
together and work for the same
shared goals in society united by
our commonly understood
norms and values.
The idea that all organisations
and institutions, including the
family, play their own role in
society and all must work
together in order for society to
function properly for the good of
all, like the organs a body.
The idea that success is earned
and determined by a
combination of ability and hard
work. People are rewarded
based on merit. Status is
achieved, not ascribed.

Such as when everyone feels so

strongly about murders and
paedophiles.

Because of diversity in society we have subcultures and these subcultures have different
norms and values.

Such as when someone goes

missing and everyone works
together to help find them
through the use of social media
campaigns.
One of the main roles of the
family is the primary
socialisation of children and one
role of the education system is
to prepare children for the world
of work.

Not everyone works together, or pulls in the

same direction, in society. Some people
deviate from expected norms and values,
like criminals.

5. Structural
perspective
Parsons

They analyse how society as a

whole fits together, and see
society as a system of interrelated parts that work together
for it to function smoothly. Idea
that society is like a human
body.

6. Socialisation is
important

Socialisation happens at a young

age and is the process of
learning norms, values, customs

Coming from a lower class

background should not hold you
back. If you are prepared to
work hard and take advantage
of your opportunities you can
succeed both in school and at
work.
Without the heart the body will
not work. Without the brain it
will not work. Both do different
things but the body needs both
to work properly. Society needs
all of its parts to function
properly and it needs all of them
to work well.
Inadequate socialisation,
particularly at the primary stage,
can lead to problems like getting

Not all organisations function for the greater

good in society, some function for the
disproportionate benefit of individual groups.
Marxist would think that organisations like
the NHS make people better mainly for the
benefit of the capitalist economy and those
who run it.
Can be argued that this does not exist in
education as the middle classes have an
advantage over the working classes as they
have cultural capital as well as elaborate
speech unlike the working class who have
restricted speech and values that hold them
back.
Marxism is also a structural perspective. The
different parts of society have one primary
role, to support existing socio-economic and
political order, i.e. maintain the status quo.

Feminists take a critical view of socialisation.

They would argue that the nuclear family
socialises children into patriarchal values as

and traditions of the culture you

are part of, such as knowing how
tospeak to people, how to dress,
how to act in certain situations,
and how to live normally.
This is the process whereby
people end up doing job roles
they are suited to do, based on
their talents and aptitudes.

involved in crime. More WC

people commit crime than MC
people because some WC
children are poorly socialised by
their parents.
At school we study subjects that
develop our skills and allow us
to find out what we are good at
and what interests us, to
prepare us for the job we want
to do when we leave.

8. Specialist skills
Durkheim

Different job roles require

different, specialised skills. The
education system sifts and
sorts people according to
ability, making sure that the
more highly skilled jobs are done
by the most highly skilled
people.

9. Manifest/ latent
functions

Manifest functions are

intentional and obvious
functions whereas latent are not
obvious and can be
unintentional.

People do job roles that are

appropriate for their skills. Lowskilled workers do less
demanding, predominantly
manual jobs, e.g. factory or
building work, whilst more highly
skilled workers do more
demanding jobs, e.g. legal or
medical jobs.
In the education system, its
Manifest Function is to teach the
national curriculum and develop
important skills and its latent
function is to socialise children
to have socially desirable sets of
norms and values.

10.
Work from top
down

Functionalism looks at society

from the top down as they focus
on societys needs and the
overall structure of society
rather than on the needs and
perceptions of the individuals
who make up society.

7. Role allocation
Davis and More

They focus on the fact that

individuals are shaped and
moulded by society and that the
actions of individuals will be
determined by external social
forces beyond their control.

girls are socialised to cook and to clean

whereas boys are not. This then leads to the
gender inequality and second class status
that is experienced by many women today.
Marxists, Feminists and New Right Theorists
would all counter argue this.School prepares
WC kids for WC jobs and MC kids for MC jobs.
It prepares boys and girls for job roles that
are gender stereotyped. It fails to give
students the transferable skills needed for a
diverse and ever changing economy.
Marxists and Feminists argue that a lot of
talent is wasted because many jobs are
allocated not on the basis of skill but on the
basis of class or gender, irrespective of the
talents and abilities of individual workers.

