Week One Sociology

Sociology Week One

This first week in sociology has brought up broad sociological terms, such as perspective. We have also been talking about global issues as well as personal issues. The butterfly effect also came up in discussion in a smaller proportion. The Allegory of the Cave displayed the wide variety of viewpoints our classroom holds, concluding in the tying together of sociological perspective and global issues.
The structural-functional approach deals with how a society goes about their life including the rules, traditions, and expectations given. Education systems, government, religious programs and family structure is dependent on how society normalizes certain traditions. The social-conflict approach deals with how people interact in society and problems that arise due to different points of view and ways of thinking. For example, race, religion, gender or social class tend to cause tension within a society. Another example of social conflict is education systems tailored to the higher class, with the best schools and colleges being extremely expensive.

The symbolic-interaction approach is both individual interactions and society as a whole interaction. This approach is about how people chose for themselves the interactions they will face with other people and or how society affects their thinking.
The Allegory of the Cave story consisted of multiple prisoners kept in darkness and only shown what a couple people presented. One day one of the prisoners was allowed to walk out of the cave to see the world, and discover that everything he had thought about the world was wrong. Upon return to the cave to tell of his discoveries he was killed. This one prisoner’s perspective on the world was only what was given to him, relating to our society and government shaping the minds of its people to support what they want best. When the prisoner was released his entire perspective changed, this happens in our world

when people choose to go to school, to educate themselves and become independent minds. When this now changed man returned to the cave to tell of his new found perspective, the prisoners were then frightened by the unknown and killed the man. In our society change is a huge, scary thing for most people so we tend to go about our lives being bossed around by whatever government we have instead of speaking out.