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Sociology articles from across Nature Portfolio

research paper sociology

Minority-driven residential desegregation has outweighed majority-driven resegregation in the USA since 1990

This study unveils the driving forces behind changes in racial segregation in the USA from 1990–2020 by linking it to population shifts in specific racial groups. We developed a decomposition method to illuminate the specific contributions of residential mobility and other demographic dynamics of each population group to urban segregation.

research paper sociology

Gender bias is more exaggerated in online images than in text

A big-data analysis shows that men are starkly over-represented in online images, and that gender bias is stronger in images compared with text. Such images could influence enduring gender biases in our offline lives.

  • Bas Hofstra
  • Anne Maaike Mulders

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research paper sociology

The mothers: contesting health-illness status and cultural authority in the age of AIDS

  • João Paulo Gugliotti
  • Richard Miskolci

The political and social contradictions of the human and online environment in the context of artificial intelligence applications

  • Roman Rakowski
  • Petra Kowaliková

research paper sociology

Spatial and temporal changes in population distribution and population projection at county level in China

Risk assessments of virtual interactions on saudi families.

  • Hanaa Faize A. Moubarak
  • Asyraf Afthanorhan

research paper sociology

Consumption responses to an unconditional child allowance in the United States

In 2021, the United States provided an unconditional child allowance to most families with children. Using anonymized mobile-location and debit/credit card data, the authors find that the benefits increased spending at childcare centres, health- and personal-care establishments, and grocery stores.

  • Zachary Parolin
  • Giulia Giupponi
  • Sophie Collyer

research paper sociology

Human languages with greater information density have higher communication speed but lower conversation breadth

The authors document wide variation in information density and speed of communication across the world’s languages. They find that higher-density languages communicate information more quickly but with more sustained focus than lower-density languages.

  • Pedro Aceves
  • James A. Evans

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research paper sociology

Scientists under arrest: the researchers taking action over climate change

Fed up with a lack of political progress in solving the climate problem, some researchers are becoming activists to slow global warming.

  • Daniel Grossman

research paper sociology

Information is a determinant of health

  • Garth Graham
  • Karen DeSalvo

research paper sociology

Deepfakes, trolls and cybertroopers: how social media could sway elections in 2024

Faced with data restrictions and harassment, researchers are mapping out fresh approaches to studying social media’s political reach.

  • Heidi Ledford

research paper sociology

Beyond fertility figures: towards reproductive rights and choices

It is widely documented that population growth is closely related to overall economic growth. Given the close link between the two, the global decline in fertility rates has led to an increasing number of governments implementing pro-natal policies aimed at encouraging childbearing. However, this article seeks to emphasise the significance of policy solutions that prioritise the needs, choices, and decisions of individuals. Rather than compelling people to have (or not have) children, it is imperative that the reproductive autonomy of individuals be respected and supported. In a global environment that demands continuous population growth, the spotlight should always remain on the people behind the fertility numbers. A shift in the pro-natal policy paradigm towards a rights-based approach is necessary to prioritise individuals’ family aspirations, break down institutional barriers, and promote equity in family formation.

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research paper sociology

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politics

High Impact Sociology Research

Oxford University Press publishes a portfolio of leading Sociology journals. To keep up to date with the latest research your peers are reading and citing, browse our selection of high impact articles on a diverse breadth of topics below.  

All articles are freely available to read, download, and enjoy until May 2023.

