This document is an in depth summary of the Theory component of the AQA A Level Sociology course and details the specific definitions and examples of sociological theories needed to secure top grades in this subject!!
Functionalism -
● Parsons - system needs and functions / value consensus + social
order / integration of individuals / building block model = norms to status
roles to institutions. System needs = adaptation, goal attainment,
integration, latency (maintains society as a latent part of life) society
moves from trad. to mod. Via structural differentiation
● AGIL schema
● Merton– says parsons assumes institutions are indispensable and all
serve a positive function
● Wrong says that parsons is too deterministic
● Functionalism is teleological
Marxism–
● Marx– HISTORICAL MATERIALISM. Capitalism has become a
superstructure. Revolution will be physical
● Weber– Marx’s two class model is too simplistic M/C disprove class
polarisation
● Gramsci– HUMANISTIC. capitalism creates hegemony of m/c power
blocs. Organic intellectuals needed.
● Willis– Gramsci is wrong- 12 w/c lads saw through hegemony and still
became w/c
● Althusser– STRUCTURALIST. It is the task of sociology to reveal
structures
● Society has economic, ideological and political level not just economic
determinism
Feminism–
- Radical
● Firestone– patriarchy is culturally universal
● Rich– women forced into compulsory heterosexuality
● Greer– separatism
- Liberal
● Oakley– emancipation of women is a win win.
● March of progress
, ● Not intersectional
- Marxist
● Women are a reserve army of labour
● Ainsley– women are takers of shit
- Difference
● Sojourner Truth’s experience of womanhood was profoundly different
than that of a white woman
- Post-structuralist
● Concerned with competing discourses (medicalisation of childbirth)
● No fixed essence of womanhood
Action Theories
Interactionism–
● We must understand society through micro interactions between
individuals
● Level of cause– objective structural factors that shape behaviour (a
religious person praying)
● Level of meaning– subjective meaning individuals give to their actions
● 4 types of action
- Traditional– carried out by custom
- Affectual– influenced by emotional state
- Value-rational– ideological action
- Instrumentally rational– carefully considered
Phenomenology–
● Schutz– we share typifications with the rest of society
● Meanings shape objective reality
● The world does not exist externally but in our minds
Ethnomethodology–
● Examines how meanings are first created
● Garfinkel– indexicality– meanings are context dependent
● Reflexivity– common sense meaning
● World does not exist outside the mind but we share the same meanings
so how can this be
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