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Three Major Sociological Perspectives

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Theories in sociology gives people different perspectives to look at the world as we know it. A perspective is simply a way of looking at the world. A theory is a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.; this is what provides us with a perspective. Sociological theories help us to explain and predict the world in which we live. Sociology includes three major theoretical perspectives: Symbolic Interactionism, Social Conflict, and Structural Functionalism. Each perspective presents a variety of explanations about the world and human behavior.

One of the major theoretical perspectives is symbolic interactionism which is a “framework for building theory that sees society as the product of the everyday interactions of individuals.” This approach is different from the next two. The reason why is because this approach utilize the micro-level orientation which is “close-up focus on social interaction in specific situations”. An example of this would be when you first met your “best friend”, you two were just “associates” at the time and did not really know each other and probably would not do the same things you would do now because there was no “symbol” or significance to your …show more content…

This approach is among the two that is macro-level orientation (a broad focus on social structures that shape society as a whole). This looks at the “big” picture in situations and not the more specific things as would micro-level orientation. Sociologist that use the social-conflict approach look at ongoing conflict of different categories, ex. rich vs. poor, white vs. black, men vs. woman. Karl Marx really fought this one, because he felt the need to fight factory owner feeling as though they had a bunch of inequality going

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