Marxists also say that organisations have

multiple functions, like the ES which not only
teaches academic subjects but also teaches
the hidden curriculum whereby it teaches
norms and values important for the economy
like respect for authority, the acceptance of
hierarchy and inequality, and the importance
of punctuality.
This is similar to Feminism and Marxism, but
very different from the perspective taken by
Action Theorists and Structuration Theorists
like Anthony Giddens.

Marxism
Characteristics

Explanation

EXAMPLE

COUNTER
ARGUMENTS/Similarities

1. Capitalism

Based on a division between a

class of owners (bourgeoisie) or
capitalist ruling class, and a
subject class of labourers
(proletariat) or working class.

New Right Theorists reject the idea that

economic disadvantage or exploitation
causes or leads to crime. Not everyone who
is less well-off turns to crime. Those that do,
do so because they choose to and they
choose to partly because they have been
poorly socialised by their families and have
values that are different from the
mainstream.

2. Social Class

The main focus is that your

social class dictates your life in
society; someone who is upper
class will have a life of leisure
and abundance whereas those
who are lower class will live
lives of hardship and poverty.
Society is divided along social
class lines and is inherently
unfair.

For Marxists, crime is inevitable

in capitalist societies because
capitalism is criminogenic by
its very nature it causes crime.
Due to capitalism exploiting the
working class as a means of
creating profit, they turn to
crime [like vandalism or theft]
as a way of expressing their
frustrations or compensating
themselves for poor financial
rewards from work.
Ineducation, middle class
students and their parents
possesscultural capital and
stand a better chance of getting
into their first choice school.
Working class students and
parents may experience
material deprivation which puts
them at a significant
disadvantage. Equality of
opportunity does not exist.

Labelling Theorists also see social class as an

important factor in determining the nature of
teacher relationships with students. Other
theorists on the other hand argue that other
forms of social division are just as important
as social class if not arguably more
important since society has become more
culturally diverse.

3. Revolution

4. Repressive State
Apparatuses (RSAs)
& Ideological State
Apparatuses (ISAs)

5. Alienation

Marx thought that capitalism

contains forces and processes
which cannot help but increase
its internal difficulties to the
point where it will inevitably
collapse. However, major social
change is not possible without
revolution, i.e. change at the
point of a gun.Dominant social
classes do not voluntarily give
up power, wealth and privilege.
Their control has to be taken
away from them, and this will
inevitably involve the use of
violence.
In Althussers model, that
agencies of the state perform
political and ideological
functions that ensure the
reproduction of capitalism;
these are divided into two, RSAs
and ISAs
RSAs: refer to armed bodies of
men i.e. police, army, and
prisons, that employ force to
getthe working class to comply
with the will of the bourgeoisie
ISAs: include institutions like the
media, the education system,
the family, religion and other
institutions which manipulate
the working class into
accepting capitalism as
legitimate.
Marx believes that our true
nature is based on our capacity
to create things to meet our
needs. Alienation is the result of
our loss of control over our

Bourgeois revolutions overthrew

feudal society, e.g., the French
Revolution, The English
Revolution of the 17th century
[ECW], and other instances of
violent rebellion like the
American Revolution have
precipitated major socio-political
change. Trotsky argued that
war is the locomotive of history
and Marx insisted that the
history of human society is the
history of class struggle

Many social reformists (e.g. Democratic

Socialists and Social Democrats) reject the
idea that socialism can be accomplished only
through class conflict and violent revolution
take issue with the Marxist requirement for a
violent proletarian revolution, arguing that
Capitalism can be reformed by gradual
democratic changes.The "inevitability" and
necessity of violent revolution has been a
matter of debate even among Marxists since
the failure of the 1848 attempted revolutions
in Europe.

