Introduction to Sociology

05/12/2011 Oana Cristina Merca Introduction to Sociological Themes and Perspectives The word sociology has its roots from the Latin socius which means participator and the Greek ology which means the study of. So basically, Sociology is one of the social sciences which remove is to explain human behaviour. Unlike Psychology, Sociology is much more concerned close to social groups behaviour including whole societies and even supranational and global groups. Of all the social sciences it is Sociology that most closely scrutinizes change and conflict in the wider friendship.The range of the discipline, and the importance of the arguments that are disputed within it, chill out make it the most exciting of the social sciences. However, it was not until the nineteenth century, as a consequence of industrial revolution, that we see a concern with society as a direct object of study. We could then determine, once and for all, what affiliate of social changes were possible. In its pr esent form, Sociology embraces a range of different views concerning two what a social science should compromise, and what might be the proper subject-matter of Sociology in particular.The latter provides perhaps the best way of making sense of the discipline. This raise will explain, compare and contrast three of the main perspectives in Sociology Functionalism, Marxism and Feminism. The break down of the Functionalism perspective was Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), whose theory was then further developed by Robert Merton (1910-2003). The Functionalist looks at society as a body where everything has a function. There are formal organizations as law, education, the family, the media, political system and informal social actions such as felo-de-se, love, and crime. Altogether serve a function and have consequences on society.Crime is normal and found in every society. It shows us what is congenial or not. Crime produces rituals as court processes and boundaries which show us who is in and who is out. Durkheim believed that a very high rate of crime or divagation shows that something had gone wrong with the society. self-annihilation is a social phenomenon which can be explained by things such as religion, economic situation, social structure, sexual orientation. Suicide is higher in protestant than catholic countries, more common among unmarried people than married, more common in military than among civilians, rates of suicide drop in time of ar and they are higher in times of economic crisis. The anomie theory of Robert Merton (1957) is distinguished between ethnic goals (material possessions, status symbols) and institutional means (opportunities to achieve these goals in a socially acceptable way). The situation where is too much emphasis on the heathen goals and not enough on the institutional means is known as anomie. Talcott Parsons (1951) is talking about two basic functions of the family the reproduction and the stabilisation of fully grown per sonality.