Compare and contrast any two major theoretical perspectives in Sociology.

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“Compare and contrast any two major theoretical perspectives in Sociology”

In this essay I am going to compare and contrast functionalism and Marxism, showing how each have some similarities but different in each theory.

Sociology is a systematic way of studying the social world. It seeks to discover the causes and effects of intercommunication and interaction that arise in social relations. "The science of society" was developed as a discipline in the 19th Century by Auguste Comte, a French philosopher. For him, common sense and the obvious would not suffice; he wanted to build scientific theories based on critical awareness of society. It is simply the study of human behaviour in terms of group membership and group organisations.  

Sociology focuses on the structural nature of society and is a very broad area that examines how we as people interact with each other and how human behaviour is shaped by social structures such as groups, communities or organisations also by social categories like age, sex, class and race and social institutions based on politics, religion and education.

The Socialization process is also a very important area and shows us how roles and attitudes are passed down from one generation to another, by which children and adults learn from others. We begin learning from others during the early days of life, and most people continue their social learning all throughout life. Other areas focus on inequality, from one point of view “any society which there is inequality is bound to have poverty”. Those at the bottom will always be poor and poverty could only be eliminated by abolishing all inequality. Inequality mostly affects groups in terms of class, gender and ethnicity.

It is possible to link the origins of sociology to a time known as The Enlightenment.  Philosophical movements of the eighteenth century which stressed human reasoning over blind faith or obedience and was thus in contrast with much of the religious and political order of the day, while also encouraging 'scientific' thinking. The Enlightenment is often cited as the start of the modern era, but this view is often dependent upon views on science and religion, it is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy, and reason as primary values of society. This view argues that the establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the market mechanism and capitalism.

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However all of these are viewed from different perspectives such as functionalism, Marxism, interactionism and post modernism. Whilst both have some similarities they are in fact very different as functionalism is based on Consensus when Marxism is based on conflict.


Similarities include

They both offer a macro-explanation of society. So they both look at the overall structure of society, rather than looking at individual views.

Functionalists and Marxist both see that human behaviour is directed by an external force. (Functional Prerequisite for functionalism, and Economic force for Marxist).

Both theories view society as a system ...

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