1 A Sociological Lens
Sean Ashley
2020 was the year of the sociological imagination. This concept, coined by the sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916-1962), invites us to see how our personal lives are shaped by changes in the larger social structure (Mills, 1967). It is a way of perceiving the world that helps distinguish when a personal problem is in fact a public issue, one that may require concerted rather than individual action in order to bring about change.
Across the globe, everyone’s lives were upended by the pandemic, but not all lives were upended equally. People who worked in lower paying, part-time jobs in grocery stores and fast-food restaurants were required to continue going to work, while those whose jobs required college and university degrees were more often encouraged to stay home and isolate in the face of a deadly virus. In North America and Europe, non-white men and women disproportionately faced the danger as frontline workers, and as a result died at higher rates than white workers. In the UAE and Saudi Arabia, migrant workers were the ones who bore the brunt of the pandemic (Kalush, 2020). Women across the world faced increased stress and wage loss as schools closed and the unequal division of childcare responsibilities became starkly visible.
Sociology can help us understand what happens when large scale social changes occur like those brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, sociologists refer to the feeling of disorientation that accompanies rapid changes in social norms as anomie, a feeling of normlessness that produces a sense of despair and anxiety. By recognizing that the root of this feeling lay not within our individual minds but within the larger shifting structures of society, sociology provides us with the tools necessary to reshape ourselves and the world around us, perhaps enabling us to create a more inclusive and just global community in the process.
Sociology is the systematic study of society. Sociologists study all aspects and levels of society, from the micro-level dynamics of small group interactions to the macro-level analysis of large-scale social structures like patriarchy and caste.
Seeing the world sociologically involves seeing the general in the particular, and the strange in the familiar (Berger, 1969). A key component of the sociological perspective is the idea that the individual and society are inseparable. It is nearly impossible to study one without the other. German sociologist Norbert Elias called the process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of individuals and the society that shapes that behavior figuration (Elias, 1978). It is like dancing; you can’t have a dance without dancers, and you can’t be a dancer without the dance.
The analogy with dance is also useful for understanding the role of individual agency when studying society. Agency refers to the individual’s ability to change and act freely within social structures. It is similar in many ways to what philosophers call free will. When you dance you are following a certain script that determines the style (bhangra, bachata, or break dancing), but you also have the freedom to improvise and alter the dance, making it your own. You could even create something totally new and start a new dance craze. Dance revolution!
Revolutionary Origins
The development of sociology as an academic discipline came after a series of revolutionary changes took hold in Europe. The early 19th century saw great changes with the Industrial Revolution, increased mobility, and new ways of organizing society along democratic (rather than monarchical) lines. It was also a period of increased trade, travel, and globalization that exposed many people — for the first time—to societies and cultures other than their own. Millions of people moved into cities and many people turned away from their traditional religious beliefs. Ideas spread rapidly. Among this new generation of thinkers, there were some who believed they could make sense of it all.
Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte (1798-1857), known simply as Auguste Comte, was one such person. He first used the term “sociology” 1838 to refer to a new scientific approach to studying society. The term comes from the Latin word socius (companion) and the Greek word logos (speech or reason). Comte was born shortly after the chaotic period of the French Revolution and was concerned with how social order might be maintained in a world that was moving away from religious explanations. He believed that society could be studied using the same scientific methods used in natural sciences and wanted to uncover the natural laws governing social life. He named this newly emerging form of gathering knowledge through scientific study “positivism.” Comte believed that revealing the laws by which societies and individuals interact would usher in a new “positivist” age of history, one watched over by a new priesthood of sociologists who understand the natural laws of social life. While most sociologists today don’t share Comte’s religious vision, many continue to share his view that sociology can be used to make the world a better place.
While the term sociology was first coined in Europe, the practice of studying society in a systematic way is found throughout history. In the 14th century, the Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) set the foundations for both modern sociology and economics. Khaldun proposed a that social groups living in the desert conditions of North Africa developed a special kind of group solidarity he called ‘absabiyya, which means a strong attachment uniting a group through common interest and opinion, something he believed helped such societies deal with the sometimes-harsh conditions of desert life (Irwin, 2018).
