Sociology in a whole is very complex conversation but has been broken down into three different perspectives. The three different perspectives are the functionalist perspective, the conflict perspective, and the symbolic interactionist perspective. To start let’s look at the functionalist perspective. The functionalist perspective is basically how our society is run today. The government provides education for the children which in turn have to pay taxes to keep each state running smoothly. The state and government are dependent on these children growing up and becoming taxpayers just like their parents before them. It creates order, stability, and productivity. If this does not work society must adapt to recapture the order and stability.
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The downfall with this perspective is that it tends to make different groups compete against each other in an ever changing society and conflict theorists believe the elite control the weak and poor. Lastly let’s look at the symbolic interactionist perspective. The symbolic interactionist perspective basically shows how people attach meanings to symbols. Anything can be used as a symbol from music to a wedding where there are multiple different symbols that can be associated with different meanings. The downfall with this perspective is that people tend to miss the big picture of our society and focus on the little things which can really hurt us as a society. For the most part this semester I believe the functionalist perspective has had and will have the biggest effect on us as a society and will continue to have the biggest effect on us for decades to come. Now there are always glimpses of the other two perspectives but for the most part our society functions on functionalist perspective. When I came into this class I had a very basic understanding of what sociology was and an even worse understanding of how to analyze …show more content…
After going through all the quizzes and gen eds my understanding of the sociological process has grown and I now understand what happens in our society and without the three perspectives it’s hard for our society to function
The downfall with this perspective is that it tends to make different groups compete against each other in an ever changing society and conflict theorists believe the elite control the weak and poor. Lastly let’s look at the symbolic interactionist perspective. The symbolic interactionist perspective basically shows how people attach meanings to symbols. Anything can be used as a symbol from music to a wedding where there are multiple different symbols that can be associated with different meanings. The downfall with this perspective is that people tend to miss the big picture of our society and focus on the little things which can really hurt us as a society. For the most part this semester I believe the functionalist perspective has had and will have the biggest effect on us as a society and will continue to have the biggest effect on us for decades to come. Now there are always glimpses of the other two perspectives but for the most part our society functions on functionalist perspective. When I came into this class I had a very basic understanding of what sociology was and an even worse understanding of how to analyze …show more content…
After going through all the quizzes and gen eds my understanding of the sociological process has grown and I now understand what happens in our society and without the three perspectives it’s hard for our society to function