Question

Discuss all of the theoretical perspectives used to study social problems and apply them to real situations;note their strengths and weaknesses of each as well as the theorists associated with each perspective.

Answer 1

• Three theoretical perspectives guide sociological thinking on social problems: functionalist theory, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionist theory. These perspectives look at the same social problems, but they do so in different ways.
• Functionalism-Social stability is necessary for a strong society, and adequate socialization and social integration are necessary for 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.Emile Durkheim developed theories of social structure that included functionalism, the division of labor, and anomie. These theories were founded on the concept of social facts, or societal norms, values, and structures.
• Social problems weaken a society’s stability but do not reflect fundamental faults in how the society is structured. Solutions to social problems should take the form of gradual social reform rather than sudden and far-reaching change. Despite their negative effects, social problems often also serve important functions for society.
• For example, crime is a major social problem, but it is also good for the economy because it creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in law enforcement, courts and corrections, home security, and other sectors of the economy whose major role is to deal with crime. If crime disappeared, many people would be out of work.
• Similarly, poverty is also a major social problem, but one function that poverty serves is that poor people do jobs that otherwise might not get done because other people would not want to do them.Like crime, poverty also provides employment for people across the nation, such as those who work in social service agencies that help poor people.
• Conflict theory-Society is characterized by pervasive inequality based on social class, race, gender, and other factors. Far-reaching social change is needed to reduce or eliminate social inequality and to create an egalitarian society.The conflict theory, suggested by Karl Marx, claims society is in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources. It holds that social order is maintained by domination and power, rather than consensus and conformity.
• Social problems arise from fundamental faults in the structure of a society and both reflect and reinforce inequalities based on social class, race, gender, and other dimensions. Successful solutions to social problems must involve far-reaching change in the structure of society.
• Feminist theory emphasizes that society is filled with gender inequality such that women are the subordinate sex in many dimensions of social, political, and economic life.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.
• 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 social psychological theory developed from the work of Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead in the early part of the twentieth century.
• Social problems arise from the interaction of individuals. People who engage in socially problematic behaviors often learn these behaviors from other people. Individuals also learn their perceptions of social problems from other people.
• 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. As the term symbolic interactionism implies, their understanding of this encounter arises from what they do when they interact and from 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.
• First, socially problematic behaviors such as crime and drug use are often learned from our interaction with people who engage in these behaviors; we adopt their attitudes that justify committing these behaviors, and we learn any special techniques that might be needed to commit these behaviors. Second, we also learn our perceptions of a social problem from our interaction with other people, whose perceptions and beliefs influence our own perceptions and beliefs.
• Another example applying the three perspectives is as follows;
• A functionalist approach might suggest that armed robbery actually serves positive functions for society, such as the job-creating function mentioned earlier for crime in general. It would still think that efforts should be made to reduce armed robbery, but it would also assume that far-reaching changes in our society would be neither wise nor necessary as part of the effort to reduce crime.
• Conflict theory would take a very different approach to understanding armed robbery. It might note that most street criminals are poor and thus emphasize that armed robbery is 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. To reduce armed robbery and other street crime, conflict theory would advocate far-reaching changes in the economic structure of society.
• 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. It would also investigate how victims of armed robbery behave when confronted by a robber. To reduce armed robbery, it would advocate programs that reduce the opportunities for interaction among potential criminal offenders, for example, after-school programs that keep at-risk youths busy in “conventional” activities so that they have less time to spend with youths who might help them get into trouble.
  
• The functionalist approach has many strengths and weaknesses about society’s functions. Strengths include its basic explanation of needs and functions of society, while is weaknesses are that it doesn’t acknowledge exploitation and inequality within society.
• Functionalist theory also supports sporting policies that help and recommend the growth of competitive sport programmes, developing coaching education programmes, in the case of youth sport there is an establishment on criminal bureau checks and qualification checks on coaches before working with younger children.
• People in society who have positions of power tend to favour functionalist theory as it is based on the assumption that society is organised for benefiting the people in that society of equality and that in any dramatic way it should not be changed.
• The weaknesses of functionalist theory is that it tends to lead to exaggerated accounts of positive consequences of sports and sports participation however it mistakenly assumes that there are no conflicts of interests between the different citizen groups in society such as women, people with disabilities, racial groups and people who are economically poor in society yet it doesn't recognise that sport can privilege or disadvantage people more than others. The theory also ignores the powerful historical and economic factors that have influenced social events and social relationships.
• Conflict theory ignores the importance of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, age and many other factors when it comes to explaining how people want to identify themselves, how they relate to other members in the society and how they organise the social world in which they live. Often it's leading people to overlook the possibility that inequalities and power in any society are based on factors other than economic and social class differences.
• The theory assumes that all aspects of social life are determined economically and is shaped by the needs of having capital in society and profit motive.
• Conflict theory is really good at helping us understand the social mechanics behind competing groups, and especially competing groups for which there's a significant power differential.
• The strength of the conflict theory is that it acknowledges the inequalities of society, and
  how these inequalities are reinforced over the generations. It illuminates how the ruling elite manipulate society in order to retain their power, and challenges the functualist view of society working together as one entity.
• Symbolic Interactionsim-A few of the weaknesses could be that symbols may be interpretted wrong, it doesn't develop the idea of socialisation, it cannot adaquetly explain where people get the meanings to these symbols and that it ends up drawing these answers from other sociological theories, and it doesn't explain social order and how it comes about.
• The strengths of it would be that it takes into account individuals free will, the choices they make and how they behave. As it is a Micro theory it is more detailed and beneficial to individuals. It also gives real insight into small scale interactions, which we would not be able to define with a macro theory.