In Europe, another important early analyzer of society was the German thinker Karl Marx (1818-1883). In 1848 he and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) co-authored the The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx, 1978). This book presents in a highly condensed form Marx’s theory of society, which differed from what Comte proposed. Whereas Comte viewed the goal of sociology as recreating a unified, post-feudal spiritual order that would help to institutionalize a new era of political and social stability, Marx developed a critical analysis of capitalism that saw the material or economic basis of inequality and power relations as the cause of social instability and conflict. Marx was not sociologist by profession, but his work provided an important foundation for thinking about society sociologically (Parsons, 1954), and he remains one of the most influential thinkers in the discipline.
Sociology as an academic discipline first emerged in the late 19th century and rapidly spread across the globe. The first independent sociology department was established at the University of Chicago in 1892 by Albion Small. Sociology was established in Japan shortly after in 1893, with the first chair in sociology being created at Tokyo Imperial University (now University of Tokyo) (Odaka, 1950).
Women were important contributors to sociology’s early period, though they were often denied academic positions and recognition due to their gender. In 1852 Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) translated Comte’s works into English. She also wrote extensively on American society (she was British herself) and is often considered by many to be the first female sociologist.
The Canadian born Annie Marion Maclean (1869–1934) was one of the first women to receive a PhD in sociology (Deegan, 2014). She wrote widely on the labour conditions of women and pioneered ethnographic research, taking shifts herself in department stores at Christmas time to study retail work culture, as well as temporarily working in a sweatshop to experience the conditions of work in those settings. Because she was a woman, Maclean was never able to gain a full professorial position at the University of Chicago; she taught sociology courses there by correspondence instead.
Another important early American sociologist was W.E.B. Du Bois (1868 –1963). He was the first Black man to earn a doctorate (any doctorate) from Harvard University. While Du Bois is well known for his books on the experience of being Black in the United States (Du Bois, 2018), he was also a dedicated activist as well and one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the USA, as well as a vocal critic of the exploitation of Africa that he saw being perpetuated by European and North American countries (Morris, 2015).
In Europe, the first sociology department was founded in 1895 by Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) Durkheim believed that society is a complex system of interrelated and interdependent parts that work together to maintain stability (Durkheim, 2014). In a healthy society, all parts work together to maintain stability, a state called dynamic equilibrium by later sociologists such as Talcott Parsons (1954). Durkheim believed that to study society, a sociologist must look beyond individuals to social facts such as laws, values, religious beliefs, and rituals, which all serve to regulate social life.
Like Comte, Durkheim was interested in what held society together during periods of change. In his book The Division of Labor in Society (2014), Durkheim explained that small scale, non-industrial societies were held together by mechanical solidarity, a type of social order maintained by the collective conscience of a culture (a concept not unlike Khaldun’s concept of ‘absabiyya). As societies become more complex in terms of jobs and industrialization, mechanical solidarity is replaced by organic solidarity, wherein social order is based on difference (i.e. different jobs and roles) and the interdependence this fosters, instead of the sameness of shared lived experience.
Theoretical Paradigms
Today, Durkheim’s approach to sociology is known as structural functionalism and represents one of the three major theoretical paradigms that we will be using to understand society. Paradigms are theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them. Three paradigms have come to dominate sociological: structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.
Structural Functionalism
Structural functionalism, also called functionalism, sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of the individuals in that society. Functionalism grew out of the writings of English philosopher and biologist, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who saw similarities between society and the human body. He argued that just as the various organs of the body work together to keep the body functioning, the various parts of society work together to keep society functioning (Spencer, 1898). The parts of society that Spencer referred to were the social institutions, or patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs, such as government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy.
