Why sociological theory

The sociological imagination allows us to stand apart mentally from our limited experience and see the link between private concerns and social issues. It permits us to trace the connection between the patterns and events of our own and the patterns and events of our society. Breadcrumb Home Sociology Sociological Perspective. The challenge, then, is for theory to demonstrate its relevance to historical and contemporary concerns. This is, in fact, easily done in a number of areas.

One is theories of cosmopolitanism, bringing together questions of human rights and migration, transnational integration processes in Europe and elsewhere and, more broadly, the relation between the social and the political.

Another, present since the beginnings of sociology though with false starts in nineteenth century evolutionary theory and twentieth century sociobiology, is the interface between the social and the rest of the natural world physical, biological, neural, and so on in what is increasingly being called the anthropocene age. I hope that this section will provide a useful site for work combining sociological theory with substantive analysis of issues of current concern.

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Bhaskar, R. A Realist Theory of Science. Leeds: Leeds Books. Google Scholar. Robert K. Merton developed structural strain theory as an extension of the functionalist perspective on deviance.

This theory traces the origins of deviance to the tensions that are caused by the gap between cultural goals and the means people have available to achieve those goals. Economics plays a huge role in human behavior.

That is, people are often motivated by money and the possibility of making a profit, calculating the likely costs and benefits of any action before deciding what to do. This way of thinking is called rational choice theory. Game theory is a theory of social interaction, which attempts to explain the interaction people have with one another. As the name of the theory suggests, game theory sees human interaction as just that: a game. Sociobiology is the application of evolutionary theory to social behavior.

It is based on the premise that some behaviors are at least partly inherited and can be affected by natural selection. Social exchange theory interprets society as a series of interactions that are based on estimates of rewards and punishments.

According to this view, our interactions are determined by the rewards or punishments that we receive from others, and all human relationships are formed by the use of subjective cost-benefit analysis.

Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, however, it has applications in several disciplines, including sociology and other social sciences. In the social sciences, chaos theory is the study of complex nonlinear systems of social complexity. It is not about disorder, but rather is about very complicated systems of order. Social phenomenology is an approach within the field of sociology that aims to reveal what role human awareness plays in the production of social action, social situations and social worlds.

In sociology, a few theories provide broad perspectives that help explain many different aspects of social life, and these are called paradigms. Paradigms are philosophical and 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 thinking, because they provide useful explanations: structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Watch the following video for an overview of each of the sociological paradigms. First, the video introduces major sociological theories in general terms, then gives an overview of structural-functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Structural functionalism views society as an organism in which the various parts, or social structures, fulfill certain functions to meet the needs of the society.

Conflict theory imagines society as a struggle for scarce resources and focuses on the conflicts created by competition and power differences. Conflict theory includes sub-categories such as class conflict theory, race conflict theory, and gender conflict theory.