Assignment

Sociology
Submitted By
UBAID UR REHMAN
Software Engineering -7b
Reg. # 066

Submitted To
Mr Masood-ur-Rahman

Comsats Institute Of Information Technology

Different Theories Of Sociology

A theory is a statement of how and why processes work or the world operates. Within sociology,
theories attempt to explain why groups of people choose to perform certain
actions and how societies function or change in a certain way.
It's important for social sciences, like psychology, economics, and sociology,
to follow theoretical perspectives as a framework for understanding
phenomena, such as the ways people form groups. Without theories, we'd
just have a huge list of individual tendencies, or decisions people make, or
types of people, but we wouldn't have any way of organizing the field.
Theories help us see overall themes across many specific types of behaviors
or decisions in the social world.

Structural-Functional Theory
The first one structural-functional theory. This approach views society as a complex, but
interconnected system, where each part works together as a functional whole. A metaphor for the
structural-functional approach is the human body. You have arms, legs, a heart, a brain, and so
on. Each individual body part has its own neurons and system for working, but each part has to
work together for a fully-functioning structure, or system. What are the different structures, or
systems, in society? You can probably think of the government, businesses, schools, and
families. We need all of these systems to work together for a fully-functioning society.
To make each of our four theories more memorable, let's think about each theory from the
perspective of an example. We'll use sports. How would you apply the structural-functional
approach or theory to sports? Well, for any given team to be successful, it needs to have a bunch
of working parts, each functional independently and cooperatively. I played soccer in high
school, so think about soccer for a second. Of course you'll have different positions on the team,
such as the forwards, the fullbacks for defense, and the goalkeeper. But you also need the coach,
the referees, and someone to pay for the equipment; and it wouldn't be very fun to play without
an audience. Each part has its own rules and systems. For example, the audience has to know
when to cheer, how to purchase concessions, and where to sit. For the entire system to work, all
of the individual parts need to work together. Structural-functional theory studies how each part
of the larger social world works together.

Social Conflict
The second major theoretical perspective in sociology is called social conflict theory. This
theory views society as a system of groups that are not equal, and therefore consistently generate

conflict and change. Think back to that example from the beginning of the lesson with the
different groups of students in school.
In my high school, the athletes might have conflicts with the people in band or the people who
were in the math club. There was a popular group of kids who were sometimes mean to the less
popular kids. When you think about this type of social conflict on a large scale, it explains
unfortunate social trends such as racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and so on, but the theory
also predicts change. For example, in the 1960s, the United States saw a huge change in civil
rights awarded to African Americans due to the political protests that highlighted the conflict
between racial groups. While racism is still a problem in the United States, this social change
helped the country make a lot of progress toward equality.

Hopefully, it's easy to see how social conflict theory might be seen in our example of sports.
Different teams will certainly conflict with each other as they compete for points, runs, or
touchdowns. Actually, sports wouldn't make any sense without some form of conflict or
competition. Fans of the different teams will display their loyalty using things like hats or
jerseys, and they might conflict with each other.
Going back to my favorite sport of soccer, the fans are famous for causing trouble when they're
upset. We even have the phrase 'soccer hooligan' or 'football hooligan' because of this tendency!
Social conflict theory emphasizes how social conflict motivates people and societies to evolve
over time.

Feminism
Theory three out of four is feminism. Feminism is often misunderstood as coming from a group
of angry women who are trying to dominate men. That is not what feminism is! Understood
correctly, feminism is a perspective that views society as traditionally unequal between men and
women and strives for equality between the sexes.
For example, you might have heard the fact that men and women, on average, are not paid
equally in the United States. Studies show that even with the same education and job demands,
women are only paid $0.77 for the same job where a man would be paid $1.00. Women are less

represented in the government, women are less likely to be business owners, and women are less
likely to be college professors.