| Theoretical Paradigms | Level of Analysis | Focus | Analogies | Questions that might be asked |
| Structural Functionalism | Macro | The way each part of society functions together to contribute to the functioning of the whole. | How each organ works to keep your body healthy (or not.) | How does education work to transmit culture? |
| Conflict Theory | Macro | The way inequities and inequalities contribute to social, political, and power differences and how they perpetuate power. | The ones with the most toys wins and they will change the rules to the games to keep winning. | Does education transmit only the dominant certain cultures? |
| Symbolic Interactionism | Micro | The way one-on-one interactions and communications behave. | What’s it mean to be an X? | How do students react to cultural messages in school? |
Durkheim shared the view that society was like a body. He believed that individuals may make up society, but in order to study society, sociologists have to look beyond individuals to social facts which were supra-individual. Each of these social facts serves one or more functions within a society. For example, one function of a society’s laws may be to protect society from violence, while another is to punish criminal behavior, while another is to preserve public health
As the founder of academic sociology in France, Durkheim wanted to demonstrate how such a social approach could help us understand pressing public issues. He took as his subject matter a phenomenon that is often considered to be highly personal to the individual: suicide. Durkheim (2005) observed that while suicide is often contemplated and performed in private, suicide rates are not distributed evenly. He gathered a large amount of data about Europeans and found that while the Jewish community had the highest levels of reported mental illness, they had the lowest levels of suicide in France. Durkheim hypothesized that differences in suicide rates might be best explained by different levels of social solidarity. This view also explains why single men living in the city had higher suicide rates than married men in the countryside. They were less integrated into social life and were more likely to suffer from anomie.
Anomie is an important concept. For Durkheim, anomie occurs when society experiences a crisis or abrupt transition and is thereby unable to exercise its regulating influence. This can include an economic crisis where people lose their job, but it can also occur when there is a rapid growth in wealth and power (Durkheim, 2005, p. 213). While the anomie was the most significant factor Durkheim explored in his book, he also identified how too much social integration might also lead to an individual taking their own life.
Four Types of Socially Generated Suicide
Anomic suicide: a state where the regulating effects of society has broken down. Example: economic crisis that results in job loss, but also the unrestrained desires that accompany being rich and famous.
Egoistic suicide: a special type of suicide which springs from excessive individualism. It refers to a lack of integration of the individual into society. Example: social isolation.
Fatalistic suicide: Springs from excessive regulation, such as conditions where someone is smothered by oppressive expectations. Example: a woman who feels she is expected to have a child but cannot. (Durkheim felt this was the rarest form of suicide).
Altruistic suicide: occurs when an individual is overly integrated into society. Example: military sacrifice.
Functionalists ask such questions as, what does religion do for society? How does the education system serve the needs of society overall? Robert Merton (1910–2003), another noted structural functionalist, pointed out that social processes often have many functions. Manifest functions are the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated, while latent functions are the unsought consequences of a social process. A manifest function of a college education, for example, includes gaining knowledge, preparing for a career, and finding a good job that utilizes that education. Latent functions of your college years include meeting new people, participating in extracurricular activities, or even finding a spouse or partner. Another latent function of education is creating a hierarchy of employment based on the level of education attained. Latent functions can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theory looks at society as a competition for limited resources. This perspective is a macro-level approach and most often identified with the writings of Marx, who saw society as being made up of social classes who compete for social, material, and political resources such as food and housing, employment, education, and leisure time. It also reflects the view of another important German sociologist, Max Weber (1864-1920). Weber agreed with Marx about the importance of class, but also believed that, in addition to economic inequalities, inequalities of political power and status can also be fields for competition.
While many conflict theorists focus on inequalities, conflict can also be productive for societies. For example, Randall Collins tells us that the development of philosophies across the world can be understood in terms of intellectual debates and exchanges between competing schools of thought, such as those that took place between the followers of the Buddha and Mahavira, the founders of Buddhism and Jainism respectively, who lived in India at the same point in time. Out of conflicts between competing schools come new branches of philosophy, as intellectuals compete for recognition and broader acceptance of their ideas (Collins, 1998).
Other theoretical perspectives that fall under the broad umbrella of conflict theory include feminism, which critically analyzes the constructions of gender and its resulting inequalities, and critical writings on race, such as those pioneered by Du Bois. Conflict theory also includes critical perspectives on colonialism, sexualities, and disability. All share the view that society may not be a smoothly operating organism, but rather an arena of conflict where groups struggle for power, recognition, and economic resources.
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society. Communication—the exchange of meaning through language and symbols—is the way in which people make sense of their social worlds. This perspective sees people as being active in shaping the social world rather than simply being acted upon.
George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) is considered a founder of symbolic interactionism though he never published his work on it. Mead’s student, Herbert Blumer, coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and outlined these basic premises: humans interact with things based on meanings ascribed to those things; the ascribed meaning of things comes from our interactions with others and society; the meanings of things are interpreted by a person when dealing with things in specific circumstances (Blumer 1969).
