Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology

Learning Objectives
Distinguish macro approaches in sociology from micro approaches.
Summarize the most important beliefs and assumptions of functionalism and conflict
theory.
Summarize the most important beliefs and assumptions of symbolic interactionism and
exchange theory.
We have talked repeatedly about “a” sociological perspective, as if all
sociologists share the same beliefs on how society works. This implication is
misleading. Although all sociologists would probably accept the basic premise that
social backgrounds affect people’s attitudes, behavior, and life chances, their
views as sociologists differ in many other ways.

Macro and Micro Approaches

Although this may be overly simplistic, sociologists’ views basically fall into two
camps: macrosociology and microsociology. Macrosociologists focus on the big
picture, which usually means such things as social structure, social institutions,
and social, political, and economic change. They look at the large-scale social
forces that change the course of human society and the lives of individuals.
Microsociologists, on the other hand, study social interaction. They look at how
families, coworkers, and other small groups of people interact; why they interact
the way they do; and how they interpret the meanings of their own interactions and
of the social settings in which they find themselves. Often macro- and
microsociologists look at the same phenomena but do so in different ways. Their
views taken together offer a fuller understanding of the phenomena than either
approach can offer alone.

Two women sitting outside of a building, smoking a cigarette

Microsociologists examine the interaction of small groups of people, such as the
two women conversing here. These sociologists examine how and why individuals
interact and interpret the meanings of their interaction.

Piero Fissore – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The different but complementary nature of these two approaches can be seen in the
case of armed robbery. Macrosociologists would discuss such things as why robbery
rates are higher in poorer communities and whether these rates change with changes
in the national economy. Microsociologists would instead focus on such things as
why individual robbers decide to commit a robbery and how they select their
targets. Both types of approaches give us a valuable understanding of robbery, but
together they offer an even richer understanding.

Within the broad macro camp, two perspectives dominate: functionalism and conflict
theory. Within the micro camp, two other perspectives exist: symbolic
interactionism and utilitarianism (also called rational choice theory or exchange
theory) (Collins, 1994). We now turn to these four theoretical perspectives, which
are summarized in Table 1.1 “Theory Snapshot”.

Table 1.1 Theory Snapshot

Theoretical perspective Major assumptions

Functionalism Social stability is necessary to have a strong society, and
adequate socialization and social integration are necessary to achieve social
stability. Society’s social institutions perform important functions to help ensure
social stability. Slow social change is desirable, but rapid social change
threatens social order. Functionalism is a macro theory.
Conflict theory Society is characterized by pervasive inequality based on social
class, gender, and other factors. Far-reaching social change is needed to reduce or
eliminate social inequality and to create an egalitarian society. Conflict theory
is a macro theory.
Symbolic interactionism People construct their roles as they interact; they do not
merely learn the roles that society has set out for them. As this interaction
occurs, individuals negotiate their definitions of the situations in which they
find themselves and socially construct the reality of these situations. In so
doing, they rely heavily on symbols such as words and gestures to reach a shared
understanding of their interaction. Symbolic interactionism is a micro theory.
Utilitarianism (rational choice theory or exchange theory) People act to maximize
their advantages in a given situation and to reduce their disadvantages. If they
decide that benefits outweigh disadvantages, they will initiate the interaction or
continue it if it is already under way. If they instead decide that disadvantages
outweigh benefits, they will decline to begin interacting or stop the interaction
if already begun. Social order is possible because people realize it will be in
their best interests to cooperate and to make compromises when necessary.
Utilitarianism is a micro theory.
Functionalism
Functionalism, also known as the functionalist perspective, arose out of two great
revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. The first was the French Revolution of
1789, whose intense violence and bloody terror shook Europe to its core. The
aristocracy throughout Europe feared that revolution would spread to their own
lands, and intellectuals feared that social order was crumbling.

The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century reinforced these concerns. Starting
first in Europe and then in the United States, the Industrial Revolution led to
many changes, including the rise and growth of cities as people left their farms to
live near factories. As the cities grew, people lived in increasingly poor,
crowded, and decrepit conditions. One result of these conditions was mass violence,
as mobs of the poor roamed the streets of European and American cities. They
attacked bystanders, destroyed property, and generally wreaked havoc. Here was
additional evidence, if European intellectuals needed it, of the breakdown of
social order.

