Sociology studies human societies, with some focusing on a macro level and others analyzing universal principles and structures. Positivism emerged in the late 19th century, followed by Marxism and antipositivism. Functionalism views society as organic, while conflict theories see inequalities and dysfunctions as creating distorted symptoms. Symbolic interactionism takes a subjective approach. Middle-range theories attempt to reconcile competing approaches to sociology.
Sociology is the very broad academic field that studies human societies. Given the scale and complexity of the civilized world, many sociologists focus their subject on a more manageable macro level. Some sociologists, however, engage in a critical analysis of the theoretically universal principles and structures that define the organization and behavior of all human societies. Although generalized, these theories of sociology can be grouped into two categorical questions. One addresses the questions that sociology should be asking, while the other type of theory is about methodology, or how sociology approaches answering its questions.
Since the dawn of civilization, social thinkers have extensively attempted to understand elements of society, such as the family, commerce, and government. In the late 19th century, at the height of the Second Industrial Revolution, during an era of rapid social change, sociology emerged as a science. A French philosopher proposed positivism as one of the earliest and most influential theories in sociology. A scientific method – the cycle of conjecture and observation – could produce understanding, remedy and a utopian “positivist” stage of society.
Contrary theories quickly followed, including Marxism which held that structural things like social class and the division of labor have a deterministic effect on society. More generally, and academically, antipositivism has been offered as an alternative methodological framework by a group of German sociologists. They insisted that no matter how vigorous the critical analysis, society is too complex to take a set of empirical data and jump to a social cause conclusion. Antipositivism essentially separated the two competing approaches to sociology, allowing for objective research while also encouraging subjective theoretical discussion.
From the first university departments of sociology in Europe, positivism was refined and molded into functionalism. Its basic premise is that society is organic and adheres to natural laws. Taking a cue from biology, measurable facts about society derive directly from its institutional or structural parts and influence the “health” of the whole system. The conflict theories of sociology invert this equation, often explaining that easily apparent inequalities and dysfunctions of society create distorted symptoms that should not be measured as “facts.”
Meanwhile, theories of sociology developed along different and independent paradigms in colleges and universities. Symbolic interactionism has taken a subjective and qualitative approach to understanding an individual’s interactions in the context of his symbolic interpretation of society. With the advance of electronic technology and the advent of the information revolution, the rapid change of society has diversified the academic theories of sociology. While there are many newly named frameworks and perspectives, most of them are collectively referred to as middle-range theories. They generally share two things in common: computational statistics and an attempt to reconcile the two historically competing categorical approaches to sociology.
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