SOC-0001 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Family Therapy, Macrosociology, Microsociology
Document Summary
To understand a particular social event or interaction, sociologists must take a multitude of factors into account. It is impossible to make predictions with absolute assurance. However, the fact that sociologists cannot offer predictions with absolute certainty does not make their work less scientific. Therefore, most sociologists specialize by taking chunks of society and making these their particular concern. Sociologists also tend to specialize in how they approach the study of their chunk. There are three sorts of divisions: topic area or subject matter, theoretical perspectives (paradigms) - how sociologists study, levels of analysis - how sociologists study. There are three major theoretical perspectives: functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionist (the differences between them mostly have to do with the sets of assumptions about the nature of the social world on which each paradigm is based) Symbolic interactionists are sometimes called social constructionists because of their interests in how people construct their own social worlds.