INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

University Degree Social studies

SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIETY

APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES PROGRAMME

LEVEL 5

MODULE: INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

(Component 1 of a 2 Component Assessment - 50% weighting)

SEMESTER ONE ASSESSMENT 2004/05

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a. Explain what may have happened next.

b. Present an analysis of the scene drawing on the following sociological approaches:

Ethnomethodology and

Goffman

A. Explain the main features of a functionalist analysis of the social world

B. How would a functionalist sociologist investigate and explain the social interactions that take place in a classroom

C. Identify and explain the strengths and weaknesses of this functionalist analysis

1a. The man carrying the beer will at first be annoyed at having spilled some of his beer and want to vent his anger verbally at the two women. On second thoughts he may realise he wasn't looking where he was going and apologise to the two women for spilling beer on them and maybe try to help them. If he feels the women were in his way he may scold the women for being careless and clumsy. If the women feel responsible for the accident they will apologise and the man will probably accept their apology and maybe even apologise himself. If the women do not feel responsible they will argue with the man about whose fault it was for the whole incident. Most likely though, if not too much beer was spilled then both party's will probably apologise to be polite and nothing much else will happen.

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b. Ethnomethodology is the study of how people make sense of the world around them. In the example above, if the man had been waiting to get past the women he may be secretly cursing the women for being so selfish for standing in his way so much. Also, if the women had seen him, the women may feel that they are not being obstinate at all and rather that the man is being rude, impatient and inconsiderate to expect them to move just so that he can get past.

Goffman 'explores the details of individual identity, group ...

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(149 words)

Goffman 'explores the details of individual identity, group relations, the impact of environment, and the movement and interactive meaning of information.' (Barnhart, 1994). In the example above the man probably identifies himself as just another person in the pub equal to all others. As he is walking through the pub we can assume that he probably doesn't know a lot of the people around him, or at least he is not interacting with them as he walks past them. The environment may have an affect on his attitude in that he may believe there is a certain pub etiquette in by which you get out of the way of people holding more than one pint of beer, maybe. Goffman's interpretation of what happens next would be different to that of the ethnomethodologist. Goffman's philosophy believes human behaviour is governed by assessing social criteria like the ones listed above before reacting. Ethnomethodology believes that social interactions are chaotic and obey no form of social order, how we react to something depends entirely on how we perceive it at the time.

2a. The functionalist analysis of the social world believes that we see people and interact with them for a reason and not just because we are in proximity or related to them. Functionalists believe that we react to others because of some overriding social dictation or for physical or psychological need.

2b. To study the social interactions in a classroom a functionalist would study the pupils by setting them group or paired tasks. The functionalist would study how the pupils acted and worked with each other and then would try to deduce why the pupils did and said what they did and why.

2c. A strength of functionalist analysis is that it is objective and positivist and therefore if a functionalist theory proves reliable then its application can be very practical. Also they are generally broader as functionalist tend to look at the broader picture rather than being subjective.

A weakness of the functionalist perspective is that it can over-simplify society until humans are treated like mathematical functions or plants or machines. This means that functionalist theories are often very broad and ill-fitting

Bibliography

BARNHART, Adam (1994), Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, [online]. last accessed on Wednesday 12th January 2005 at URL: