Hi everyone, it's Dr. G and I'm here to talk to you about theoretical approaches in sociology. Let's get started. A theory is a general statement about how some parts of the world fit together and how they work. It is helpful to think of sociological theories as road maps to understanding our social world. Each sociological theoretical approach provides us a different road with different scenery but leads us to the same destination: knowledge. There are many theories within sociology but three have risen to become the primary theoretical approaches. They are structural functionalism, social conflict theory, and symbolic interaction theory. So, let's start with structural functionalism. The first thing that I encourage you to do when trying to understand a theory, any theory, in any academic discipline including sociology is to look at the title because hopefully the person or people that came up with the name of that theory did so in a way that somehow represents what the theory is all about. We are fortunate in this case the creators of structural functional theory did just that. So let's look at the words structural functional. The first thing that should pop out at you is the word structure. So in sociology what do you think that we would be taking a look of look at the structure of? Society. So we're going to take a look at well how is society structured how is it put together. The second thing that you should notice in the title is the word functional or function which means to work. So what we can further see is that each of the components or things that help to make up society will in essence do things for society. What are some of the major building blocks of society, the major components? Well, I have some of them listed up on the screen they include things like the economy, politics, family, religion, education, and the media. These are certainly not all of the major components that help to structure society but they are certainly some of the most prevalent ones. As a side note, each of these are referred to as "social institutions." This is how society is structured a great way of thinking about this is to think about either your human body or think about a building. Our bodies are made up of many different parts like our hands, our heads, our eyes, and our mouths and so on and so forth or a building has a floor, a ceiling, windows, and doors. Each of these components or parts will do things for human beings. Our hands allow us to pick things up our feet allow us to get from point a to point b. A window will allow light to come in and fresh air to come in and the door will allow people to come in and out of a room. Well, according to structural functional theory society works exactly the same way. All of these things that structure society also have functions or things that they do some of their functions are called manifest and that means that it is the primary reason why it exists and some of the functions are latent or hidden. Let's take education for an example: What is the primary function of education for society? The primary function of education for society is to educate people. Now is that the only function of education for society? Certainly not! There are other functions for example another function of education for society is to socialize people, especially when it comes to young children going to let's say elementary and middle school. Another latent function of education would be to provide an opportunity for people to get to meet one another in college and this could potentially lead to a relationship and possibly marriage. So what we could do is we could go through and look at how all of these structures all of the components that make up society have multiple functions that they do. So, when you take a look at the big system and structural functionalism will have us look at society as a system all of the parts are working together to promote solidarity and stability within society. Structural functionalism is a macro level theory: what does that mean? that means that we are looking at the big picture we are not looking at individual people we are looking at large groups of people for example I asked the question earlier what does education do for society? I did not ask the question what does education do for you or for Tammy or for one Juan? There's a big difference there so we need to remember when we use the structural functional theory it is a big picture, macro level theory. All of these components that make up society work together they're interrelated and interdependent. This means that if there is a change that occurs let's say in the economy that change will affect all of the other components that collectively make up what we call to be society. Let's move on and talk about the second major theory in sociology and that's called social conflict theory. Again, I invite you to look at the title because the title gives us some information about what this theory is all about. The key word is conflict. Unlike structural functionalism that sees society as a stable system with multiple parts all working together to create solidarity and stability, social conflict theory actually looks at how there is a lot of strife and competition within society. In order for us to to really understand this what I have done on the screen is i have divided, I have created two groups of people within the United States and this is important to know because if we were talking about another country there would be different groups in the boxes that appear up here but we're talking at about the United States. On the left-hand side of your screen you see what I call the dominant or the majority groups the people that fit into this group generally have more power, prestige, and generally money though not all the time. On the right hand side, you see the what's called the subordinate or the minority groups. The people that fit into this box generally have less power, prestige, and wealth generally than the people on the left hand side of your screen. So what happens: the people in the right hand side of the box will compete with the people on the left-hand side of the box for what we call scarce resources: power, income, prestige, and education. In the United States, who fits on the left hand side who are the dominant groups who are the majority groups? Men, Christians, Caucasians, those without a major disability, heterosexuals, English speakers, and those that are well to do. Who fits into the minority category group: women, non-Christians, people of color, those with a major disability, members of the LGBT community, non-English speakers, and the poor. And so what we see with social conflict theory is that life is not fair and resources are not evenly distributed. People in the right box generally face prejudice and discrimination and are not afforded the same equal opportunity as the people on the left-hand side. Now is this to say that the people on the right-hand side are always discriminated against they always face prejudice. No, that would absolutely not be the case. But, social conflict theory is also a macro level theory like structural functionalism so what does that mean? That means that when we compare women as a group to men as a group we have hardcore scientific research that shows that women are generally discriminated against as compared to men. There is plenty of scientific research out there to support this finding. Lt's go on to the third and final major theory within sociology and that's called symbolic interactionism. There's a major difference between symbolic interaction theory and structural functionalism and social conflict theory and that major difference is that symbolic interaction theory is a micro level theory. So what does that mean? That means that now our approach to understanding our social world is to look at individuals or small groups of people not necessarily looking at large groups of people. Let's look at the title symbolic interaction theory what does the title tell us? We can pull the word symbol out of symbolic. So, what is a symbol? A symbol is something that represents something else. So, a big part of symbolic interaction theory is all of the symbols that we humans create and use. When you think about it life is full of symbols both tangible symbols. For examples, let's say a traffic light or a traffic sign and intangible symbols like being a mother or father or teacher or student that's all symbolic and it carries symbolic meaning. We attach meaning to virtually everything in life as we define our surroundings we create our own reality including what we think of others as well as what we think of ourselves. This brings us to the second word in the title and that's interaction. We interact with other human beings and when we interact with other human beings we give meaning to the interaction that we have with them. So, in essence what we do is during all of our waking hours when we are interacting with other people we are assigning meaning to that interaction: we are creating our own reality which probably will be different than other people's reality within the same social environment that we are a part of. This brings us to the definition of the situation we are constantly and consistently defining things this is good this is bad I like this, I don't like that. We may not be totally conscious that we're doing this but again all of our waking hours everywhere that we go we are constantly giving meaning to every social situation that we put ourselves into. Symbolic interaction theory is all about giving meaning to our social world, to others, and ultimately to ourselves. That's a little bit about the three major sociological theoretical approaches. I hope that you have enjoyed this. Please come back and see a future video as we continue the sociology experience. Thanks, have a great day.