DOMINANT APPROACHES AND IDEAS

1. STRUCTIONAL FUNCTIONALISM
Developed by Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim.
Individuals are born into society and become the product of all the social influences around them as they socialized by
various institutions such as the family, education, media and religion.
Functionalism sees society as a system ; a set of interrelated parts which together form a whole.
There is a relationship between all these parts and agents of socialization and together they all contribute to the
maintenance of society as a whole.
Social consensus, order and integration are key beliefs of functionalism.

Four Basic Functional Pre-requisites

a. Adaptation
Refers to the relationship between system and its environment.
Food and shelter must be provided to meet the physical needs of members.
b. Goal Attainment
Refers to the need for all societies to set goals towards which social activity is directed.
Procedures for establishing goals and deciding on priorities between goals are institutionalized in the form of political
systems.
c. Integration
Refers primarily to the “adjustment of conflicts”.
It is concerned with the coordination and mutual adjustment of the parts of the social system.
c. Integration
Legal norms define and standardize relations between individuals and between institutions, and so reduce the potential
for conflict.
d. Pattern Maintenance
Refers to the maintenance of the basic pattern of values, institutionalized in the society.
Institutions that perform this function include the family, the educational system and religion.

An approach that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. It looks
for a structure’s social function

2. MARXISM
Proponent: Karl Max
An approach that acknowledges the economic relations between classes determine/structure social and political
relations Mental
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that views class relations and social conflict using a materialist
interpretation of historical development and takes a dialectical view of social transformation
Marxism uses a methodology, now known as historical materialism, to analyze and critique the development of capitalism
and the role of class struggles in systematic economic change.
According to Marxist, class conflict arises in capitalist societies due to contradictions between the material interests of the
oppressed proletariat and the bourgeoisie

PROLETARIAT - A class of wage labourers employed to produce goods and services

BOURGEOISIE- The ruling class that owns the means of production and extract their wealth through appropriation of
the profit produced by the proletariat

3. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
Proponent:
 Symbolic interaction theory analyzes society by addressing the subjective meanings that people impose on objects,
events, and behaviors.
Subjective meanings are given primacy because it is believed that people behave based on what they believe and not
just on what is objectively true
Thus, society is thought to be socially constructed through human interpretation.
People interpret one another’s behavior, and it is these interpretations that form the social bond.
These interpretations are called the “definition of the situation.”

Examples:
 Filipino Teenage Smoking
 “Colorism first, racism later!”
 Concerning gender, we see the problematic way in which meaning is attached to the symbols "man" and "woman"
in the sexist trend of college students routinely rating male professors more highly than female ones. Or, in pay
inequality based on gender.

4. PSYCHOANALYSIS
Proponent : Sigmund Freud
The core idea at the center of psychoanalysis is the belief that all people possess unconscious thoughts, feelings,
desires, and memories.

Some of the Basic Tenets of Psychoanalysis

 The way that people behave is influenced by their unconscious drives
 The development of personality is heavily influenced by the events of early childhood; Freud suggested that
personality was largely set in stone by the age of five.
 Some of the Basic Tenets of Psychoanalysis
 Bringing information from the unconscious into consciousness can lead to catharsis and allow people to deal
with the issue
 Emotional and psychological problems such as depression and anxiety are often rooted in conflicts between
the conscious and unconscious mind
 Some of the Basic Tenets of Psychoanalysis
 Bringing information from the unconscious into consciousness can lead to catharsis and allow people to deal
with the issue
 Emotional and psychological problems such as depression and anxiety are often rooted in conflicts between
the conscious and unconscious mind
 A skilled analyst can help bring certain aspects of the unconscious into awareness by using a variety of
psychoanalytic strategies such as dream analysis and free association

How Is Unconscious Information Brought Into Awareness?

Free Association: Freud also believed that he could bring these unconscious feelings into awareness through the use
of a technique called free association. He asked patients to relax and say whatever came to mind without any
consideration of how trivial, irrelevant, or embarrassing it might be. By tracing these streams of thought, Freud
believed he could uncover the contents of the unconscious mind where repressed desires and painful childhood
memories existed.
Dream Interpretation: Freud also suggested that dreams were another route to the unconscious. While information
from the unconscious mind may sometimes appear in dreams, he believed that it was often in a disguised form. Dream
interpretation often involves examining the literal content of a dream (known as the manifest content) to try to
uncover the hidden, unconscious meaning of the dream (the latent content). Freud also believed that dreams were a
form of wish fulfillment. Because these unconscious urges could not be expressed in waking life, he believed they
find expression in dreams.
 Freud believed that the human mind was composed of three elements:
the id, the ego, and the superego.
 a. The Id
The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth.
The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. 
The id is very important early in life because it ensures that an infant's needs are met.
Although people eventually learn to control the id, this part of personality remains the same infantile, primal force all
throughout life.
It is the development of the ego and the superego that allows people to control the id's basic instincts and act in ways that
are both realistic and socially acceptable.

b. The Ego
The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality.
According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner
acceptable in the real world. Freud compared the id to a horse and the ego to the horse's rider.

3. The Superego
 The superego is the aspect of personality that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we
acquire from both parents and society—our sense of right and wrong.
 The superego provides guidelines for making judgments.
 According to Freud, the superego begins to emerge at around age five.

There are two parts of the superego:

 The ego ideal includes the rules and standards for good behaviors. These behaviors include those which are
approved of by parental and other authority figures. Obeying these rules leads to feelings of pride, value, and
accomplishment.
 The conscience includes information about things that are viewed as bad by parents and society. These
behaviors are often forbidden and lead to bad consequences, punishments, or feelings of guilt and remorse.
 The Interaction of the Id, Ego, and Superego
 These aspects of personality are dynamic and always interacting within a person to influence an individual's
overall personality and behavior.

What Happens If There Is an Imbalance?

According to Freud, the key to a healthy personality is a balance between the id, the ego, and the superego.
An individual with an overly dominant id, for example, might become impulsive, uncontrollable, or even criminal.
This individual acts upon his or her most basic urges with no concern for whether the behavior is appropriate,
acceptable, or legal.
An overly dominant superego, on the other hand, might lead to a personality that is extremely moralistic and possibly
judgmental. This person may be very unable to accept anything or anyone that he or she perceives as "bad" or
"immoral."
An excessively dominant ego can also result in problems. An individual with this type of personality might be so tied
to reality, rules, and appropriateness that they are unable to engage in any type of spontaneous or unexpected
behavior. This individual may seem very concrete and rigid, incapable of accepting change and lacking an internal
sense of right from wrong.