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

 Distinction from the physical sciences

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

What is Sociology?

 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.

C. Wright Mills
Sociological Imagination

 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.

Peter Berger
He 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.

Sociological Perspective

 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

A. FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE
Manifest & Latent Functions
Dysfunctions

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

C. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST
PERSPECTIVE

Major Theoretical Perspectives

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

I. Physical / Biological Anthropology

A. Archaeology
1. Prehistory
2. Historical Archaeology

II. Cultural Anthropology

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. EVOLUTIONISM
B. DIFFUSIONISM
C. STRUCTURALISM
D. FUNCTIONALISM
E. POSTSTRUCTURALISM
F. TRANSACTIONALISM
G. PROCESSUALISM
H. MARXISM
I. CULTURAL MATERIALISM
J. FEMINISM
K. COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY
L. INTERPRETIVISM
M. POSTMODERNISM

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

A. EVOLUTIONISM (19th century)

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

1. 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.
2. Brother-sister marriage soon developed
3. Group marriage

Evolution of the family (stages)

4. Matriarchal family structure

women held economic and political
power.
5. Patriarchal males took control of
the economic and political
structure.

Evolution of the family (stages)

 Distinct difference between

primitive (communistic) and
civilized society ownership
of property

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.

B. DIFFUSIONISM

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 form 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

 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.

C. STRUCTURALISM

 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.

 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

D. FUNCTIONALISM

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.

Neoevolutionist: Leslie White

societies (sociocultural systems)
evolved in relation to the amount of
energy captured and used by each
member of society .
th
EVOLUTIONISM (20 Century)

 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.

D. POSTSTRUCTURALISM

 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)

 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)

E. TRANSACTIONALISM

 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.

 The study of social structures and

cultures by analyzing and comparing
their processes and methodologies..

F. PROCESSUALISM

 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.

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?

G. MARXISM

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

H. CULTURAL MATERIALISM

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

I. FEMINISM

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.

J. COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY

 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

 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.

K. INTERPRETIVISM

 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

L. POSTMODERNISM