  • Community Development Journal
  • European Sociological Review 
  • International Political Sociology 
  • Journal of Human Rights Practice 
  • Journal of Refugee Studies
  • Refugee Survey Quarterly 
  • Social Forces 
  • Social Politics 
  • Social Problems
  • Social Science Japan Journal 
  • Sociology of Religion 
  • The British Journal of Criminology 

Community Development Journal  

Covid-19 and community development Sue Kenny Community Development Journal , Volume 55, Issue 4, October 2020, Pages 699–703, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsaa020

Financialization, real estate and COVID-19 in the UK Grace Blakeley Community Development Journal , Volume 56, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 79–99, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsaa056

Financial subordination and uneven financialization in 21st century Africa Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Kai Koddenbrock, Ndongo Samba Sylla  Community Development Journal , Volume 56, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 119–140, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsaa047

CDJ Editorial—What is this Covid-19 crisis? Rosie R. Meade  Community Development Journal , Volume 55, Issue 3, July 2020, Pages 379–381, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsaa013

There’s a time and a place: temporal aspects of place-based stigma Alice Butler-Warke Community Development Journal , Volume 56, Issue 2, April 2021, Pages 203–219, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsaa040

European Sociological Review  

Cohort Changes in the Level and Dispersion of Gender Ideology after German Reunification: Results from a Natural Experiment Christian Ebner, Michael Kühhirt, Philipp Lersch European Sociological Review , Volume 36, Issue 5, October 2020, Pages 814–828, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaa015

‘Cologne Changed Everything’—The Effect of Threatening Events on the Frequency and Distribution of Intergroup Conflict in Germany Arun Frey European Sociological Review , Volume 36, Issue 5, October 2020, Pages 684–699, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaa007

The Accumulation of Wealth in Marriage: Over-Time Change and Within-Couple Inequalities Nicole Kapelle, Philipp M. Lersch European Sociological Review , Volume 36, Issue 4, August 2020, Pages 580–593, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaa006

Three Worlds of Vocational Education: Specialized and General Craftsmanship in France, Germany, and The Netherlands Jesper Rözer, Herman G. van de Werfhorst European Sociological Review , Volume 36, Issue 5, October 2020, Pages 780–797, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaa025

Intergenerational Class Mobility among Men and Women in Europe: Gender Differences or Gender Similarities? Erzsébet Bukodi, Marii Paskov European Sociological Review , Volume 36, Issue 4, August 2020, Pages 495–512, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaa001

International Political Sociology  

Confronting the International Political Sociology of the New Right Rita Abrahamsen, Jean-François Drolet, Alexandra Gheciu, Karin Narita, Srdjan Vucetic, Michael Williams International Political Sociology , Volume 14, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 94–107, https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaa001

Collective Discussion: Toward Critical Approaches to Intelligence as a Social Phenomenon Hager Ben Jaffel, Alvina Hoffmann, Oliver Kearns, Sebastian Larsson International Political Sociology , Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 323–344, https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaa015

The Cruel Optimism of Militarism: Feminist Curiosity, Affect, and Global Security Amanda Chisholm, Hanna Ketola International Political Sociology, Volume 14 , Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 270–285, https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaa005

Feminist Commodity Activism: The New Political Economy of Feminist Protest Jemima Repo International Political Sociology , Volume 14, Issue 2, June 2020, Pages 215–232, https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olz033

Affect and the Response to Terror: Commemoration and Communities of Sense Angharad Closs Stephens, Martin Coward, Samuel Merrill, Shanti Sumartojo International Political Sociology , Volume 15, Issue 1, March 2021, Pages 22–40, https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaa020

Journal of Human Rights Practice  

Africa, Prisons and COVID-19 Lukas M. Muntingh Journal of Human Rights Practice , Volume 12, Issue 2, July 2020, Pages 284–292, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huaa031

Pandemic Powers: Why Human Rights Organizations Should Not Lose Focus on Civil and Political Rights Eda Seyhan Journal of Human Rights Practice , Volume 12, Issue 2, July 2020, Pages 268–275, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huaa035

Affirming Radical Equality in the Context of COVID-19: Human Rights of Older People and People with Disabilities Supriya Akerkar Journal of Human Rights Practice , Volume 12, Issue 2, July 2020, Pages 276–283, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huaa032

