today in Introduction to Sociology we're going to cover sociological Theory I'll go ahead and warn you this is one of the more complicated Concepts that we're going to cover and I don't fully expect you to understand it after this brief lecture in fact I understand you I expect you to watch this lecture take some great notes go read the textbook look at some examples uh think through it a little bit if you don't understand it today please don't worry if you don't understand it in a week let's talk um and we'll get you up to speed so what we're going to tackle are the four major sociological theories so one of the things that I want to ask you to remember is the difference between micro and macro now remember there's also that Meso Level but for purposes of your exam I'm going to make this as easy as humanly possible for you because we're at just at the 100 level so when we're talking about micro we're talking about you and we might be talking about your bubble now when I ask about that on an exam right I won't be asking about the bubble remember those are your closest friends and family okay I'll just be asking about an individual that just seems to simplify things when we're talking about macro we might be looking at the country or the whole world or a large demographic group so maybe we're looking at Generation X or Generation Z maybe we're looking at men versus women maybe we're looking at the working class versus the upper middle class when we're thinking about these we want to keep in mind macro at the individual level macro at the big group level so let's start with functionalist theory so functionalist theory is a more macro level Theory and the key idea behind it is that all parts of society work together closely like organs and the body work so everything serves a purpose everything has some reason that it does what it does and so even really negative things like I I think most of us would argue that racism is a very negative thing serves a social purpose so for example one of the things that racism does is if you can keep people divided by ethnicity if and keep them hating one another based on ethnic group you keep them from banding together um and fighting a class war for example so even something really negative might serve a purpose now a criticism here is the world isn't always orderly and stable functionalist theorists tend to think that things are pretty orderly they're pretty stable they're running relatively smoothly just like the organs in the body do just like you know you swallow something it goes down the esophagus into the stomach then through the intestines in in in fact there's a lot of things in society that are actually pretty dysfunctional right there's a lot of conflict and War if we want to think about what would a functionalist theorist think I'm going to ask you that I'll ask you what would a functionalist theorist think about something all you need to do when I ask you about what this particular type of theorist would think is answer the question what purpose does X whatever the thing is serve for society so we're going to use professional sports as an example well professional sports generates a ton of money and creates a whole bunch of jobs I know that there are a limited number of professional athletes in this world but think about all the people who design and sell team uniforms who uh run the stadium and sell concessions the television broadcasters Prof professional sports generates a ton of jobs right and a ton of income so that would be a purpose that professional sports serve for society another one might be entertainment well when we're all more entertained more relaxed we probably work a little bit harder we're probably a little nicer to our families so it might create a little bit of social order and stability and also maybe a little bit more effort and happiness conflict theist really can be thought of as the opposite of functionalist they also are macro they're looking at these big social groups or even whole countries and one of the key ideas of conflict theory is that we have plenty of resources to go around we just don't share them very well think about how much food gets thrown away in Indianapolis every single day despite the fact that other people are starving right if we just figured out a better way to share those resources we would have a more Equitable Society conflict there are really interested in inequality okay however a key criticism of conflict there is that we're often not necessarily struggling with one another right um conflict here does not necessarily mean physical fighting and in fact it rarely does often it's sort of a power struggle or a struggle over resources and in fact what I want you to do to think like a conflict theorist is to say what two large social groups are struggling over Rich scarce resources let's think about that in professional sports maybe it's male athletes versus female athletes over pay I can tell you a huge difference in the pay between the Indiana Pacers the male team and the Indiana Fever the female team maybe it is about social class over the resources for playing sports so if you grew up in a lower income neighborhood the I the chance that you had an ice hockey rank there very low but if you grew up in a more affluent suburb that's where we tend to locate those things so which kids are more likely to grow up to be uh hockey players kids from the suburbs or kids from the rural lowincome or inner city areas so we're thinking about large social groups and scarce resources now we get into our two individual level theories and again remember micro really means you and your your bubble you and your Close Associates however when I ask you about this on the test it's really just going to refer to an individual just to make your life a little bit easier so one key idea of symbolic interactionist theory is that we all have um our own perspective on how things how the world works but there are times that we come together and create a shared reality so for example imagine you walked into the United Methodist Church next to campus what are you supposed to do you've never been there before you don't know what's supposed to happen looks like a service is occurring well even if you're not a Christian or have never been to a Christian Church charts you probably know you kind of quietly and reverently walk in maybe you sit there perhaps you're paying attention to what's going on maybe you're reading some of the spiritual text you have a sense of how you're supposed to behave in a church even if you've never been into one because you can see what the people around you are doing you have seen this provided in the media before um and and we all kind of agreed that's what you do when you go to a church you might also think about something like um money how come I can exchange this piece of paper uh for food and gasoline but I can't exchange a random sheet of paper for food or gasoline I can't exchange shells or beads for food or gasoline it's because we all kind of collectively decided that this is the official currency that we're using and as we use it um we've made it a real thing so lots of things we're just playing makeb believe with we're playing makeb believe with physical dollars they don't actually mean anything they only mean something because we collectively agreed that they did now a criticism of this well it can be really hard to discern what is capital T truth you've sort of heard that expression there's three sides to every story his hers and the truth well you can't really figure out what the capital T truth is if everyone has their their own true perspective on something we're a little different here with symbolic interactionist because they ask two