In response, the intellectuals began to write that a strong society, as exemplified

by strong social bonds and rules and effective socialization, was needed to prevent
social order from disintegrating (Collins, 1994). In this regard, their view was
similar to that of the 20th-century novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding
(1954), which many college students read in high school. Some British boys are
stranded on an island after a plane crash. No longer supervised by adults and no
longer in a society as they once knew it, they are not sure how to proceed and come
up with new rules for their behavior. These rules prove ineffective, and the boys
slowly become savages, as the book calls them, and commit murder. However bleak,
Golding’s view echoes that of the conservative intellectuals writing in the
aftermath of the French and Industrial Revolutions. Without a strong society and
effective socialization, they warned, social order breaks down, and violence and
other signs of social disorder result.

This general framework reached fruition in the writings of Émile Durkheim (1858–
1917), a French scholar largely responsible for the sociological perspective as we
now know it. Adopting the conservative intellectuals’ view of the need for a strong
society, Durkheim felt that human beings have desires that result in chaos unless
society limits them. He wrote, “To achieve any other result, the passions first
must be limited.…But since the individual has no way of limiting them, this must be
done by some force exterior to him” (Durkheim, 1897/1952, p. 274). This force,
Durkheim continued, is the moral authority of society.

How does society limit individual aspirations? Durkheim emphasized two related
social mechanisms: socialization and social integration. Socialization helps us
learn society’s rules and the need to cooperate, as people end up generally
agreeing on important norms and values, while social integration, or our ties to
other people and to social institutions such as religion and the family, helps
socialize us and integrate us into society and reinforce our respect for its rules.
In general, Durkheim added, society comprises many types of social facts, or forces
external to the individual, that affect and constrain individual attitudes and
behavior. The result is that socialization and social integration help establish a
strong set of social rules—or, as Durkheim called it, a strong collective
conscience—that is needed for a stable society. By so doing, society “creates a
kind of cocoon around the individual, making him or her less individualistic, more
a member of the group” (Collins, 1994, p. 181). Weak rules or social ties weaken
this “moral cocoon” and lead to social disorder. In all of these respects, says
Randall Collins (1994, p. 181), Durkheim’s view represents the “core tradition” of
sociology that lies at the heart of the sociological perspective.

Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim was a founder of sociology and largely responsible for the
sociological perspective as we now know it.

https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/d/pics/durkheim.jpg – public domain.

Durkheim used suicide to illustrate how social disorder can result from a weakening
of society’s moral cocoon. Focusing on group rates of suicide, he felt they could
not be explained simply in terms of individual unhappiness and instead resulted
from external forces. One such force is anomie, or normlessness, which results from
situations, such as periods of rapid social change, when social norms are weak and
unclear or social ties are weak. When anomie sets in, people become more unclear
about how to deal with problems in their life. Their aspirations are no longer
limited by society’s constraints and thus cannot be fulfilled. The frustration
stemming from anomie leads some people to commit suicide (Durkheim, 1897/1952).

To test his theory, Durkheim gathered suicide rate data and found that Protestants
had higher suicide rates than Catholics. To explain this difference, he rejected
the idea that Protestants were less happy than Catholics and instead hypothesized
that Catholic doctrine provides many more rules for behavior and thinking than does
Protestant doctrine. Protestants’ aspirations were thus less constrained than
Catholics’ desires. In times of trouble, Protestants also have fewer norms on which
to rely for comfort and support than do Catholics. He also thought that
Protestants’ ties to each other were weaker than those among Catholics, providing
Protestants fewer social support networks to turn to when troubled. In addition,
Protestant belief is ambivalent about suicide, while Catholic doctrine condemns it.
All of these properties of religious group membership combine to produce higher
suicide rates among Protestants than among Catholics.

