Theoretical Perspectives:

SOCIOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY

SOCIOLOGY
While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You
can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average
number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician".
- Winwood Reade

What is Sociology?

Distinction from the physical sciences

o Historical context versus Speculative
Distinction from other social Sciences:
o Anthropology study of culture
o Political Science study of power
o Economics study of resources
o History study of past events
o Psychology study of mental processes

C. Wright Mills Sociological Imagination

The application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions.
Someone using the sociological imagination "thinks himself away" from the familiar routines of
daily life.
The vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.
The understanding that social outcomes are shaped by social context, actors, and social actions
The things we do are shaped by: the situation we are in, the values we have, and the
way people around us act.
The power of the sociological imagination to connect "personal troubles to public issues.

Sociological Perspective
Peter Berger

Stated that the sociological perspective was seeing "the general in the particular.
This help sociologists realize general patterns in the behavior of specific individuals.
One can think of sociological perspective as our own personal choice and how the society plays a
role in shaping our individual lives.

Emile Durkheim - behavior in a social context

The function of religion (solidarity)
Consequences of work in an industrial society (anomie then suicide)
Max Weber the subjective meanings people attach to their actions. Value-free sociology
Verstehen understanding
Ideal type
Karl Marx the Communist Manifesto

Major Theoretical Perspectives

A. FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE

Manifest & Latent Functions

Dysfunctions

B. CONFLICT PERSPECTIVE

Marxist
Feminist
On Race W.E.B. Du Bois

C. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE

ANTHROPOLOGY
I. Physical / Biological Anthropology
A. Human Paleontology/Paleoanthropology
- Emergence and evolution of humans
- makes use of fossil records, geological information, primatology
B. Human Variation
- Human Genetics, Population Biology, Epidemiology

II. Cultural Anthropology

A. Archaeology
1. Prehistory
2. Historical Archaeology

B. Anthropological Linguistics
1. Historical Linguistics how languages are related and how they change over time
2. Descriptive/Structural Linguistics How contemporary languages differ
3. Sociolinguistics How languages are used in a social context

C. Ethnology (Cultural Anthropology)

Studies patterns of thought & behavior. eg. customs, politics, kinship org., religion, art, etc.
same objectives as an archaeologist but data is gathered through interaction and observation.
1. Ethnography Participant/Observation
2. Ethnohistorian studies written documents(reports of others) about a certain culture.
3. Cross-Cultural Researcher Explains why societies differ in cultural traits.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
I.
J.
K.
L.
M.

EVOLUTIONISM
DIFFUSIONISM
STRUCTURALISM
FUNCTIONALISM
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
TRANSACTIONALISM
PROCESSUALISM
MARXISM
CULTURAL MATERIALISM
FEMINISM
COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY
INTERPRETIVISM
POSTMODERNISM

A. EVOLUTIONISM (19th century)

Why are societies at similar or different levels of evolution and development?
Unilineal Evolution: Edward B. Tylor
Societies evolve in a single direction toward complexity, progress, and civilization
Human beings are innately rational they are continuously improving their societies.
Categorized based on technology, family, economy, political organization, art, religion
& Philosophy
Unilineal Evolution: Lewis Henry Morgan
Native American Indian Societies
Gathered information on customs & language of the Iroquios-speaking peoples of
upstate New York
Kinship terms different from Europeans and similar with other native American tribes

Evolution of the family (stages)

Humans originally lived in primitive hordes in which sexual behavior was not
regulated and individuals didnt know who their fathers were. Hawaiians use one
general term to classify their father and all other male relatives.
Brother-sister marriage soon developed
Group marriage

Evolution of the family (stages)

Matriarchal family structure women held economic and political power.

Patriarchal males took control of the economic and political structure.
Distinct difference between primitive (communistic) and civilized society ownership of property

B. DIFFUSIONISM
Why are societies at similar or different levels of evolution and development?
Societal change occurs when societies borrow cultural traits from one another: cultural knowledge,
technology, economic ideas, religious views, and art.

British Diffusionism: G. Elliot Smith & William J. Perry

Egyptian culture
All aspects of civilization originated in Egypt and diffused to other cultural areas
How about other cultures that had no borrowings from Egypt? Ethnocentric answer some cultures
simply became degenerate and had forgotten the original ideas borrowed from Egypt.

German Diffusionism: Father Wilhelm Schmidt

Kulturkreise (culture circles)
Several early centers of civilization had existed and that from these early centers cultural traits
diffused outward in circles to other regions

Criticisms:

Underestimated human innovativeness

Assumption that cultural traits in a given area will be adapted by other cultures

C. STRUCTURALISM

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS
Binary oppositions constitute the self-sufficient structure. Food: cooked or raw, Nature or culture.
It argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structuremodeled on language
(i.e., structural linguistics)that differs from concrete reality and from abstract ideas.
people think about the world in terms of binary oppositessuch as high and low, inside and
outside, person and animal, life and deathand that every culture can be understood in terms of
these opposites.
"From the very start, the process of visual perception makes use of binary oppositions
In South America he showed that there are "dual organizations" throughout Amazon rainforest
cultures, and that these "dual organizations" represent opposites and their synthesis.
For instance, tribes of the Amazon were found to divide their villages into two rival halves;
however, the members of opposite halves married each other. This illustrated two opposites in
conflict and then resolved.