Social scientists who apply symbolic-interactionist thinking look for patterns of interaction between individuals. Their studies often involve observation of one-on-one interactions. For example, while a conflict theorist studying a political protest might focus on class difference, a symbolic interactionist would be more interested in how individuals in the protesting group interact, as well as the signs and symbols protesters use to communicate their message.
Symbolic interactionists examine how our reality is socially constructed. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann argued that society is created by humans and human interaction, which they call habitualization. Habitualization describes how “any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be … performed again in the future in the same manner and with the same economical effort” (Berger and Luckmann 1966). Not only do we construct our own society but we also accept it as it is because others have created it before us. Society is, in fact, “habit.”
Another way of looking at this concept is through W.I. Thomas’s notable Thomas theorem which states, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1928). That is, people’s behaviour can be determined by their subjective construction of reality rather than by objective reality. For example, a teenager who is repeatedly given a label—overachiever, player, bum—might live up to the term even though it initially wasn’t a part of his character.
The focus on the importance of social interaction in building a society led sociologists like Erving Goffman (1922-1982) to develop a technique called dramaturgical analysis. Goffman used theater as an analogy for social interaction and recognized that people’s interactions showed patterns of cultural “scripts.” He argued that individuals were like actors in a play. We switched roles, sometimes minute to minute—for example, from student or daughter to dog walker. Because it can be unclear what part a person may play in a given situation, they have to improvise their role as the situation unfolds (Goffman, 1959).
Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective are more likely to use qualitative research methods, such as in-depth interviews or participant observation, because they seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which research subjects live.
Applying Sociological Paradigms
Let’s take a moment to see how the different paradigms might approach a topic like religion.
Emile Durkheim’s book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1995) provides the basis for a structural functionalist analysis of religion. Durkheim tells us that at its core religion involves distinguishing the sacred from the profane. He points out that different societies have different ideas about what should be considered sacred, but in every case, religion involves concentrating the attentions of the group on some object or symbol within a ritualized setting. For Durkheim the function of religion is to reinforce the community, and that the sacred is really an expression of the group itself.
The Marxist-feminist Sylvia Federici offers a conflict theory perspective on religion. Rather than seeing religion as integrating a community, she notes the power of religion to tear a community apart. In her book Caliban and the Witch (2004), Federici points out that the time period (late 16th to early 17th century) when women were burned as witches in Europe corresponds with the expansion of capitalism across the continent and was part of a program to push women out of professions like medicine and weaken their role in society through the shock of violence, clearing the way for new male dominated capitalist enterprises. She refers to this process as primitive accumulation, a term that Marx used to explain the initial theft of wealth and land required by capitalism in order to get started.
Symbolic interactionists on the other hand would focus more on the meaning of religious beliefs. Peter Berger (1990) for example argued that religion provides us with a sacred canopy that protects us from the inherent chaos and confusion of reality. It shelters us by providing us a system for interpreting and understanding why, for example, bad things happen to good people. Science might explain the how, but religion provides us with the why.
As you can see, the different theoretical paradigms would ask different questions about religion overall. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive – religion does bring people together, generate conflict, and provide meaning. What the theoretical paradigms do is focus our attention on certain social domains of religion and proffer a theoretical framework so that we can start asking probing questions about the role of religion in the world.
These three approaches still provide the main foundation of modern sociological theory though they have evolved. Structural functionalism was a dominant force after World War II and until the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, sociologists began to feel that structural functionalism did not sufficiently explain the rapid social changes happening across the world, such as the Civil Rights Movement in the USA and anti-colonial struggles in Africa and Asia.
Conflict theory then gained prominence, with its emphasis on institutionalized social inequality. Critical theory, and the particular aspects of feminist theory and critical race theory, focused on creating social change through the application of sociological principles. The field saw a renewed emphasis on helping ordinary people understand sociology principles, in the form of public sociology.
Gaining prominence in the wake of Mead’s work in the 1920s and 1930s, symbolic interactionism declined in influence during the 1960s and 1970s only to be revitalized at the turn of the twenty-first century (Stryker, 1987). Postmodern social theory developed in the 1980s to look at society through an entirely new lens by rejecting previous macro-level attempts to explain social phenomena. In fact, postmodernism rejected the idea that any grand theory could explain society, though in a way it became a grand theory in its own right, one that emphasized how reality was constructed through discourse and that the claims to truth and knowledge are forms of power.