Today’s functionalist perspective arises out of Durkheim’s work and that of other
conservative intellectuals of the 19th century. It uses the human body as a model
for understanding society. In the human body, our various organs and other body
parts serve important functions for the ongoing health and stability of our body.
Our eyes help us see, our ears help us hear, our heart circulates our blood, and so
forth. Just as we can understand the body by describing and understanding the
functions that its parts serve for its health and stability, so can we understand
society by describing and understanding the functions that its “parts”—or, more
accurately, its social institutions—serve for the ongoing health and stability of
society. Thus functionalism emphasizes the importance of social institutions such
as the family, religion, and education for producing a stable society. We look at
these institutions in later chapters.

Similar to the view of the conservative intellectuals from which it grew,

functionalism is skeptical of rapid social change and other major social upheaval.
The analogy to the human body helps us understand this skepticism. In our bodies,
any sudden, rapid change is a sign of danger to our health. If we break a bone in
one of our legs, we have trouble walking; if we lose sight in both our eyes, we can
no longer see. Slow changes, such as the growth of our hair and our nails, are fine
and even normal, but sudden changes like those just described are obviously
troublesome. By analogy, sudden and rapid changes in society and its social
institutions are troublesome according to the functionalist perspective. If the
human body evolved to its present form and functions because these made sense from
an evolutionary perspective, so did society evolve to its present form and
functions because these made sense. Any sudden change in society thus threatens its
stability and future. By taking a skeptical approach to social change,
functionalism supports the status quo and is thus often regarded as a conservative
perspective.

Conflict Theory
In many ways, conflict theory is the opposite of functionalism but ironically also
grew out of the Industrial Revolution, thanks largely to Karl Marx (1818–1883) and
his collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895). Whereas conservative intellectuals
feared the mass violence resulting from industrialization, Marx and Engels deplored
the conditions they felt were responsible for the mass violence and the capitalist
society they felt was responsible for these conditions. Instead of fearing the
breakdown of social order that mass violence represented, they felt that
revolutionary violence was needed to eliminate capitalism and the poverty and
misery they saw as its inevitable result (Marx, 1867/1906; Marx & Engels,
1848/1962).

Karl Mar
Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels were intense critics of capitalism.
Their work inspired the later development of conflict theory in sociology.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

According to Marx and Engels, every society is divided into two classes based on
the ownership of the means of production (tools, factories, and the like). In a
capitalist society, the bourgeoisie, or ruling class, owns the means of production,
while the proletariat, or working class, does not own the means of production and
instead is oppressed and exploited by the bourgeoisie. This difference creates an
automatic conflict of interests between the two groups. Simply put, the bourgeoisie
is interested in maintaining its position at the top of society, while the
proletariat’s interest lies in rising up from the bottom and overthrowing the
bourgeoisie to create an egalitarian society.

In a capitalist society, Marx and Engels wrote, revolution is inevitable because of

structural contradictions arising from the very nature of capitalism. Because
profit is the main goal of capitalism, the bourgeoisie’s interest lies in
maximizing profit. To do so, capitalists try to keep wages as low as possible and
to spend as little money as possible on working conditions. This central fact of
capitalism, said Marx and Engels, eventually prompts the rise among workers of
class consciousness, or an awareness of the reasons for their oppression. Their
class consciousness in turn leads them to revolt against the bourgeoisie to
eliminate the oppression and exploitation they suffer.

Over the years, Marx and Engels’s views on the nature of capitalism and class
relations have greatly influenced social, political, and economic theory and also
inspired revolutionaries in nations around the world. However, history has not
supported their prediction that capitalism will inevitably result in a revolution
of the proletariat. For example, no such revolution has occurred in the United
States, where workers never developed the degree of class consciousness envisioned
by Marx and Engels. Because the United States is thought to be a free society where
everyone has the opportunity to succeed, even poor Americans feel that the system
is basically just. Thus various aspects of American society and ideology have
helped minimize the development of class consciousness and prevent the revolution
that Marx and Engels foresaw.

