2.6: The Takeaway

Theory is an important component of any discipline, and certainly an important one in sociology. Without theory, sociology might look and sound a bit like journalism where stories are captured and broadcast but not necessarily presented through conceptual frameworks that organize sociological perspectives. The perspectives herein—Functionalism, Conflict, and Interactionism—provide these conceptual frameworks and afford sociologists the tools through which arguments about social phenomena can be crafted. While Functionalism place emphasis on how institutions work together to sustain social systems and is presented through an optimistic view of the social world, Conflict, through a rather pessimistic view, focuses on how institutions—namely the economic system of Capitalism—generates vast inequality and inequities. Relatively different from both Functionalism and Conflict, Interactionism, while maintaining a fairly neutral view of the social world, takes up the study of social interaction in a much more close and intimate fashion, highlighting the symbols, roles, expectations that create and recreate social realties.

The takeaway for this chapter is that social theory is an essential part of how sociology is both distinguished from other disciplines, as well as how it creates sociological ideas and research. To think sociologically is to use theory to guide one’s thought process; however, to do sociology is to use methods that gather evidence about sociological phenomena—the focus of which will be the topic of the next chapter.