Digital Dead Body Management (DDBM): Time to Think it Through Kristin Bergtora Sandvik Journal of Human Rights Practice, Volume 12 , Issue 2, July 2020, Pages 428–443, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huaa002

Legal Reasoning for Legitimation of Child Marriage in West Java: Accommodation of Local Norms at Islamic Courts and the Paradox of Child Protection Hoko Horii Journal of Human Rights Practice , Volume 12, Issue 3, November 2020, Pages 501–523, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huaa041

Journal of Refugee Studies  

Refugee-Integration-Opportunity Structures: Shifting the Focus From Refugees to Context Jenny Phillimore Journal of Refugee Studies , Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2021, Pages 1946–1966, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaa012

What Difference do Mayors Make? The Role of Municipal Authorities in Turkey and Lebanon's Response to Syrian Refugees Alexander Betts, Fulya MemiŞoĞlu, Ali Ali Journal of Refugee Studies , Volume 34, Issue 1, March 2021, Pages 491–519, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaa011

Old Concepts Making New History: Refugee Self-reliance, Livelihoods and the ‘Refugee Entrepreneur’ Claudena Skran, Evan Easton-Calabria Journal of Refugee Studies , Volume 33, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 1–21, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fez061

Research with Refugees in Fragile Political Contexts: How Ethical Reflections Impact Methodological Choices Lea Müller-Funk Journal of Refugee Studies , Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2021, Pages 2308–2332, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaa013

The Kalobeyei Settlement: A Self-reliance Model for Refugees? Alexander Betts, Naohiko Omata, Olivier Sterck Journal of Refugee Studies , Volume 33, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 189–223, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fez063

Migration Studies  

International migration management in the age of artificial intelligence Ana Beduschi Migration Studies , Volume 9, Issue 3, September 2021, Pages 576–596, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnaa003

Migration as Adaptation? Kira Vinke, Jonas Bergmann, Julia Blocher, Himani Upadhyay, Roman Hoffmann Migration Studies , Volume 8, Issue 4, December 2020, Pages 626–634, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnaa029

Research on climate change and migration where are we and where are we going? Elizabeth Ferris Migration Studies , Volume 8, Issue 4, December 2020, Pages 612–625, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnaa028

The emotional journey of motherhood in migration. The case of Southern European mothers in Norway Raquel Herrero-Arias, Ragnhild Hollekim, Haldis Haukanes, Åse Vagli Migration Studies , Volume 9, Issue 3, September 2021, Pages 1230–1249, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnaa006

'I felt like the mountains were coming for me.'-The role of place attachment and local lifestyle opportunities for labour migrants' staying aspirations in two Norwegian rural municipalities Brit Lynnebakke Migration Studies , Volume 9, Issue 3, September 2021, Pages 759–782, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnaa002

Refugee Survey Quarterly  

Refugee Rights Across Regions: A Comparative Overview of Legislative Good Practices in Latin America and the EU Luisa Feline Freier, Jean-Pierre Gauci Refugee Survey Quarterly , Volume 39, Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 321–362, https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdaa011

Syrian Refugee Migration, Transitions in Migrant Statuses and Future Scenarios of Syrian Mobility Marko Valenta, Jo Jakobsen, Drago Župarić-Iljić, Hariz Halilovich Refugee Survey Quarterly , Volume 39, Issue 2, June 2020, Pages 153–176, https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdaa002

Ambiguous Encounters: Revisiting Foucault and Goffman at an Activation Programme for Asylum-seekers Katrine Syppli Kohl Refugee Survey Quarterly , Volume 39, Issue 2, June 2020, Pages 177–206, https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdaa004

Behind the Scenes of South Africa’s Asylum Procedure: A Qualitative Study on Long-term Asylum-Seekers from the Democratic Republic of Congo Liesbeth Schockaert, Emilie Venables, Maria-Teresa Gil-Bazo, Garret Barnwell, Rodd Gerstenhaber, Katherine Whitehouse Refugee Survey Quarterly , Volume 39, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 26–55, https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdz018