Despite this shortcoming, their basic view of conflict arising from unequal
positions held by members of society lies at the heart of today’s conflict theory.
This theory emphasizes that different groups in society have different interests
stemming from their different social positions. These different interests in turn
lead to different views on important social issues. Some versions of the theory
root conflict in divisions based on race and ethnicity, gender, and other such
differences, while other versions follow Marx and Engels in seeing conflict arising
out of different positions in the economic structure. In general, however, conflict
theory emphasizes that the various parts of society contribute to ongoing
inequality, whereas functionalist theory, as we have seen, stresses that they
contribute to the ongoing stability of society. Thus, while functionalist theory
emphasizes the benefits of the various parts of society for ongoing social
stability, conflict theory favors social change to reduce inequality. In this
regard, conflict theory may be considered a progressive perspective.

Feminist theory has developed in sociology and other disciplines since the 1970s
and for our purposes will be considered a specific application of conflict theory.
In this case, the conflict concerns gender inequality rather than the class
inequality emphasized by Marx and Engels. Although many variations of feminist
theory exist, they all emphasize that society is filled with gender inequality such
that women are the subordinate sex in many dimensions of social, political, and
economic life (Tong, 2009). Liberal feminists view gender inequality as arising out
of gender differences in socialization, while Marxist feminists say that this
inequality is a result of the rise of capitalism, which made women dependent on men
for economic support. On the other hand, radical feminists view gender inequality
as present in all societies, not just capitalist ones. Chapter 11 “Gender and
Gender Inequality” examines some of the arguments of feminist theory at great
length.

Symbolic Interactionism
Whereas the functionalist and conflict perspectives are macro approaches, symbolic
interactionism is a micro approach that focuses on the interaction of individuals
and on how they interpret their interaction. Its roots lie in the work in the early
1900s of American sociologists, social psychologists, and philosophers who were
interested in human consciousness and action. Herbert Blumer (1969), a sociologist
at the University of Chicago, built on their writings to develop symbolic
interactionism, a term he coined. This view remains popular today, in part because
many sociologists object to what they perceive as the overly deterministic view of
human thought and action and passive view of the individual inherent in the
sociological perspective derived from Durkheim.

Drawing on Blumer’s work, symbolic interactionists feel that people do not merely
learn the roles that society has set out for them; instead they construct these
roles as they interact. As they interact, they “negotiate” their definitions of the
situations in which they find themselves and socially construct the reality of
these situations. In so doing, they rely heavily on symbols such as words and
gestures to reach a shared understanding of their interaction.

An example is the familiar symbol of shaking hands. In the United States and many
other societies, shaking hands is a symbol of greeting and friendship. This simple
act indicates that you are a nice, polite person with whom someone should feel
comfortable. To reinforce this symbol’s importance for understanding a bit of
interaction, consider a situation where someone refuses to shake hands. This action
is usually intended as a sign of dislike or as an insult, and the other person
interprets it as such. Their understanding of the situation and subsequent
interaction will be very different from those arising from the more typical shaking
of hands.

Now let’s say that someone does not shake hands, but this time the reason is that
the person’s right arm is broken. Because the other person realizes this, no snub
or insult is inferred, and the two people can then proceed to have a comfortable
encounter. Their definition of the situation depends not only on whether they shake
hands but also, if they do not shake hands, on why they do not. As the term
symbolic interactionism implies, their understanding of this encounter arises from
what they do when they interact and their use and interpretation of the various
symbols included in their interaction. According to symbolic interactionists,
social order is possible because people learn what various symbols (such as shaking
hands) mean and apply these meanings to different kinds of situations. If you
visited a society where sticking your right hand out to greet someone was
interpreted as a threatening gesture, you would quickly learn the value of common
understandings of symbols.

Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a general view of human behavior that says people act to maximize
their pleasure and to reduce their pain. It originated in the work of such 18th-
century thinkers as the Italian economist Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) and the
English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Both men thought that people act
rationally and decide before they act whether their behavior will cause them more
pleasure or pain. Applying their views to crime, they felt the criminal justice
system in Europe at the time was far harsher than it needed to be to deter criminal
behavior. Another 18th-century utilitarian thinker was Adam Smith, whose book The
Wealth of Nations (1776/1910) laid the foundation for modern economic thought.
Indeed, at the heart of economics is the view that sellers and buyers of goods and
services act rationally to reduce their costs and in this and other ways to
maximize their profits.

