sociology essay structure

sociology essay structure

The Sociological Study of Contemporary Social Issues

1. Introduction to Sociology and Sociological Perspective

Remember, however, that they are not just descriptive. Instead, sociological studies try to explain why circumstances conform to one pattern rather than another in each particular instance and allow us to describe these techniques. Before studying this theory, which provides us with descriptions and explanations of some aspect of society, sociological studies are designed to be careful and systematic. In each study, sociologists develop precise goals, analyze situations, collect the data, and summarize their results. Sociological research often stems from concerns about the social world that may influence or inspire personal change. If inaccurately understood, however, these personal experiences may often cause obsessive slander. In these instances, performing a rigorous, scientific evaluation of a particular situation is doubly important, as rigorous evaluation helps us to shed our own subjective attitudes and desires at the expense of what really is the case.

Sociology offers a perspective, a view of the world. The sociological perspective opens a window onto unfamiliar worlds and offers a fresh look at familiar ones. Sociologists study the broader social context, meaning how people are influenced by their society: its traditions, laws, groups, values, and constraints. It offers a distinctive and enlightening outlook that offers new ways of understanding and interacting with the social world. Moreover, sociology addresses the specific issues of a contemporary society such as rapid social change, globalization, crime, and problems. Sociology also makes a significant effort to transform our understanding of invisible social markers, such as race, gender, or age status through recognizable social institutions such as the family, religion, and education. Moreover, it offers an array of research techniques that can be used to comprehend the social world and change the status quo.

2. Key Theoretical Approaches in Sociology

Attempts to conceptualize society beginning from a holistic sociological perspective, connecting elements constituting the structures, actually soon faced criticism and also declined in the later decades of the last century. Several strong inflows of critical sociology began to emerge, negating the social interconnectedness and the validity of generalizations in sociology lived in the 1960s and 1970s. During that time, one widely accepted theoretical perspective began to be eroded, that of functionalism, which, along with its age-long partner – interactionism, tried to build a vision of society where all of its parts have a function. The result was a marriage between its two parts which at first sight were hedging opposite approaches.

There are several major sociological theories, modern and historical, having comprehensive and different foundational conceptions. Some of them consider society as a well-integrated structure, without which society could not exist in the function and in harmony with itself. Others, on the contrary, propose that society does not exist as a functioning harmony of interacting stable and integrated functional units. These approaches actually propose that society is a very complex system of social interactions, being far from any harmony or stability, which means that the society is constantly changing and evolving. In this perspective, actions of separate social parts produce conflicts and contradictions among interactions, without any cohesion. It would be too simplistic to say that the history of sociology consists of theoretical attempts to conceptualize society and describe its functions.

3. Application of Sociological Concepts to Contemporary Social Issues

The concept of the “underclass” has received sufficient prominence in the scholarly and popular press to debate whether or not it represents the emergence of something new and significant. Has the substantial expansion during the 1980s of those unable to earn more than the poverty line now resulted in a population qualitatively different from the “old” poverty population? Is there an emerging polarization of the “hardcore” or “tainted” unemployed, who are “a distinct poverty group that is not integrated into the working class either functionally or normatively” due to long-term welfare dependency, high jobless rates, crime, and unwed motherhood?

Behavioral accounts of deviance focus on the interaction between particular individuals and their environments. Such accounts acknowledge that rules defining proper behavior, as well as particular behaviors themselves, are social products that emerge through social processes. The proposal to construct social indicators of reviving community rests on several premises about the nature of community and American social structure. Despite popular notions that social structure in America is no longer relevant, many argue that class and other structured inequalities are as powerful today as they were in times past, and in this regard, the resurgence of community represents a backlash against acquired rights by more privileged individuals and groups.

4. Research Methods in Sociology

All sociological research methods involve some manipulations of data. These may be controlled experiments, surveys, observational studies, content analysis, historical or comparative/international research. The key to understanding sociological research is that it should be value and belief-free. Good sociological research uses the scientific method. All sociological research should be value-free because all research is vulnerable to value judgments or beliefs that may influence results. In analysis, sociological researchers have to be especially alert to those areas where they might allow their values to color results. Techniques for establishing research projects have not changed significantly in well over 100 years. They remain the same. Good sociological research demonstrates excellent ethical behavior. Good sociological research uses concepts and categories that are clearly defined so that if another sociologist followed the same methods, they would come up with the same result. This is called reliability. If an experiment or research can be repeated and the results duplicated, it is reliable. Studies should also have been valid, i.e. what was meant to be measured was measured. All experimental methods have problems – what is important is that the results are not unduly influenced by these problems – particularly to reflect prejudices or be collected in a way that produces invalid results. Good research utilizes appropriate methodological and theoretical perspectives. The method used to gather information should be consistent with the topic and from social interactions or natural occurrences. One can hardly gather the natural history of a social movement through a survey or laboratory experiment. Value-free research is that it draws on sociological perspectives that enable the “big question” to be answered economically and efficiently. Data gathering should minimize impact on subjects being studied. Researchers should have a clear notion of how much they can generalize from the results they have obtained. Because today’s sociologists must work within an ethical framework, there are also special concerns about privacy, informed consent, and using people as subjects in experimental situations. Subjects of research must never be totally unaware of what is being done to them. Animosity directed at people in uniform under the guise of research is totally inappropriate. Relatives strongly resist their portrayal in the literature, so one must be particularly careful here. If the behavior of certain segments of the population is to be portrayed, the entire field of study must be considered, i.e. people who are both “good” and “bad.” It might, however, be necessary to be selective in studying certain kinds of behavior. Data and concept definition can also be sources of privacy invasion. A major principle in minimizing privacy infringement is that the welfare of the respondents should always take precedence over the welfare of the researcher. Even in commercial research, when the topic doesn’t necessarily warrant the kind of concern mentioned above, ethical research impels consideration for the effects of research on respondents. The decision on privacy may hinge on how great a threat to an individual’s person or organization’s privacy is posed by responses to the study. Sensitivity to the presence of the researcher, part of the concept of personal intrusion, is inherent in fieldwork. While adherence to these principles is often easier in fieldwork than with surveys, observational research can be more invasive than surveys. This does not give license for sociologists to invade people’s lives. It is simply to note that exploratory research techniques, e.g. fieldwork, call for a different set of ethical considerations than do survey research techniques.

5. Conclusion and Future Directions in Sociological Research

What direction should the retooled and reoriented discipline take? Very early after Auguste Comte offered his “science of society,” a chorus of critics pointed out that a science of society was neither possible nor necessary. As this essay has noted, we have a great volume of work published within a structure intended to be sociological—that is, dealing with social issues; still, we have no sociology. Moreover, we have a failure of a discipline to sense any transition from a time in which its structure and its questions were at certain levels of identification and proposed solution. Such failures indicate that other questions and levels of issue recognition may be necessary. The heavy investment in the production and accumulation of widgets within the sociological enterprise would seem to belie a claim to laissez-faire based on assumptions that no science of society can be produced and that none is needed or wanted.

Are the 20th-century structures used by sociologists, and the questions those structures were supposedly put in place to answer, capable of addressing the 21st-century issues that confront today’s United States? This review essay suggests they are not. It further contends that the very assumptions on which American sociology rests are not guiding researchers toward vital questions that need to be asked, nor are they informing investigations into socially relevant topics in ways that could yield historically significant findings. The discipline of sociology, the author suggests, ought to become a venue for addressing social issues when they need to be adjudicated rather than an enterprise that spends most of its efforts merely dotting i’s and crossing t’s that are externally posed.