Improving SOGI Asylum Adjudication: Putting Persecution Ahead of Identity Moira Dustin, Nuno Ferreira Refugee Survey Quarterly , Volume 40, Issue 3, September 2021, Pages 315–347, https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdab005

Social Forces  

Paths toward the Same Form of Collective Action: Direct Social Action in Times of Crisis in Italy Lorenzo Bosi, Lorenzo Zamponi Social Forces , Volume 99, Issue 2, December 2020, Pages 847–869, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soz160

Attitudes toward Refugees in Contemporary Europe: A Longitudinal Perspective on Cross-National Differences Christian S. Czymara Social Forces , Volume 99, Issue 3, March 2021, Pages 1306–1333, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaa055

Opiate of the Masses? Inequality, Religion, and Political Ideology in the United States Landon Schnabel Social Forces , Volume 99, Issue 3, March 2021, Pages 979–1012, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaa027

Re-examining Restructuring: Racialization, Religious Conservatism, and Political Leanings in Contemporary American Life John O’Brien, Eman Abdelhadi Social Forces , Volume 99, Issue 2, December 2020, Pages 474–503, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaa029

Evidence from Field Experiments in Hiring Shows Substantial Additional Racial Discrimination after the Callback Lincoln Quillian, John J Lee, Mariana Oliver Social Forces , Volume 99, Issue 2, December 2020, Pages 732–759, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaa026

Social Politics  

Varieties of Gender Regimes Sylvia Walby Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society , Volume 27, Issue 3, Fall 2020, Pages 414–431, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxaa018

The Origins and Transformations of Conservative Gender Regimes in Germany and Japan Karen A. Shire, Kumiko Nemoto Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society , Volume 27, Issue 3, Fall 2020, Pages 432–448, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxaa017

Counteracting Challenges to Gender Equality in the Era of Anti-Gender Campaigns: Competing Gender Knowledges and Affective Solidarity Elżbieta Korolczuk Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society , Volume 27, Issue 4, Winter 2020, Pages 694–717, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxaa021

Gender, Violence, and Political Institutions: Struggles over Sexual Harassment in the European Parliament Valentine Berthet, Johanna Kantola Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society , Volume 28, Issue 1, Spring 2021, Pages 143–167, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxaa015

Gender Regime Change in Decentralized States: The Case of Spain Emanuela Lombardo, Alba Alonso Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society , Volume 27, Issue 3, Fall 2020, Pages 449–466, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxaa016

Social Problems  

Technologies of Crime Prediction: The Reception of Algorithms in Policing and Criminal Courts Sarah Brayne, Angèle Christin Social Problems , Volume 68, Issue 3, August 2021, Pages 608–624, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa004

White Christian Nationalism and Relative Political Tolerance for Racists Joshua T. Davis, Samuel L. Perry Social Problems , Volume 68, Issue 3, August 2021, Pages 513–534, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa002

The Increasing Effect of Neighborhood Racial Composition on Housing Values, 1980-2015 Junia Howell, Elizabeth Korver-Glenn Social Problems , Volume 68, Issue 4, November 2021, Pages 1051–1071, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa033

Transition into Liminal Legality: DACA' Mixed Impacts on Education and Employment among Young Adult Immigrants in California Erin R. Hamilton, Caitlin Patler, Robin Savinar Social Problems , Volume 68, Issue 3, August 2021, Pages 675–695, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa016

Constructing Allyship and the Persistence of Inequality J. E. Sumerau, TehQuin D. Forbes, Eric Anthony Grollman, Lain A. B. Mathers Social Problems , Volume 68, Issue 2, May 2021, Pages 358–373, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa003

Social Science Japan Journal  

Nuclear Restart Politics: How the ‘Nuclear Village’ Lost Policy Implementation Power Florentine Koppenborg Social Science Japan Journal , Volume 24, Issue 1, Winter 2021, Pages 115–135, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaa046