There remain many examples of

both. For instance the idea of
RSAs is evident today with the
control that police officers have
on individuals ensuring they are
punished if they break the rules.
In addition, ISAs like the family
and the media influence the
next generation, encouraging
them to believe their lower class
position is deserved and so
discourage them from
attempting to break out of it;
this keeps the upper class in
power and the lower class
oppressed.

Similarly, Gramscis distinction between the

use of coercion (RSAs) and consent (ISAs) as
different ways of securing the dominance of
the bourgeoisie, or ruling class hegemony.
Functionalists would argue that the police
and the legal system more broadly, exists to
protect the interests of all of us and often
acts against those members of the middle
and upper classes who also break the law.
Pluralists would maintain that the media is
multi-faceted and diverse and caters for the
interests, needs and desires of an
increasingly varied and diverse population.
Certain media publications are renowned for
satirising and criticising the government. Our
society promotes rather than seeks to
control differences of opinion.

According to Marxists, alienation

exists in all societies. Those who
own the means of production
are also those who control the
process and they exercise that

The nature of the economy has changed. The

job market has grown and expanded beyond
all recognition. Many people today are selfemployed and therefore have far more
control over the nature of the work they do.

6. The State

labour power and its products

and therefore our separation
from our true nature.

control for their own selfish

interests. Those who carry out
the process, the workers, have
no control and no real pride or
interest in the process. They see
none of the benefits and all they
receive in return for their efforts
is a wage.

Growing numbers of people are employed in

creative industries and many more are
employed in jobs or careers that they
genuinely enjoy and get a great deal of
intrinsic satisfaction from. Alienation is an
outdated concept. Even in areas of
employment where it may once have been
applicable, working conditions have
improved to such an extent that it is no
longer relevant.
In support of this idea Snider (1993) argues
that the capitalist state is reluctant to pass
laws that regulate the activities of
businesses or threaten their profitability
because the owners of big business and
politicians are part of the same social class
and are keen to ensure that they all continue
to make money.

Marxists argue that the state,

aka the government, supports
the dominant classes in society.
The state is "the executive
committee of the bourgeoisie".
In capitalist societies the state
rules primarily in the interests of
the capitalist ruling class.

An example of how the state

rules in the interests of the
ruling class could be the fact
that there are very few laws
that effectively challenge and
change the unequal distribution
of wealth in society thus
keeping the working class
exploited and in a position of
relative poverty.

Explanation

EXAMPLE

COUNTER
ARGUMENTS/SIMILARITIES

Research in the 1970s and 80s

found that learning materials in
schools e.g. textbooks portrayed
women mainly as housewives
and mothers, and maths books
convey boys as more inventive
and better at problem solving
than girls. Familial ideology
promotes the idea that women
remain primarily responsible for

Weiner argues that since the 1980s,

teachers have routinely challenged such
stereotypes and sexist images have been
removed from learning materials. This may
have helped girls raise their achievement by
presenting them with more positive and
varied images of what women can do. Roles
in many families are becoming increasingly
symmetrical as a consequence of increasing
educational and employment opportunities

Feminism
Characteristics
1. Sex and Gender
(Oakley)

Sex refers to the biological

differences between males and
females. Gender refers to
culturally constructed
differences between
masculine and feminine
roles and identities assigned to
males and females.

2. Girls changing
ambitions

Changes in the family, together

with education and employment
opportunities are producing
changes in girls ambitions.

3. Patriarchy

Literally meaning rule by

fathers it is now used to refer to
the concept of male domination,
for example the term patriarchal
society refers to the fact that
society is male dominated.

domestic work and the primary

socialisation of children.

for women in wider society.

Sharpe in 1974 interviewed girls

and found they had low
aspirations; they felt that
educational success was
unfeminine and believed that if
they appeared to be ambitious
and intelligent they would be
considered unattractive. Their
priorities were love, marriage,
husband, children and then jobs
and careers. Similar research
she carried out two decades
later revealed that girls
priorities had changed, with
many of them putting jobs and
careers at the top of their lists.
In the film American Hustle
the two leading female actors
received lower pay than the
leading males. In some areas of
employment even now women
are paid, on average, 17% than
men for doing the same job.
Men predominate in positions of
power and influence in society,
for example as judges,
politicians, CEOs of major
companies, and are still
regarded as the head of the
family, main breadwinner and
decision maker in most
households.

