Sociological theory
[2] These theories range in scope, from concise, yet thorough, descriptions of a single social process to broad, inconclusive paradigms for analysis and interpretation.
[4] Prominent sociological theorists include Talcott Parsons, Robert K. Merton, Randall Collins, James Samuel Coleman, Peter Blau, Niklas Luhmann, Immanuel Wallerstein, George Homans, Theda Skocpol, Gerhard Lenski, Pierre van den Berghe and Jonathan H.
As such, social theory is generally closer to continental philosophy insofar as it is less concerned with objectivity and derivation of testable propositions, thus more likely to propose normative judgments.
"[8] Prominent social theorists include:[5] Jürgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, Dorothy Smith, Roberto Unger, Alfred Schütz, Jeffrey Alexander, and Jacques Derrida.
There are also prominent scholars who could be seen as being in-between social and sociological theories, such as:[5] Harold Garfinkel, Herbert Blumer, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu, and Erving Goffman.
Through a well-cited survey of sociological theory, Randall Collins (1994) retroactively labels various theorists as belonging to four theoretical traditions:[9] functionalism, conflict, symbolic interactionism, and utilitarianism.
Likewise, utilitarianism (aka "rational choice" or "social exchange"), although often associated with economics, is an established tradition within sociological theory.
[13] This tradition often aligns with classical functionalism and is associated with several founders of sociology, primarily Herbert Spencer, Lester F. Ward and William Graham Sumner.
A common parallel used by functionalists, known as the organic or biological analogy[14] (popularized by Herbert Spencer), is to regard norms and institutions as 'organs' that work toward the proper-functioning of the entire 'body' of society.
[15] The perspective was implicit in the original sociological positivism of Auguste Comte, but was theorized in full by Durkheim, again with respect to observable, structural laws.
Functionalism also has an anthropological basis in the work of theorists such as Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski, and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, the latter of whom, through explicit usage, introduced the "structural" prefix to the concept.
[20] However, theorists believe that capitalism turned most other people into industrial workers, or, in Marx's terms, proletarians: individuals who, because of the structure of capitalist economies, must sell their labor for wages.
It is through this notion that conflict theories challenge historically dominant ideologies, drawing attention to such power differentials as class, gender and race.
In this sense, individuals interact within countless situations through symbolic interpretations of their given reality, whereby society is a complex, ever-changing mosaic of subjective meanings.
[1]: 19 Some critics of this approach argue that it focuses only on ostensible characteristics of social situations while disregarding the effects of culture, race, or gender (i.e. social-historical structures).
As argued by Josh Whitford (2002), rational actors can be characterized as possessing four basic elements:[22] Exchange theory is specifically attributed to the work of George C. Homans, Peter Blau, and Richard Emerson.
The utilitarian perspective in sociology was, most notably, revitalized in the late 20th century by the work of former ASA president James Samuel Coleman.
Synchrony and diachrony (or statics and dynamics) within social theory are terms that refer to a distinction emerging out of the work of Levi-Strauss who inherited it from the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure.
[31] Strain theory is a theoretical perspective that identifies anomie (i.e. normlessness) as the result of a society that provides little moral guidance to individuals.
[32][33] In this sense, broadly speaking, during times of great upheaval, increasing numbers of individuals "cease to accept the moral legitimacy of society," as noted by sociologist Anthony R. Mawson (1970).
"[35] Developed by Erving Goffman,[i] dramaturgy (aka dramaturgical perspective) is a particularized paradigm of symbolic interactionism that interprets life to be a performance (i.e. a drama).
The benefits of this approach not only include increased clarity, but also, through mathematics, the ability to derive theoretical implications that could not be arrived at intuitively.
As such, models typically used in mathematical sociology allow sociologists to understand how predictable local interactions are often able to elicit global patterns of social structure.
Postmodernism, adhering to anti-theory and anti-method, believes that, due to human subjectivity, discovering objective truth is impossible or unachievable.
[1]: 53 Questions that are asked by this approach include: "How do we understand societies or interpersonal relations, while rejecting the theories and methods of the social sciences, and our assumptions about human nature?"
[ii] The general theory of crime refers to the proposition by Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi (1990) that the main factor in criminal behaviour is the individual's lack of self-control.
[1]: 198–9 A psychopath can be defined as a serious criminal who does not feel shame or guilt from their actions, as they have little (if any) sympathy for the people they harm, nor do they fear punishment.
[55] The white-collar crime involves people making use of their occupational position to enrich themselves and others illegally, which often causes public harm.