Factors Affecting Household Disaster Preparedness Among Foreign Residents in Japan David Green, Matthew Linley, Justin Whitney, Yae Sano Social Science Japan Journal , Volume 24, Issue 1, Winter 2021, Pages 185–208, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaa026

Climate Change Policy: Can New Actors Affect Japan's Policy-Making in the Paris Agreement Era? Yasuko Kameyama Social Science Japan Journal , Volume 24, Issue 1, Winter 2021, Pages 67–84, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaa051

Japan Meets the Sharing Economy: Contending Frames Thomas G. Altura, Yuki Hashimoto, Sanford M. Jacoby, Kaoru Kanai, Kazuro Saguchi Social Science Japan Journal , Volume 24, Issue 1, Winter 2021, Pages 137–161, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaa041

Administrative Measures Against Far-Right Protesters: An Example of Japan’s Social Control Ayaka Löschke Social Science Japan Journal , Volume 24, Issue 2, Summer 2021, Pages 289–309, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyab005

Sociology of Religion  

Religion in the Age of Social Distancing: How COVID-19 Presents New Directions for Research Joseph O. Baker, Gerardo Martí, Ruth Braunstein, Andrew L Whitehead, Grace Yukich Sociology of Religion , Volume 81, Issue 4, Winter 2020, Pages 357–370, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sraa039

Keep America Christian (and White): Christian Nationalism, Fear of Ethnoracial Outsiders, and Intention to Vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election Joseph O. Baker, Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead Sociology of Religion , Volume 81, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, Pages 272–293, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sraa015

Formal or Functional? Traditional or Inclusive? Bible Translations as Markers of Religious Subcultures Samuel L. Perry, Joshua B. Grubbs Sociology of Religion , Volume 81, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, Pages 319–342, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sraa003

Political Identity and Confidence in Science and Religion in the United States Timothy L. O’Brien, Shiri Noy Sociology of Religion , Volume 81, Issue 4, Winter 2020, Pages 439–461, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sraa024

Religious Freedom and Local Conflict: Religious Buildings and Zoning Issues in the New York City Region, 1992–2017 Brian J. Miller Sociology of Religion , Volume 81, Issue 4, Winter 2020, Pages 462–484, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sraa006

The British Journal of Criminology  

Reporting Racist Hate Crime Victimization to the Police in the United States and the United Kingdom: A Cross-National Comparison Wesley Myers, Brendan Lantz The British Journal of Criminology , Volume 60, Issue 4, July 2020, Pages 1034–1055, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa008

Does Collective Efficacy Matter at the Micro Geographic Level?: Findings from a Study Of Street Segments David Weisburd, Clair White, Alese Wooditch The British Journal of Criminology , Volume 60, Issue 4, July 2020, Pages 873–891, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa007

Responses to Wildlife Crime in Post-Colonial Times. Who Fares Best? Ragnhild Aslaug Sollund, Siv Rebekka Runhovde The British Journal of Criminology , Volume 60, Issue 4, July 2020, Pages 1014–1033, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa005

‘Playing the Game’: Power, Authority and Procedural Justice in Interactions Between Police and Homeless People in London Arabella Kyprianides, Clifford Stott, Ben Bradford The British Journal of Criminology , Volume 61, Issue 3, May 2021, Pages 670–689, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa086

Live Facial Recognition: Trust and Legitimacy as Predictors of Public Support For Police Use of New Technology Ben Bradford, Julia A Yesberg, Jonathan Jackson, Paul Dawson The British Journal of Criminology , Volume 60, Issue 6, November 2020, Pages 1502–1522, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa032

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How to Write Sociology Papers

Writing sociology papers.

Writing is one of the most difficult and most rewarding of all scholarly activities. Few of us, students or professors, find it easy to do. The pain of writing comes largely as a result of bad writing habits. No one can write a good paper in one draft on the night before the paper is due. The following steps will not guarantee a good paper, but they will eliminate the most common problems encountered in bad papers.

