Three Igms Of The Sociological Paradigm

In the study of sociology there are three major paradigms. These paradigms are functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. Each one views the world in very different ways, but ultimately their goal is the same: to understand why people behave the way they do in society. When faced with major social problems, these three paradigms have very different views of why they exist and how to solve them. To see how the paradigms offer different views, two social problems, in this case racism and religion, were taken and analyzed through the perspective of each paradigm. Functionalists view the world as parts that work together to keep society intact. They believe that everything that occurs has a specific purpose in maintaining balance in society. When it comes to an issues such as racism, functionalists would argue that it exists because racial minorities aren’t properly assimilating into society, and it’s causing imbalance in society. Functionalists might suggest that the only way to truly end racism would be for all minorities to be absorbed into the dominant society in all ways: socially, economically, and culturally. As for the issue of religion, functionalists
Using this approach they would view racism as a problem that exists because of class conflict. The upper class is predominately one race, and therefore they use racism as a mechanism to keep the power within their class. Conflict theorists would probably agree that the only way to end racism would be to end class conflict, therefore creating complete equality. When faced with the matter of religion, conflict theorists might say that religion is a problem because it’s a concept used by a more powerful class to manipulate those less powerful in order to keep their power. Conflict theorists believe the only way for all conflicts to be solved is by eliminating class