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These ____________________ are the fundamental assumptions that sociologists have about the social world , the ones that guide their thinking and research . Sociology is concerned with both the ____________________ and the ____________________ .
Let's start with ____________________ ____________________ , which originated with a French sociologist named ____________________ ____________________ . He imagined society as a kind of organism , with different parts that all worked together to keep it alive and in good health . Of course , things could go wrong . But this was always imagined by Durkheim as a malfunction , an illness , or a deviation from the normal functioning of things .
So the structural functionalist perspective makes this same basic assumption : society is seen as a complex system whose parts work together to promote stability and social order . And these different " ____________________ " of society are social structures , relatively stable patterns of social behavior .
For example , Durkheim was extremely interested in religion , and also in the division of labor , or how tasks in a society are divided up . And these structures are seen as fulfilling certain social functions . For instance , the family , in most societies , fulfills the function of socializing children - teaching them how to live in that society .

Manifest ____________________ are intended or obvious consequences of a particular structure , while latent functions are unintended or unrecognized . For example , we often think of the purpose of schools as providing children with knowledge . But schools can also help socialize children . They can have - and historically have had - the additional purpose of creating workers who listen to authority and hit deadlines . That's a ____________________ ____________________ .
Now , along with functions , we also have social ____________________ , which is any social pattern that disrupts the smooth operation of society . Technological development is a powerful driver of economic improvement , for example , which is a useful function . But it's also a destabilizing force . New machines can put people out of work . Someday soon , we may see the social dysfunction of thousands of long distance truckers being displaced by self - driving vehicles .
And this brings us to one of the problems with structural functionalism . Since it sees society as fundamentally functional and stable , it can be really bad at dealing with ____________________ . It can be bad at providing good explanations for why change happens , and it can also interpret bad things in society as having positive functions , which should therefore not be changed .
To take an extreme example , a structural functionalist view might imagine that poverty , although harmful to people , is functional for society , because it ensures there are always people who want work . So this view might see any attempts at alleviating poverty as being potentially damaging to society .
Conflict ____________________ imagine society as being composed of different groups that struggle over scarce resources - like power , money , land , food , or status . This view takes change as being fundamental to society .
The first conflict theory in sociology was the theory of class conflict , advanced by ____________________ ____________________ . This theory imagines society as having different classes based on their relationships to the means of production - things like factories and raw materials . Under capitalism , two classes were the capitalists , or ____________________ , who own the means of production , and the workers , or ____________________ , who must sell their labor to survive . Marx saw this conflict between classes as the central conflict in society and the source inequality in power and wealth .
But there are other conflict theories that focus on different kinds of groups . Race - Conflict theory , for example , was first stated sociologically by ____________________ . ____________________ . ____________________ . ____________________ , another founder of sociology . It understands social inequality as the result of conflict between different racial and ethnic groups . Gender - Conflict theory , meanwhile , focuses on the social inequalities between women and men .
Symbolic ____________________ first appeared most clearly in the work of German sociologist ____________________ ____________________ and his focus on ____________________ , or " understanding . " Weber believed that sociology needed to focus on people's individual social situations and the meaning that they attached to them . So , because it's more micro - focused , symbolic interactionism understands society as the product of everyday social interactions .
Specifically , this school of thought is interested in understanding the shared reality that people create through their interactions . It might seem weird to say that reality can be created , but think back to the idea of raw facts versus interpretation . Waving my hand back and forth is a raw fact , but it only means that I'm waving hello to you because we've agreed to give it that meaning .
For symbolic interactionism , then , there is no big - T truth . Instead , it looks at the world we create when we assign meaning to interactions and objects . A handshake is only a greeting because we agree that it is . A dog can be a friend or food , depending on what meaning we've given it .