1. Select a topic early. Start thinking about topics as soon as the paper is assigned and get approval of your topic choice from the professor before starting the research on the paper. When choosing a topic, think critically. Remember that writing a good sociology paper starts with asking a good sociological question.

2. Give yourself adequate time to do the research. You will need time to think through the things you read or to explore the data you analyze. Also, things will go wrong and you will need time to recover. The one book or article which will help make your paper the best one you've ever done will be unavailable in the library and you have to wait for it to be recalled or to be found through interlibrary loan. Or perhaps the computer will crash and destroy a whole afternoon's work. These things happen to all writers. Allow enough time to finish your paper even if such things happen.

3. Work from an outline. Making an outline breaks the task down into smaller bits which do not seem as daunting. This allows you to keep an image of the whole in mind even while you work on the parts. You can show the outline to your professor and get advice while you are writing a paper rather than after you turn it in for a final grade.

4. Stick to the point. Each paper should contain one key idea which you can state in a sentence or paragraph. The paper will provide the argument and evidence to support that point. Papers should be compact with a strong thesis and a clear line of argument. Avoid digressions and padding.

5. Make more than one draft. First drafts are plagued with confusion, bad writing, omissions, and other errors. So are second drafts, but not to the same extent. Get someone else to read it. Even your roommate who has never had a sociology course may be able to point out unclear parts or mistakes you have missed. The best papers have been rewritten, in part or in whole, several times. Few first draft papers will receive high grades.

6. Proofread the final copy, correcting any typographical errors. A sloppily written, uncorrected paper sends a message that the writer does not care about his or her work. If the writer does not care about the paper, why should the reader?

Such rules may seem demanding and constricting, but they provide the liberation of self discipline. By choosing a topic, doing the research, and writing the paper you take control over a vital part of your own education. What you learn in the process, if you do it conscientiously, is far greater that what shows up in the paper or what is reflected in the grade.

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH PAPERS

Some papers have an empirical content that needs to be handled differently than a library research paper. Empirical papers report some original research. It may be based on participant observation, on secondary analysis of social surveys, or some other source. The outline below presents a general form that most articles published in sociology journals follow. You should get specific instructions from professors who assign empirical research papers.

1. Introduction and statement of the research question.

2. Review of previous research and theory.

3. Description of data collection including sample characteristics and the reliability and validity of techniques employed.

4. Presentation of the results of data analysis including explicit reference to the implications the data have for the research question.

5. Conclusion which ties the loose ends of the analysis back to the research question.

6. End notes (if any).

7. References cited in the paper.

Tables and displays of quantitative information should follow the rules set down by Tufte in the work listed below.

Tufte, Edward. 1983. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information . Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press. (lib QA 90 T93 1983)