Conclusion
Sociology today is a global project with researchers and departments found throughout the world. Organizations such as the International Sociology Association (https://www.isa-sociology.org) provide a forum for sociologists to exchange ideas and share their findings. As an academic endeavor, sociology is a global conversation about how to best understand the world and deal with pressing social problems such as poverty, violence, and displacement.
Not everyone who studies sociology though becomes a professional sociologist. Sociology provides an excellent foundation for a variety of careers, including work in the fields of marketing, criminal justice, community development, advocacy, law, public relations, social work, and more. The value of sociology, however, is not just that it will help you in your chosen career. The sociological imagination gives you the power see the social forces at work around you, which in turn gives you more control and context for your personal experience. You no longer need to simply accept things as they are. You can start changing the things you cannot accept.
Study Questions
- Which theory do you think better explains how societies operate — structural functionalism or conflict theory? Why?
- Describe a situation in which a choice you made was influenced by societal forces.
- Do you think the way people behave in social interactions is more due to the cause and effect of external social constraints or more like actors playing a role in a theatrical production? Why?
References
Berger, P. (1969). An invitation to sociology: A humanistic perspective. Doubleday.
Berger, P. (1990). The sacred canopy: Elements of a theory of religion. Anchor.
Berger, P. and T. Luckmann. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Anchor Books.
Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Prentice Hall.
Collins, R. (1998). The sociology of philosophies: A global theory of intellectual change. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Deegan, M. J. (2014). Annie Marion MacLean and the Chicago schools of sociology, 1894-1934. Routledge.
Durkheim, E. (2014). The division of labor in society. Free Press.
Durkheim, E. (1995). The elementary forms of religious life. The Free Press.
Durkheim, E. (2005). Suicide: A study in sociology. Routledge.
Du Bois, W. E. B (2018). The souls of black folk: Essays and sketches. Myers Education Press.
Elias, N. (1978). What Is sociology? New York: Columbia University Press.
Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the witch: Women, the body and primitive accumulation. Autonomedia.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday.
Irwin, R. (2018). Ibn Khaldun: An intellectual biography. Princeton University Press.
Kalush, R. (2020). In the Gulf, migrant workers bear the brunt of the pandemic. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/6/1/in-the-gulf-migrant-workers-bear-the-brunt-of-the-pandemic
Marx, K., and F. Engels. (1978). The Marx-Engels reader, 2nd edition. W.W. Norton & Company.
Mills, C. W. (1967). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
Morris, A. (2015). The scholar denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the birth of modern sociology. University of California Press.
Parsons, T. (1954). Essays in sociological theory: revised edition. The Free Press.
Odaka, K. (1950). Japanese sociology. Past and present. Social Forces, 27(3), 400-409. https://doi.org/10.2307/2572250.
Spencer, Herbert. (1894). The principles of biology. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
Stryker, S. (1987). The vitalization of symbolic interactionism. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50(1), 83-94.
Thomas, W.I., and D.S. Thomas. (1928). The child in America: Behavior problems and programs. New York: Knopf.
The ability to understand how your own biography is shaped by larger social forces and the social structure you inhabit.
The study of specific relationships between individuals or small groups.
A wide-scale view of the role of social structures within society.
The process of simultaneously analyzing the behaviour of an individual and the society that shapes that behaviour.
The ability for the individual to act in the world to create change and alter the conditions of social life.
A theory of knowledge that is dependent on science for explanations.
Facts that transcend the individual and affect their lives and actions. They include such things as institutions, values, and norms.
A type of social order based on sameness and maintained by the collective consciousness of a culture.
A type of social order based around interdependence and acceptance of economic and social differences.
Philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them.
Patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs, such as government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy.
A breakdown or absence of social norms.
The unrecognized or unintended consequences of a social process.
The idea that society is constructed by us and those before us, and it is followed like a habit.
How a subjective reality can drive events to develop in accordance with that reality, despite being originally unsupported by objective reality.
The original theft of capitalism which allows the system to get started. It includes the seizure of land from peasant farmers and Indigenous peoples.