In sociology, utilitarianism is commonly called exchange theory or rational choice

theory (Coleman, 1990; Homans, 1961). No matter what name it goes under, this view
emphasizes that when people interact, they seek to maximize the benefits they gain
from the interaction and to reduce the disadvantages. If they decide that the
interaction’s benefits outweigh its disadvantages, they will initiate the
interaction or continue it if it is already under way. If they instead decide that
the interaction’s disadvantages outweigh its benefits, they will decline to begin
interacting or stop the interaction if already begun. Social order is possible
because people realize it will be in their best interests to cooperate and to make
compromises when necessary.

A familiar application of exchange theory would be a dating relationship. Each

partner in a dating relationship gives up a bit of autonomy in return for love and
other benefits of being close to someone. Yet every relationship has its good and
bad moments, and both partners make frequent compromises to ensure the relationship
will endure. As long as the couple feels the good moments outweigh the bad moments,
the relationship will continue. But once one or both partners decide the reverse is
true, the relationship will end.

Comparing Macro and Micro Perspectives

This brief presentation of the four major theoretical perspectives in sociology is
necessarily incomplete but should at least outline their basic points. Each
perspective has its proponents, and each has its detractors. All four offer a lot
of truth, and all four oversimplify and make other mistakes. We will return to them
in many of the chapters ahead, but a brief critique is in order here.

A major problem with functionalist theory is that it tends to support the status
quo and thus seems to favor existing inequalities based on race, social class, and
gender. By emphasizing the contributions of social institutions such as the family
and education to social stability, functionalist theory minimizes the ways in which
these institutions contribute to social inequality.

Conflict theory also has its problems. By emphasizing inequality and dissensus in
society, conflict theory overlooks the large degree of consensus on many important
issues. And by emphasizing the ways in which social institutions contribute to
social inequality, conflict theory minimizes the ways in which these institutions
are necessary for society’s stability.

Neither of these two macro perspectives has very much to say about social
interaction, one of the most important building blocks of society. In this regard,
the two micro perspectives, symbolic interactionism and utilitarianism, offer
significant advantages over their macro cousins. Yet their very micro focus leads
them to pay relatively little attention to the reasons for, and possible solutions
to, such broad and fundamentally important issues as poverty, racism, sexism, and
social change, which are all addressed by functionalism and conflict theory. In
this regard, the two macro perspectives offer significant advantages over their
micro cousins. In addition, one of the micro perspectives, rational choice theory,
has also been criticized for ignoring the importance of emotions, altruism, and
other values for guiding human interaction (Lowenstein, 1996).

These criticisms aside, all four perspectives taken together offer a more
comprehensive understanding of social phenomena than any one perspective can offer
alone. To illustrate this, let’s return to our armed robbery example. A
functionalist approach might suggest that armed robbery and other crimes actually
serve positive functions for society. As one function, fear of crime ironically
strengthens social bonds by uniting the law-abiding public against the criminal
elements in society. As a second function, armed robbery and other crimes create
many jobs for police officers, judges, lawyers, prison guards, the construction
companies that build prisons, and the various businesses that provide products the
public buys to help protect against crime.

To explain armed robbery, symbolic interactionists focus on how armed robbers

decide when and where to rob a victim and on how their interactions with other
criminals reinforce their own criminal tendencies.

A man holding a gun to the camera

Geoffrey Fairchild – The Robbery – CC BY 2.0.

Conflict theory would take a very different but no less helpful approach to
understanding armed robbery. It might note that most street criminals are poor and
thus emphasize that armed robbery and other crimes are the result of the despair
and frustration of living in poverty and facing a lack of jobs and other
opportunities for economic and social success. The roots of street crime, from the
perspective of conflict theory, thus lie in society at least as much as they lie in
the individuals committing such crime.

In explaining armed robbery, symbolic interactionism would focus on how armed

robbers make such decisions as when and where to rob someone and on how their
interactions with other criminals reinforce their own criminal tendencies. Exchange
or rational choice theory would emphasize that armed robbers and other criminals
are rational actors who carefully plan their crimes and who would be deterred by a
strong threat of swift and severe punishment.