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Sociology with Sage

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  • 2.1 Approaches to Sociological Research
  • Introduction
  • 1.1 What Is Sociology?
  • 1.2 The History of Sociology
  • 1.3 Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology
  • 1.4 Why Study Sociology?
  • Section Summary
  • Section Quiz
  • Short Answer
  • Further Research
  • 2.2 Research Methods
  • 2.3 Ethical Concerns
  • 3.1 What Is Culture?
  • 3.2 Elements of Culture
  • 3.3 High, Low, Pop, Sub, Counter-culture and Cultural Change
  • 3.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Culture
  • 4.1 Types of Societies
  • 4.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Society
  • 4.3 Social Constructions of Reality
  • 5.1 Theories of Self-Development
  • 5.2 Why Socialization Matters
  • 5.3 Agents of Socialization
  • 5.4 Socialization Across the Life Course
  • 6.1 Types of Groups
  • 6.2 Group Size and Structure
  • 6.3 Formal Organizations
  • 7.1 Deviance and Control
  • 7.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Deviance and Crime
  • 7.3 Crime and the Law
  • 8.1 Technology Today
  • 8.2 Media and Technology in Society
  • 8.3 Global Implications of Media and Technology
  • 8.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology
  • 9.1 What Is Social Stratification?
  • 9.2 Social Stratification and Mobility in the United States
  • 9.3 Global Stratification and Inequality
  • 9.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification
  • 10.1 Global Stratification and Classification
  • 10.2 Global Wealth and Poverty
  • 10.3 Theoretical Perspectives on Global Stratification
  • 11.1 Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups
  • 11.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity
  • 11.3 Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism
  • 11.4 Intergroup Relationships
  • 11.5 Race and Ethnicity in the United States
  • 12.1 Sex, Gender, Identity, and Expression
  • 12.2 Gender and Gender Inequality
  • 12.3 Sexuality
  • 13.1 Who Are the Elderly? Aging in Society
  • 13.2 The Process of Aging
  • 13.3 Challenges Facing the Elderly
  • 13.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Aging
  • 14.1 What Is Marriage? What Is a Family?
  • 14.2 Variations in Family Life
  • 14.3 Challenges Families Face
  • 15.1 The Sociological Approach to Religion
  • 15.2 World Religions
  • 15.3 Religion in the United States
  • 16.1 Education around the World
  • 16.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Education
  • 16.3 Issues in Education
  • 17.1 Power and Authority
  • 17.2 Forms of Government
  • 17.3 Politics in the United States
  • 17.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Government and Power
  • Introduction to Work and the Economy
  • 18.1 Economic Systems
  • 18.2 Globalization and the Economy
  • 18.3 Work in the United States
  • 19.1 The Social Construction of Health
  • 19.2 Global Health
  • 19.3 Health in the United States
  • 19.4 Comparative Health and Medicine
  • 19.5 Theoretical Perspectives on Health and Medicine
  • 20.1 Demography and Population
  • 20.2 Urbanization
  • 20.3 The Environment and Society
  • Introduction to Social Movements and Social Change
  • 21.1 Collective Behavior
  • 21.2 Social Movements
  • 21.3 Social Change

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

  • Define and describe the scientific method.
  • Explain how the scientific method is used in sociological research.
  • Describe the function and importance of an interpretive framework.
  • Describe the differences in accuracy, reliability and validity in a research study.

When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behavior is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in. They notice patterns of behavior as people move through that world. Using sociological methods and systematic research within the framework of the scientific method and a scholarly interpretive perspective, sociologists have discovered social patterns in the workplace that have transformed industries, in families that have enlightened family members, and in education that have aided structural changes in classrooms.

Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen in this world. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once the question is formed, the sociologist proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a scientific approach or an interpretive framework. The following sections describe these approaches to knowledge.

The Scientific Method

Sociologists make use of tried and true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, and field research. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that these interactions can seem impossible to chart or explain. It might seem that science is about discoveries and chemical reactions or about proving ideas right or wrong rather than about exploring the nuances of human behavior.

However, this is exactly why scientific models work for studying human behavior. A scientific process of research establishes parameters that help make sure results are objective and accurate. Scientific methods provide limitations and boundaries that focus a study and organize its results.

The scientific method involves developing and testing theories about the social world based on empirical evidence. It is defined by its commitment to systematic observation of the empirical world and strives to be objective, critical, skeptical, and logical. It involves a series of six prescribed steps that have been established over centuries of scientific scholarship.

Sociological research does not reduce knowledge to right or wrong facts. Results of studies tend to provide people with insights they did not have before—explanations of human behaviors and social practices and access to knowledge of other cultures, rituals and beliefs, or trends and attitudes.