D. FUNCTIONALISM

Is the view that society consist of institutions that serve vital purpose for people.
Relationship of institutions and how these institutions function to serve society or the individual
Division of 2 groups: agency vs structure

Structural-Functionalism: Radcliffe Brown

Africa & Andaman Islands
Institutions function to perpetuate the survival of society
Societys economic, political, religious, and social institutions serve to integrate society
as a whole.
Exogamous marriages- norms, obligations, and duties serve to promote stability and
order
Psychological Functionalism: Malinowski
How society functions to serve the individuals interests
Trobriand Islands (Papua New Guinea) how cultural norms are used to satisfy individual needs
Magic. Fishing in enclosed lagoons and safe areas, fishermen relied on their skills. In the open sea
where it is more dangerous and unpredictable, they relied more on magical beliefs.

Includes a system of beliefs concerning death, the afterlife, sickness, and health.

EVOLUTIONISM (20th Century)

Neoevolutionist: Leslie White
societies (sociocultural systems) evolved in relation to the amount of energy captured and used by
each member of society .

E. POSTSTRUCTURALISM
Offers a way of studying how knowledge is produced.

It argues that because history and culture condition the study of underlying structures, both are
subject to biases & misinterpretations.
A Poststructuralist approach argues that to understand an object, it is necessary to study both the
object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object.
The author's intended meaning is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. The author's
identity as a stable "self" with a single, discernible "intent" is a fictional construct.
Post-structuralism rejects the idea of a literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning, or
one singular existence. Instead, every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose,
meaning, and existence for a given text.
This position is generalizable to any situation where a subject perceives a sign. Meaning is
constructed by an individual from a signifier.
A Poststructuralist critic must be able to use a variety of perspectives to create a multifaceted
interpretation of a text, even if these interpretations conflict with one another. It is particularly
important to analyze how the meanings of a text shift in relation to certain variables, usually
involving the identity of the reader (social facts)

F. TRANSACTIONALISM

Theory first advanced by Frederick Barth in 1959 to consider social processes and interactions.
Individuals are viewed as self-interested actors wishing to get the best value in
exchange relationships. Individuals are thereby characterized as autonomous &
independent (essentially non-social beings)
Barth was critical of earlier functionalist models that portrayed an overly cohesive and collective
picture of society without paying due attention to the roles, relationships, decisions and innovations
of the individual.
Swat Pathan people in Pakistan and the organization among Norwegian fishermen showed that
social forms like kinship groups, economic institutions and political alliances are generated by the
actions and strategies of the individuals deployed against a context of social constraints.
By observing how people interact with each other, an insight could be gained into the nature of the
competition, values and principles that govern individuals' choices, and also the way resources are
allocated in society.

G. PROCESSUALISM

The study of social structures and cultures by analyzing and comparing their processes and
methodologies.
Investigations of the way humans do things, and the way things decay. Experimental archaeology,
which focuses on studying the process of how an artifact or structure was made, is a processual

study, as is site formation process, which studies the natural and cultural processes that resulted in
the way an archaeological site looks today.

H. MARXISM
Historical Dialectical Materialism
The base of history is the mode of production:
1. Forces of Production Means
2. The intercourse/relations of men who owns what? Who has power over whom?

I. CULTURAL MATERIALISM

MARVIN HARRIS
Focuses on technology, environment, and economic factors as key determinants in sociocultural
evolution.
Infrastructure, structure, superstructure

J. FEMINISM

Feminist approaches in anthropology explore the gendered nature of culture and society, along with
related issues of power.

K. COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY

Seeks to explain patterns of shared knowledge, cultural innovation, and transmission over time and
space.
Concerned with what people from different groups know and how that implicit knowledge, in the
sense of what they think subconsciously, changes the way people perceive and relate to the world
around them.
Cognitive anthropology addresses the ways in which people conceive of and think about events and
objects in the world. It provides a link between human thought processes and the physical and
ideational aspects of culture

L. INTERPRETIVISM

Interpretive approaches in cultural anthropology treat culture as "texts" to be understood through

interpretation of their "deep structure.
Culture is treated as "webs of meaning" to be understood through critical analysis.
A key theorist who represents this approach is Clifford Geertz.

M. POSTMODERNISM

Is there such a thing as an objective observer?

Ethnographers should engage in dialogue with their subjects
Ethnography should consist of many voices from the native population, not just of the observer and
key informants