theory

• Humanistic Marxism (neo) - Gramsci:

  • reject traditional marxists idea that economic forces determine the workers experience of society.
  • capitalist state can not impose its will on the population - it needed consent of the population to rule - persuade people through ideology.
  • bourgeoisie rule due to education and mass media successfully persuading society of the legitimacy (cultural domination), concessions such as the welfare state.
• Frankfurt school:

  • instrumental reason - marx failed to explore people’s motivations for accepting capitalism - it is wrong to dismiss this as “false consciousness“
  • mass culture - marcuse - stressed the role of mass or popular culture in exploitation. mass media replaced religion as the main means of ruling class power - distract WC from exploitation.
  • oppression of personality - personalities are controlled to benefit capitalism - sex is used to sell wide range of products
• Parsons - society as a system:

  • S - system - society and biological organisms have interdependent parts that function for the greater good of the whole.
  • SN - system needs - organisms have needs that must be met - social institutions have evolved for this.
  • F - functions - have evolved functions that benefit society as a whole
• 4 basic needs that all societies must satisfy

  • Goal attainment (political)
  • Adaption (economic)
  • Integration (harmony)
  • Latency
• Goal attainment (political)


  Setting goals and making decisions about how power and resources are allocated
• Adaption (economic)


  Adequate standard of living for survival of members
• Integration (harmony)


  Each institution develops in response to functions - seek to limit conflict and to bring consensus
• Latency


  Consequences of actions - two types: pattern maintenance = young are socialised into believing sets or values and behaviour that is the same as older generations - Tension management = society can be stressful this tension is managed by social institution
• triple systems theory - walby:

  • draws together broad ideas of liberal, marxist and radical feminism - patriarch intersects with capitalism and racism to produce a triple form of inequality
• six patriarchal social structures - Walby:

  1. economy - lower paid work and discrimination.
  2. family - distribution of housework and childcare is unfairly distributed.
  3. media - represent narrow range of roles.
  4. state - acts in men’s interests - tax and welfare.
  5. personal relationships- double standard with sexual relationship.
  6. violence - sexual and domestic violence controls women.
• essentialism = women have universal experiences of patriarchy - weakness of there forms of feminism.
• postmodernism feminism = rejects essentialism— emphasises differences between groups or women based on variety of characteristics
• Cixous - language is:

  • phallocentric - male dominated and reflecting males view.
• Butler - focuses on how language and performance (body gestures) contribute to social construction or gender and sexuality and the idea that there are essential differences between men and women - society needs to adopt a broader more fluid definition of gender identity
• weber - instrumental and effectual actions - different sets of social meanings that helped to account for social actions.

  1. instrumental actions - underpinned by rational social meaning - calculated the benefits of actions and weighed them up against possible costs.
  2. affectual action -underpinned by emotional meanings such as love and loyalty.
• phenomenology: empthaises all information about the social word is the product of the human mind. Aims to study the subjective experience of the individual - organise categories into phenomena.
• phenomena - held to have characteristics in common according to senses.

  • Schutz - these shared categories are “typifications” - shared categories
• phenomenological view of suicide - Taylor - suicide victims mentally categorise phenomen of suicidal action into two broad categories.

  1. purposive - they are certain they want to die because they interpret their circumstances as negative and suicide is the only way out.
  2. ordeal suicides - psychological uncertainty - attempt by individuals to gauge how important they are to significant others
• purpose of phenomenology:

  • understand the essence of phenomena - characteristics which lewd to something being placed in a particular mental category.
  • research should be faithful to the phenomenon as it is moved - observing and understanding the natural context
• ethnomethodology - Garfinkel - interpretivist approach aiming to analyse how people construct and make sense of social activity by uncovering common sense rules that govern all social interacations - unconscious complex unwritten rules.
• reflexivity - the way that two individuals in a social interaction will mirror each others behaviour and talk in such a way that the interaction makes sense to pair of them
• structuralist marxism - Althusser: - 4 components of capitalist society:

  1. economic system - infrastructure - responsible for the manufacture of goods and is source of inequality-exercises control over all.
  2. political system - state - most important- choose to exercise ideological or repressive power.
  3. idealogical state apparatus - education/ media - disseminate ruling class ideology - reproduce class inequality.
  4. repressive state apparatus- ruling class uses force such as police and military to impose its will
• structuralist marxism:

  • sees itself as scientific - aims to discover laws that underpin capitalism.
  • positivist approach - sees structural forces - those that originate in the ruling class ideology produced by supersstructure as determine individual thoughts or actions.
• evaluation of neo marxism:

  • humanistic marxism - influenced studies of working class lads in education - play role in addressing struggles of oppressed classes.
  • humanistic marxism - overstating free will and choice - no choice but to consent to rule by the bourgeoisie.
  • undermined by globalisation -
• mertons internal critique of functionalism: suggests that parsons failed to realise the distinction between

  • manifest - latent functions
  • latent - unintended consequences- institutions aren't always functional or beneficial - maybe be harmful.
• postmodernist view of globalisation:

  argue globalisation has transformed society.

  • Albrow - defines globalisation as all of those processes by which people have been incorporated into single society.
  • waters -social processes by which constraints of geography on economic political social and cultural arrangements have been reduced.
  • martell - geographical distance and time zones are not longer important - erased distance and
• baudrillard - claims that postmodern societies are hyper real - dominated of simulacra (signs of reality) embodied by theme parks films and tv - more real than reality - the media is responsible for the inablity of people to distinguish between reality and image
• poppers definition of science:

  • he claims the H-D model assumes that if enough evidence is collected, it proves a hypothesis correct.
  • he argues the good science is actually about proving hypothesis wrong.
  • scientists can never be conclusively right, only conclusively wrong - no such thing as truth.
• popper's conjecture and refutation model:

  • the true scientific model - hypothesis is formed based on an observation, then looks for evidence to refute it.
  • good science is about being skeptical.
  • positivists sociology is not scientific because - it used the HD model when analyzing data collected, sociological theories are too theoretical, making predictions about the future is not scientific as it can not be proved wrong.
• pragmatic definition of science - Kuhn:

  • science and should be defined as a paradigm - a body of knowledge that dominates a particular field of science and sets out what scientists should believe and how they should conduct research.
  • science only progresses when their is evidence to contradict the paradigm.
  • eventually the evidence is so contradictory that it causes a scientific revolution.