Sociological perspectives
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The functionalist, conflict, and interactionist perspectives can all be used in analyzing social institutions. What are the strengths and weaknesses in each perspective's analysis of those institutions?
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The solution provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the functionalist, conflict, and interactionist perspectives in relation to their utilization in the analysis of social institutions. Resources are listed in the text for further exploration of the topic.
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1.The functionalist, conflict, and interactionist perspectives can all be used in analyzing social institutions. What are the strengths and weaknesses in each perspective's analysis of those institutions?
Typically, contemporary sociologists use the term social institution to refer "to complex social forms that reproduce themselves such as governments, the family, human languages, universities, hospitals, business corporations, and legal systems' One definition is put forth by Jonathan Turner (Turner 1997: 6):
"a complex of positions, roles, norms and values lodged in particular types of social structures and organising relatively stable patterns of human activity with respect to fundamental problems in producing life-sustaining resources, in reproducing individuals, and in sustaining viable societal structures within a given environment." (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-institutions/). Different theories analyze social institutions suing different methods. For example,
(1) Functionalist theory argues that the social institutions fulfill ...
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