Girls are now choosing more academic

subjects which would then help them to go
to university and get a high status job in, for
example, teaching. Girls are outperforming
boys at all stages of the FES, they
outnumber boys in Further and Higher Ed.
and over 65% of married women now go out
to work, many of them full time. Increasing
numbers of women are breaking in to areas
of employment previously regarded as male
preserves.

Radical feminists state that all men oppress

all women. All men benefit from patriarchy
especially from womens unpaid domestic
labour and from their sexual services. Liberal
feminists maintain that patriarchy can be,
and is being, challenged successfully and
gradually eroded as a consequence of
economic, legal, political and cultural
changes.

4. Equality

Liberal feminists are concerned

with human and civil rights and
freedoms and the idea of
individual equality. They
maintain that cultural and
political change is steadily
bringing about a fairer, more
progressive society.

5. Oppression

For radical feminists, patriarchal

oppression remains a direct and
personal reality for many
women.

6. Womens
subordination

Radical feminists maintain that

women remain subordinate to
men. Marxist feminists state
that this subordination benefits
capitalism as an economic
system.

The introduction of the Equal

Pay Act in 1970, the Sex
Discrimination Act in 1975, the
DRA in 1969, freely available
contraception in the 1960s,
abortion legislation, the
criminalisation of marital rape in
the 1990s have all been seen as
steps in the right direction and
giving women greater freedoms
and greater equality.
Firestone (1974) argued that the
origins of patriarchy lie in
womens biological capacity to
bear and care for infants, since
performing this role means they
become dependent on males.
They are oppressed because
they are economically
dependent on men, they take on
the bulk of unpaid domestic
work, they are often physically
controlled and abused and they
are persuaded to conform to a
narrow and unsatisfying form of
sexuality imposed on them by
men.
Women are a source of cheap,
exploitable labour for
employers.
Women are a reserve army of
labour that can be moved into
the labour force during
economic booms and moved out
again in times of recession.
Women reproduce the labour
force through their unpaid
domestic labour, first by bearing
children and then by nurturing

Radicalfeminists maintain that such changes

are merely cosmetic and superficial and that
heterosexual relationships are inevitably
oppressive because they involve sleeping
with the enemy. Women will never be equal
while they continue to involve themselves
with men. Separatism and political
lesbianism are the only effective ways of
combatting patriarchal control.

Marxist feminists argue that the root cause

of womens oppression is the capitalist
economic system rather than patriarchy and
that capitalism is the main beneficiary of
womens oppression rather than men.

MF arguments fail to explain womens

subordination in non-capitalist societies. Why
is it that women are the ones who end up
doing the unpaid domestic work necessary
for the capitalist economic system rather
than men? Dual Systems feminists like
Hartmann argue that in modern capitalist
societies capitalism and patriarchy are like
two sides of the same coin, intertwined and
mutually reinforcing.

and socialising them to become

the next generation of workers.
Women absorb anger that would
otherwise be directed at
capitalism. According to Fran
Ansley, women are the takers
of shit.

7. Difference Feminism

Women are not, in essence, all

the same. Rather, they are
different and as sociologists it is
important that we recognise and
acknowledge the differences
that exist between women.

WC women are different from

MC women both in terms of
their experiences and their life
chances. Black women are
different from white women and
Western women are different
from women living in Africa or
China. The differences between
women mean that their
preoccupations and what they
see as important will vary, as
will their attitudes and values.

Social Action and Postmodern theorists

would agree that there is a great diversity of
experience between women, for example in
terms of their experience of family life and
opportunities in the workplace. This diversity
of experience is to be welcomed in part and
will almost certainly affect how they perceive
the position of women in society or
womens issues more generally. Marxist and
Radical feminists are less convinced. They
maintain that the relationship women have
with capitalism and with men mean that, in
spite of their differences they share a
commonality of experience that ought to
unite them in a common struggle. Focussing
on the differences between women weakens
them and reduces their ability to bring about
real and meaningful change.

