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Sociological Reflection

Decent Essays

Throughout the course, I have acquired a number of different ideas that will contribute to my knowledge and understanding of sociology. First, I was able to learn about what a social problem was in general. What defines a social problem, how they are constructed, and the four stages of a social problem. It may be obvious to many, but an important note about social problems is that they are socially constructed. This means that people decide if societal condition is a social problem. Natural things like earthquakes and hurricanes are not social problems. I was also able to learn about the three sociological perspectives theories: Functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. These three theories make up a large part of how these social problems are viewed and why they occur. Functionalist compare society to a self-adjusting machine and each part of the machine has a function. When parts of the machine are working accordingly, it contributes to the well-being of the society. The conflict theory states that everyone is competing with one another for a limited amount of resources. There are only so many resources to go around, and the competition for them is so severe that conflict is barley kept in check. Symbolic interactionism is the theory that focuses on how we make sense out of life. It states that we see the world through symbols that we attach meaning to and that we use to communicate with one another. With this better understanding of what a social

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