key questions one of those is what are the symbols and what do they mean now a symbol is just something that stands for something else you can't have a symbol and just say this pencil is a symbol of a pencil no you might have a child though who picks up a pencil and pretends to use it as a magic wand so maybe this pencil is a symbol of something magical that could happen or a great time at play here I've got some images that I'm going to describe in case any of our classmates are visually impaired I've got an upside down horseshoe that is in the color of royal blue well what does that stand for this horseshoe stands for the Indianapolis Colts our professional football team there is a winged tie which stands for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway um and there is a pee with a basketball in it and that's going to stand for our Pacers our basketball team so professional sports have lots and lots and lots of symbols but you also might think about you know what is a symbol to you of an athlete more generally H if I think about how I wanted to symbolize an athlete let's say I want to put a tattoo on myself to say I'm an athlete what could I tattoo on myself that would lead you to go oh that's about Athletics Maybe I could tattoo a basketball on myself and it wouldn't necessarily mean basketball it would just mean I'm super into Athletics maybe a a free weight um so we want to think about something that stands for something else it has a deeper meaning now the other key question symbolic interactionists ask again we're getting really personal here is what past experiences have shaped your present view of reality admittedly I'm not super into sports there's probably a couple of reasons for that so one of those is I am not athletic in any way shape or form like I'm never getting that tattoo cuz I just am that's just not how my body is built and so playing sports with me for me was kind of an exercise in futility it wasn't very fun because I wasn't very good I didn't really get better um and so that's a past experience that shaped my present view but at the same time my little brother was an amazing athlete like a three sport letter person was Captain of his college hockey team so I got drugged to basically every sport that ever existed in the history of ever as a child and so don't really love it now somebody else might have very different experience with sports maybe they love going to professional sporting events because that was the way that they bonded with their family or maybe they got a lot of accolades for being an athlete themselves or maybe they just had a lot of video games when they were a kid that were sports related video games and then now they're an adult they have a little bit more money they want to go to those sorts of things so again we're looking at something really unique to the individual our last theory is by far our easiest most students tend to think um most students often think that the functionalist and conflict are the hardest and the rational choic is the easiest so again this is a micro level Theory this is one that sociologists have kind of stolen from economists and the key idea here is utilitarianism so what that means is that as humans make decisions we want to maximize the gain we get and minimize the harm that we have so really they're saying that we're we're as rational as we possibly can be however one giant criticism of this is we often don't make decisions based on what's actually true we make decisions based on emotions or we make decisions based on erroneous information now that said rational Choice theorist can still ask a key question if you want to think like a rational Choice theorist you literally just make me a proon list for an individual let's say a friend asked me if I want to go to um an Indiana Fever game this evening well I like going Downtown it's kind of fun maybe there's a good dinner involved um it might be fun to see like what the halftime entertainment is and I'd want to spend some time with my friend and I haven't seen them lately so those are what all be Pros for me but the cons well it's really expensive and it's cold outside I don't know that I want to walk around downtown late at night um so those would be my personal pros and cons your personal pros and cons might lead you somewhere very different but that's why it's a micr level or individual Theory so I wanted to take us here to the end for a quick check to see if you have a good sense of functionalist conflict symbolic interactionist and rational Choice theories these are the kind of questions it could be multiple choice questions on your exam and those four answers functionalist conflict symbolic interactionist and rational choice would be the four answer choices now remember if we can just figure out if we're talking about an individual or we're talking about a big group we can narrow it down to two the functionalist and conflict are only looking at Big groups symbolic interactionist and rational Choice are only looking at individuals Amed believes that a person whose parents were vegetarian is more likely to rescue animals from shelters instead of BU pets what kind of theorist is he well he's looking at a person so we know it has to be individual it's either symbolic interactionist or rational choice we're just looking at one person not a big group of people just one person now here's the deal I do not want you to put more into this question than is actually there you in your own head might be going oh okay there's some pros and cons so if I rescue animals from a shelter here's the good things if I do but here's some of the negative none of that appears in this question so don't incl it in your brain instead what does appear is we know we have a person we know their parents were vegetarian and that's leading them to rescue animals from shelters well that is your past experience leading to your present view of reality that is symbolic interactionist a second one Susan wants to examine why Asian Hotel clerks are paid more than Hispanic Hotel clerks okay we've got two big social groups Asian Hotel clerks big social group Hispanic Hotel Group groups big social group it's either functional conflict are we talking about how this makes Society work more smoothly not necessarily do we have a scarce resource we do we've got pay and is there inequality sure is the Asian Hotel clerks being paid more than the Hispanic Hotel clerks that means with this inequality Focus Susan is a conflict theist Allison thinks that social networking websites both help Millennials keep in touch and also encourage them to work harder because they get jealous of other people's good lives what type of theorist is she well Millennials are a large social group so it's either functionalist or conflict do we have two groups that are at war with one another do we have two groups that have conflict that are struggling we don't we just have the Millennials here right um and so what Allison is saying is this big social group there's a benefit to social media that helps Society work better because people who are millennials um are able to stay in touch with their friends but also work harder she's a functionalist theorist finally Tim chose this car because it was his favorite color and got good gas mileage even though the interior was a little torn up we're only talking about Tim has to be symbolic interactionist or rational Choice well we've got a pretty clear Pro con list here favorite color and good gas mileage are the pros interior is a little torn up is the con that makes Tim a rational Choice theorist okay I know that's a lot we'll work on this some more together and I want to encourage you to reach out to me if you have any questions at all