Postmodernism
Characteristics
1. Antifoundationalism

2. Critical of other
views (Relativism)

3. Individualism

Explanation

EXAMPLE

There are no sure foundations to

knowledge, no objective criteria
we can use to determine
whether a particular theory is
true or false. We cannot
guarantee our knowledge is
correct and there is no real way
of knowing whos right and
whos wrong.
Any theory that claims to have
absolute truth is wrong as it is
merely offering an interpretation
of reality rather than revealing
that reality as it truly is. All
theoretical attempts to explain
reality are big stories, or metanarratives, of equal value, no
better, no worse, no more true
than any other.

There are different religions,

each with their own ideas of
truth, different political
ideologies with competing
knowledge claims about how
best to improve society, and
scientists using factual,
objective evidence to support
conflicting hypotheses.
Historically, scientists have
made claims that have
subsequently been shown to be
false. Different religious
traditions have conflicting views
about God and the roles of men
and women in society.
Communists and capitalists
have fundamentally different
ideas about how society should
be regulated and controlled.
PMs are critical of all those who
claim to have a monopoly on
truth when in reality truth is
relative and culturally
determined.

The needs of the individual have

become more important than
the collective needs of groups of
people in society.

Capitalism, based on the

principle of individual wealth
accumulation and consumption
has become the worldwide
economic system of choice;
communism, with its supposed
concern for the greater good, is

COUNTER
ARGUMENTS/SIMILARITIES
Interpretivists view OS in a similar light
regarding them not as objective and factual
pieces of evidence but as the result of a
culturally determined decision making
process masquerading as truth.

The same can be said for sociological

knowledge. Functionalists claim there is
consensus in society while Marxists say
society is based on conflict. However
relativism is self-defeating. PM is of no more
value, no more true than any other theory.
In addition, there is plenty of objective
factual knowledge out there to be
uncovered. For example, the fact that
disproportionate numbers of young males
from EM backgrounds are imprisoned in the
UK. What matters is what we chose to do
with this knowledge once we have it.
Metanarratives may be imperfect but they
provide us with an approximation of reality
which is helpful, and they are the best weve
got!
The Founding Fathers of Sociology were also
concerned about the trend towards greater
individualism in modern society and saw it as
a potentially destabilising influence. More
recently Functionalists have argued that
society is based on consensus which sees
most of us agreeing with societys core

all but dead. As individuals we

experience far greater personal
freedom and can increasingly
choose our own course in life
and define our own identity. For
example, whether to live as an
individual or part of a family,
whether to be a Roman Catholic
or a follower of The Force, or
whether to be male or female!

4. Destabilisation

Identity and society have both

become destabilised, far less
fixed. Far less certain. Identity is
no longer fixed as we can
change it through what we
consume. Society is far less
fixed because it is constantly
changing and at a much more
rapid pace.

Instead of a fixed or ascribed

identity determined by class,
ethnicity or gender people are
free to construct their own
identities from the bewildering
array of choices on offer. We are
made aware of these choices
through the media and are able
to forge our chosen identity
through our consumption
patterns, picking and mixing
cultural goods to define
ourselves. We can be born into a
white Christian family but
choose to follow Islam, we can
choose to belong to a youth
subcultural group defined by
clothing and music styles, we
can be born male but define
ourselves as feminine in how we
dress and how we present
ourselves to others. The allpervading, ever changing and
diverse nature of the media
means that culture has become
fragmented and unstable.
Members of society no longer

values. Therefore society is the result of a

collective effort and less individualistic than
postmodernists claim. Marxists and Feminists
stress that our choices are restricted and
constrained by our membership of collective
social groups, for example our social class
group or the fact that we belong to a
particular ethnic group or whether we are
male or female. Individual freedoms are also
restricted by the law and because we have a
responsibility to consider the needs of
others.
Marxists might argue that this lack of a
shared identity, goals and values is nothing
new. Society has always been characterised
by the conflict existing between different
social classes with different interests.
Functionalists on the other hand would argue
that most people are socialised into a
commonly held set of values and norms and
that attitudes towards things like murder for
example serve to unite us and maintain
social stability.

share a fixed set of values,

beliefs and attitudes.

