SOC224 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Talcott Parsons, Auguste Comte, Sociological Theory
27 Sep 2017
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Review: subjective definitions of deviance claim that there is no single characteristic that differentiates deviance from normality . Instead, the notion of deviance is socially defined on the basis of dominant moral codes: dominant moral codes emerge from processes of social construction. There are different approaches to the notion of social construction, but constructionists are essentially radical skeptics and relativists. Interpretive/critical=subjective: love that sociology doesn"t have a scientific basis, like to interpret, not a guess, a well substantiated explanation of some type of phenomena. Structural functionalism: we can objectively measure human beings, functionalism is a classic positivist theories, macro level analysis. Interested in the large scale social processes, things like social stability: looks at society as a complex machine or coordinate. Idea is that society is constituted by many parts; if you take a part it is relative to removing an organ in a body: argumentative that they are conservative of the status quo.
