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 way of life companion and the Greek ology which means the battlefield of. So basic both(prenominal)y, Sociology is one of the hearty sciences which aim is to exempt human conduct. Unlike Psychology, Sociology is much more have-to doe with just about social groups behaviour including whole societies and even international and global groups. Of all the social sciences it is Sociology that most closely scrutinizes change and mesh in the wider society.The range of the discipline, and the importance of the arguments that atomic number 18 gainsay within it, still make it the most evoke of the social sciences. However, it was not until the nineteenth century, as a consequence of industrial revolution, that we see a annoyance with society as a direct object glass of study. We could then determine, once and for all, what sort of social c hanges were possible. In its present form, Sociology embraces a range of different views concerning both what a social science should compromise, and what might be the proper subject-matter of Sociology in particular.The latter provides perhaps the surmount way of making sense of the discipline. This essay leave explain, compare and contrast three of the main perspectives in Sociology Functionalism, Marxism and Feminism. The founder of the Functionalism perspective was Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), whose theory was then notwithstanding developed by Robert Merton (1910-2003). The Functionalist looks at society as a body where e actuallything has a function. There are formal organizations as law, education, the family, the media, political system and unaffixed social actions such as suicide, love, and crime. Altogether wait on a function and have consequences on society. aversion is normal and found in every society. It shows us what is unobjectionable or not. Crime produces ritua ls as apostrophize processes and boundaries which show us who is in and who is out. Durkheim believed that a very high rate of crime or deflection shows that something had gone wrong with the society. Suicide is a social phenomenon which can be explained by things such as religion, economic situation, social structure, sexual orientation. Suicide is higher(prenominal) in protestant than catholic countries, more common among single 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 high-and-mighty between cultural 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 cultural goals and not enough on the institutional means is known as anomie. Talcott Parsons (1951) is talking about two basic functions of th e family the reproduction and the stabilisation of bountiful personality.