SOC 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Ethnography, Ethnocentrism, Moe Williams
Document Summary
Theories concerned with large scale patterns and institutions. Explaining social organization and change through roles of social structures, phenomena, and institutions. If something exists and persists, it must have a function. Manifest and latent functions: functional non the less. Critique: fails to account for unequal distributions of power and inequality in social relationships. Role of family is to socialize individuals into gender roles, teach men work oriented roles, the disciplinarian, socializing men and women in these ways leads to social stability. Social conflict is built into social relations, which can be used to explain social organization and change. Groups (class, race, gender, etc. ) act in their own interests. Critique: does not fully account for forces of adhesion and stability. Theory concerned with small group social relations and interactions. People acquire their sense of who they are only through interaction with others. Questions how we interact and interpret symbols. Critique: de-emphasizes larger structural context in which these micro interactions occur.