5. Media-Saturation

Postmodern society is
increasingly influenced by an
all-pervading media.

6. Distortion

The hyper reality created by the

media leaves us unable to
distinguish reality from images,
fact from fiction.

For many people much of what

they know about the world
around them comes from what
they see and hear in the media.
Media advertising has a major
influence on our consumption
patterns. It also has an influence
on the attitudes and values we
hold and on our sense of
identity. The media has become
even more influential now that it
is even easier to access, with
virtually every home having
more than one TV and the fact
that we are constantly
connected to it through our use
of smart phones and other
mobile devices.
What we see in the media
appears more real than reality
itself and becomes for some a
substitute for reality. For
example, the acceptance that
media representations like
reality TV shows are real and
true to life, or the way we are
persuaded by media advertising
to buy into a particular kind of
lifestyle, or the way some
people become obsessed with
the lives of soap characters,
pop idols or the alter egos they
create for themselves in online
gaming communities.

Feminists would agree as the media

continues to oppress women and reinforces
patriarchy by showing men and women in
gender stereotypical roles and by the why it
sexualises young girls and increasingly
portrays women as sexual commodities
there for the pleasure of men. Neo-Marxists
maintain that media advertising has an
important influence onfamilies and children
in particular, by creating manufactured
needs and encouraging them to employ
pester power to get their parents to buy all
the latest fashion accessories and electronic
gadgets. The media also has a role to play in
socialising us into societys core values and
beliefs.

Marxist and SC theorists like Cohen agree

that the media has the power to distort,
exaggerate, stereotype and scapegoat
certain social groups, like the mods and
rockers of the 1960s, the hippy drug users of
the early 70s or the benefit scroungers of
more recent times. People are encouraged to
see all members of such groups as criminals
or deviants when in reality they might not
be. Pluralists might argue that the public are
media-savvy, discerning in their selective
use of the media, and in terms of what they
believe and how much they allow it to affect
them. More than that, people are becoming
increasingly active in the creation of their
own media.Functionalists argue that media
condemnation of certain behaviours
contributes to boundary maintenance and is
a genuine reflection of public concern rather

than a distortion of reality.

Action Theories
Characteristics

Explanation

EXAMPLE

COUNTER
ARGUMENTS/SIMILARITIES

1. Micro level, bottom

up approach.

SA theories focus on the idea

that the social world is created
through the actions and
interactions of individuals.

Structural theories like Functionalism,

Marxism and Feminism are macro
approaches and therefore more top-down
and deterministic. They choose to focus on
social institutions and social forces and the
power they have to limit, restrict and shape
our behaviour. From a Marxist perspective for
example interactions between teachers and
students are at least in part determined by
differences in social class between teachers
and some pupils. Similarly, husbands and
wives in the home relate to one another
partly on the basis of culturally determined
expectations about power and gender roles.

2. Voluntarism

As individuals we have free will

and choice. Our actions and
ideas are not determined by
society, something external to

Interactionism focuses on small

scale, face to face interactions,
for example between teachers
and students in a class room, or
between a husband and wife in
a family. They would also stress
the individual nature of the
relationship that many people
have with whatever idea of God
they might believe in and the
idea that within the CJS justice is
negotiable and based on the
nature of the interactions that
take place between offenders
and law enforcement agents.
Human beings are highly
developed, thinking creatures.
People do not simply react
unthinkingly to external stimuli.

Left and Right Realists share this view in

relation to crime for example, arguing that
ultimately offenders choose to commit crime
based on a rational decision-making process.

us and forcing us to behave in

certain ways. We choose to act
in the ways we do based on the
meanings we give to the
circumstances we find
ourselves in.

We perceive the world around us

through our senses. We then
interpret that information, i.e.
give it meaning, before then
deciding how to act. So, some
students will react more
positively to negative teacher
labelling, some married couples
choose to negotiate their roles
and responsibilities, and most
people who experience
economic hardship choose not
to commit crime.

