Sociology Midterm 101 Sociology Midterm 11 Part 1 Answer 3 of the 4 essay questions below You must answer the starred question 1. Use three approaches to try to understand the following situation....

Sociology homework 11 Part 1
1. Use three approaches to try to understand the following situation. Make sure that you are clear as to how each approach would view the situation differently. How would a structural functionalist view a marriage relationship? How would a conflict theorist view marriage relationship and how would an interactionist view a marriage relationship?
Marriage is defined as a relationship between two individual that is basically a social contract legally recognized in society and traditionally showing union and the sexual relationship. A ceremony to conduct marriage is known to be marriage ceremony where laws and rituals of society are involved. The approaches to understand marriage relationship is different from varying prospective. A structural functionalist views marriage as a force holding people together, they consider macro concept and ignore micro one completely. On the other hand, a conflict theorist’s views marriage in broader way and is based on social acceptance of two individuals together in society. They study conflicts, differences, disputes and the problems among the married couples. Men are considered as superior to women by conflict theorists who create problem as men tries to maintain the power and women tries to seize it. On contrast to these two prospective, am interactionist views marriage at very micro level and considers view of individuals engaged in marriage about their thinking and communication on the basis of society. The actions as well as communication are studied and considered the most by an interactionist.
*2. Discuss the process of socialization from birth to death. Define the elements of socialization. How does our social environment change who we are? Discuss the role of parents, schools, peer groups, counter culture groups, sub-culture groups, race and gender, television, the internet, work and secondary groups in this process. Discuss socialization from a structural functionalist point of view and from a conflict theorist point of view.
Birth being start of life and death being end of life completes the life cycle of an individual. The socialization phase comes in between. Initially at birth, a human is an empty book with no socialization at all. Socialization is basically a process to teach people how to live and behave in society with all norms, ethics and values as a proficient member of society. Socialization possesses many elements mainly including Investigation, socialization, Maintenance, Re-socialization and remembrance. These collectively form the process of socialization as well. Social environment plays vital role in molding humans into social animals as an infant doesn’t have any culture or societal norms but needs to be transformed by several relations into a socially acceptable person. Parents plays the most crucial role as they are first social contact of an infant who puts all the basic ethics and values in a child by positive and negative influence in terms of rewards and punishments respectively. Further, Schools tends to help a child to learn subject and instill notion of competition, teamwork, time, cooperation as well as discipline. Along with parents and teachers, peer groups are the closed people having huge influence on the children as they do share same characteristics and mostly have same interests being on same socialization stage. Also, sub culture and counter culture helps to learn the ethics, morals, values of own culture in details as well as of other cultures. This helps them to be secular. Apart from these, gender and race also influence some inbuilt social behaviors due to shared traits and values just like the peer groups. Television and internet are the mass media modes that have strong influence on children now days and affect the process of thinking and decision making a lot. Now a days, impact of secondary as well as work group is also increasing because of shared interests, goals and objectives that helps them to connect with each other in empathizing way. A structural functionalist view the socialization process as coercive, the one forcing an individual to accept the values and norms of society agreed by societal members due to the social contract in effect which protects individuals from one another. The core of this is to maintain a balance and stability. Contrary to this, a conflict theorists views socialization as a way or status quo perpetuation because people don’t challenge their own social classes thus not upsetting the existing class of culture.
4. Discuss the different types of groups that you participate in and define them as primary groups, secondary groups, and formal groups, peer groups, in groups and out groups. If you do not have examples of all these groups in your own life, take examples from society. Define and discuss bureaucracy and give examples. Discuss in what circumstances, a collection of people become a group. Be sure to explain the characteristics of each type of group.
A society does have several types of groups that do influence the society along with having impact on socialization. Primary groups are the ones where the interactions are carried out frequently and face to face among the members that belongs to same background. Smaller in size, these group members have personal relation that is intense and intimate. For example- Family, close friends...