Social Theory and Social Structure

boom, the gross majority of the people were of the lower classes, and they toiled away in factories and workshops. As the child of parents who worked as servants for wealthy families, Wells observed firsthand the social divide between the rich and the poor. He believed in the idea of social Darwinism, that society was a ‘survival of the fittest’, and he conveyed this belief through his two immensely divergent races of Eloi and Morlocks.“Its…

heroic knights, helpless damsels, and a society built upon a distinctive social class system flourishing with innovation. Needless to say, this prominent conception of the Medieval Ages represents the contrary of relations with the social injustices of modern European society. This Modern European society has found its roots of corruption in the Medieval Ages, which have formed a concrete foundation through the rigid social hierarchy and the negative portrayal of those different from the…

According to McLeod (2007) conformity is defined as a kind of social impact including an adjustment in conviction or conduct keeping in mind the end goal to fit in with the circle. A simple definition of conformity in psychological term can be defined as “yielding to group pressures” (Crutchfield, 1955 as cited…

Sue and Sue’s Counseling the Culturally Diverse Theory and Practice (2008), focuses on social justice counseling and therapy. Sue and Sue state that there are seven fundamental components of social justice counseling. The first principle places emphasis on the locus of the problem existing outside of the client and in the client’s environment and community instead. While other perspectives tend to place the individual at the center of the issue, social justice counseling helps the individual…

religion etc. Nevertheless, the realm of the definition constructed by the other hovers at the interface between national and transnational discourses. Though, the axis of both are based on a stigmatized identity. Goffman defines these identities as social actors perceived as anomies by a given…

I conducted a social class interview with a friend who is a middle aged mother of three. She remembers growing up in what she considered to be a low class family. Both her parents worked in factories and neither one had any education past high school. Their family of five grew up in a small three bedroom townhouse which she reports to be only about 1000 square feet. She recalls having one small bathroom that they all shared with paint chipping off the walls and black spots of mold on the…

For the most part, philosophies of social contracts are developed from a heuristic perspective of human conditions known as the natural state or conditions that are lack social order. From this perspective, philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes attempt to explain the nature of humans and the rationality that was involved in giving up some of their freedom to create social structures. These theories, nonetheless differ widely on the basis of the author account and the natural…

The grid and group theory is used by Mary Douglas as a tool to go beyond the dichotomy. For Douglas, the priority is to use social life as the basis for understanding how people come to know the world they live in. The ‘grid’ axis refers to the individually oriented aspects of social structure, whilst the ‘group’ axis refers to the strength of group ties. The grid axis thus measures how governed and constricted the individual is. Douglas explores past the dichotomy by considering the effect on…

When social workers are confronted between choices of two equally unwelcome alternative conflicts involving a difficult moral decision, it is known as an ethical dilemma (Chenoweth & McAuliffe, 2015, p. 73). Ethical dilemmas arise when the principles of the Code of Ethics and the Code of Conduct’s guidelines and boundaries have been crossed, resulting in dual relationships (Reamer, 2003). But as will be discussed, social workers continue to face barriers that exist within the Human Service…

Functionalism and Education The functionalist perspective is a sociological viewpoint that examines how social order is possible and examines how societies remain relatively stable. It is referred to as a macro-sociological perspective as it is concerned with society as a whole and less concerned with individualism. It is focused on ensuring that the norms and values of a society are passed on from generation to generation. In order to ensure a society’s survival, it “must recruit new members…