3. Free agents

We create and shape society

through our choices, meanings
and actions.

4. Symbolic
interactionism

Focuses on our ability to create

the social world through our
actions and interactions. These
Interactions are based on the
meanings we give to situations
and we convey these meanings
through our use of symbols like
objects, images, gestures and
language.

This thing we call society is the

product of human beings coming
together and making decisions
about how collectively we should
live and work together. Society
is the product of human thinking
and decision-making. It is
created by, and exists because
of, us and it is continually being
shaped and changed by us. All
social institutions, systems and
structures owe their very
existence to the choices,
meanings and actions of groups
of individuals.
If someone shakes their fist at
you, how would you react? The
fist will be symbolic of
something far more important,
namely a meaning that the
person shaking it will be trying
to convey. How you react to it
will be determined by how you
interpret the gesture and the

Similarly, Postmodernists also like to

emphasise the fact that as individuals we
have much more freedom to make choices
today that suit our own individual
circumstances. However, Structural theorists
see human beings as similar to puppets
whose behaviour and ideas are determined
and manipulated by something external to
them, namely society. Some behaviour is
more likely than others because we are more
likely to make certain choices due to social
conditioning or due to our circumstances.
Much of what we do is unthinking and
performed unconsciously as a matter of
routine.
Social institutions, systems and structures
have been freely created by us but over time
they have grown and taken on a life of their
own, largely independent of the choices,
meanings and actions of any individual, a bit
like Frankensteins monster, which is called
into existence freely by the scientist but is
then able to exert an uncontrollable and
irresistible influence on its creator. The doctor
no longer has the freedom to choose that he
arguably once had.

For Functionalists and Marxists SI places too

much emphasis on the idea of individual
interpretation and individual freedom. It fails
to acknowledge the crucial role played by
socialisationin patterning peoples behaviour
and wider social structures like class
inequality and powerin the creation of shared
meanings.

5. Phenomenology

Literally the idea that all we

can know about the world is
what we are able to perceive
through our senses, i.e. what
our senses can tell us about it.
The world is what our senses
tell us it is. It is a product of
our mind.

meaning you attach to it. Much

of the time the meanings we
attach to things are shared and
this shared understanding is a
product of social interaction.
However, they are not entirely
fixed and predictable. Black girls
and black boys may attach
different meanings to the largely
negative labelling they often
experience in school and then
react differently to it. Similarly,
the police may attach very
different meanings to the
superficially similar actions of
different groups of young
people.
As individuals, each with our
own mind, our own senses, our
own perceptions, we could all
potentially see the world
differently. If we did, it would
make the social world, where we
communicate, cooperate and
collaborate with one another,
virtually impossible. The fact is
we dont. The social world is, or
appears to be, for the most part
stable, orderly and predictable.
This is because our perceptions
or understandings, instead of
being unique to ourselves, are
part of a shared world of
meaning, i.e. our perceptions
are shared by others. For
example, the way coroners
categorise deaths as suicides is
based on a shared
understanding of what

The idea that the social world has no real,

objective existence outside of the meanings,
categorisations and assumptions we share
would be supported by PMs who are keen to
stress the relative and subjective nature of
reality and truth. But where do these
shared meanings come from? Who or what
has the power to shape them and reproduce
them? Reality may be a product of human
consciousness and socially constructed but
once called into existence social structures
become social facts capable of exerting a
very real constraining influence on their
human creators. Religious ideas for example
may well be no more than the product of
human consciousness, as Marx argued, but
they become embodied in powerful
organisational and physical structures which
control our behaviour. Critics of this position
might respond, only if we let them.

6. Ethnomethodology

Focuses on the methods we

use to actively make sense of
the world and the events of our
everyday lives appear ordered.

constitutes a typical suicide

death, i.e. a typification of
suicide. For sociologists like
Atkinson, it is impossible to
know for certain how many
deaths are suicides because the
way we categorise things is
based on how we perceive them
and our perceptions could be
wrong. What matters are the
mental processes involved in
categorising and decisionmaking and the ways those are
socially or culturally determined.
As human beings we have a
need for the world around us to
appear ordered, certain,
definite, patterned and
predictable. The reality of life is
that it is far from any of these
things but the need we have
means that we will do almost
anything that make it appear to
be this way. Religion helps with
this because it enables us to
impose an order on things that
might otherwise prove too
disturbing and too chaotic for us
to cope with. In our efforts to
explain the world around us we
are constantly looking for
patterns in things and we build
up bodies of common sense
knowledge, shared with others,
that we reflect on whenever we
need to make sense of new
experiences. Social order is
participant produced. For
example, during a telephone

EM has a lot in common with phenomenology

and like other SA theories takes a bottom-up
approach to the explanation of social order.
Interactionists share their view that people
are active both in terms of interpreting the
meaning of an external event and then
choosing how to respond and the fact that
the world we inhabit is a social construct, the
product of shared meanings. Functionalists
like Parsons, and other structuralists, argue
that social order is imposed on us by a social
system external to us through a process of
socialisation. The shared meanings that are
built up over time are not independently constructed by each and every individual. They
are a body of rules and explanations which
pre-exist individuals and which structure the
way they think and the way they behave.
They are all too real insofar as we believe
them to be and in their consequences.

7. Structure and action

The idea that both structural

and social action approaches
ought to be combined into a
single, unified theory, namely
Structuration Theory, a term
coined by Giddens in the
1980s.

conversation generally only one

person speaks at a time. The
fact that the other person is
silent is assumed and their
silence is, given the context,
taken to mean that they are
listening and paying attention.
We assume that the
conversation is patterned and
ordered. They could be doing
anything on the other end of the
phone but because we cant see
them we continue the
conversation directed by our
taken for granted assumptions
and common sense knowledge.
Structure and Action are two
sides of the same coin and
therefore inseparable and
interdependent; neither can
exist without the other. Through
our actions we produce and
reproduce social structures over
time and the structures we
create both constrain and
enable future actions. For
example, language is a structure
made up of rules that to an
extent govern or control how we
use it. But language also
enables us to communicate with
one another and be understood.
Similarly, the formal education
system is structured and to an
extent controlling and
constraining but it also passes
on skills and shared meanings
which enable us to act in ways
we otherwise couldnt. Social

Marxists have criticised this approach for

underestimating the capacity of social
structures to resist change. Large scale
structures like the economy and the state are
notoriously resistant to change.
Nevertheless, they can be changed and from
time to time are changed and what causes
that change are the actions of human beings.

8. Dramaturgical
model

Goffmans use of concepts

relating to drama to explain
how we actively construct our
self or the image that other
people have of us.

structures are for the most part

reproduced by our actions but
can also be changed, either
intentionally or unintentionally
by our actions.
An actor creates a character and
then behaves as though they
were that person. Like the actor,
our true selves are different
from the roles we play. Through
our skilful use of clothing,
language, gestures and the
material objects we surround
ourselves with we actively
construct a public identity and
are able to manage or control
the way others see us. For
example, by dressing in certain
clothes, buying certain material
goods or using certain language
we can pass ourselves off as
successful and middle class to
our audience. Students and
teachers in a class room setting
are on stage and therefore
putting on an act, behaving in a
particular way to create desired
impression. When back at home
and off stage they can behave
more like themselves.

Structuralists also make use of the concept of

roles but unlike Goffman view them as
internalised and quite tightly scripted by
society through the process of socialisation.
Feminists for example talk about gender
scripts and the idea that men and women in
a heterosexual marriage perform culturally
determined, gender based roles relating to
domestic work and control in the family.
Functionalists, similarly talk about the
instrumental and expressive roles whichthey
see as a product partly of biological
differences between men and women and
reinforced through socialisation. Goffman
emphasises the fact that the roles we play
are not necessarily internalised, i.e. we dont
see ourselves in terms of the roles we play.
He also argues that we have far more
freedom in how we act out those roles. The
scripts provided by society are fairly loose
and open to interpretation.