In general, sociologists tackle questions about the role of social characteristics in outcomes or results. For example, how do different communities fare in terms of psychological well-being, community cohesiveness, range of vocation, wealth, crime rates, and so on? Are communities functioning smoothly? Sociologists often look between the cracks to discover obstacles to meeting basic human needs. They might also study environmental influences and patterns of behavior that lead to crime, substance abuse, divorce, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, or illness. And, because sociological studies are not all focused on negative behaviors or challenging situations, social researchers might study vacation trends, healthy eating habits, neighborhood organizations, higher education patterns, games, parks, and exercise habits.

Sociologists can use the scientific method not only to collect but also to interpret and analyze data. They deliberately apply scientific logic and objectivity. They are interested in—but not attached to—the results. They work outside of their own political or social agendas. This does not mean researchers do not have their own personalities, complete with preferences and opinions. But sociologists deliberately use the scientific method to maintain as much objectivity, focus, and consistency as possible in collecting and analyzing data in research studies.

With its systematic approach, the scientific method has proven useful in shaping sociological studies. The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. They provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity. In the end, the scientific method provides a shared basis for discussion and analysis (Merton 1963). Typically, the scientific method has 6 steps which are described below.

Step 1: Ask a Question or Find a Research Topic

The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, select a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a geographic location and time frame. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. Sociologists strive to frame questions that examine well-defined patterns and relationships.

In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits reflect the cultural value placed on appearance?”

Step 2: Review the Literature/Research Existing Sources

The next step researchers undertake is to conduct background research through a literature review , which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to the library, a thorough online search, and a survey of academic journals will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted, identify gaps in understanding of the topic, and position their own research to build on prior knowledge. Researchers—including student researchers—are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or that inform their work. While it is fine to borrow previously published material (as long as it enhances a unique viewpoint), it must be referenced properly and never plagiarized.

To study crime, a researcher might also sort through existing data from the court system, police database, prison information, interviews with criminals, guards, wardens, etc. It’s important to examine this information in addition to existing research to determine how these resources might be used to fill holes in existing knowledge. Reviewing existing sources educates researchers and helps refine and improve a research study design.

Step 3: Formulate a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an explanation for a phenomenon based on a conjecture about the relationship between the phenomenon and one or more causal factors. In sociology, the hypothesis will often predict how one form of human behavior influences another. For example, a hypothesis might be in the form of an “if, then statement.” Let’s relate this to our topic of crime: If unemployment increases, then the crime rate will increase.

In scientific research, we formulate hypotheses to include an independent variables (IV) , which are the cause of the change, and a dependent variable (DV) , which is the effect , or thing that is changed. In the example above, unemployment is the independent variable and the crime rate is the dependent variable.

In a sociological study, the researcher would establish one form of human behavior as the independent variable and observe the influence it has on a dependent variable. How does gender (the independent variable) affect rate of income (the dependent variable)? How does one’s religion (the independent variable) affect family size (the dependent variable)? How is social class (the dependent variable) affected by level of education (the independent variable)?

Taking an example from Table 12.1, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Note, however, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. A sociologist might predict that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will increase or improve habits of hygiene (now the dependent variable). Identifying the independent and dependent variables is very important. As the hygiene example shows, simply identifying related two topics or variables is not enough. Their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis.

Step 4: Design and Conduct a Study

Researchers design studies to maximize reliability , which refers to how likely research results are to be replicated if the study is reproduced. Reliability increases the likelihood that what happens to one person will happen to all people in a group or what will happen in one situation will happen in another. Cooking is a science. When you follow a recipe and measure ingredients with a cooking tool, such as a measuring cup, the same results is obtained as long as the cook follows the same recipe and uses the same type of tool. The measuring cup introduces accuracy into the process. If a person uses a less accurate tool, such as their hand, to measure ingredients rather than a cup, the same result may not be replicated. Accurate tools and methods increase reliability.

Researchers also strive for validity , which refers to how well the study measures what it was designed to measure. To produce reliable and valid results, sociologists develop an operational definition , that is, they define each concept, or variable, in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept. By operationalizing the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner. Moreover, researchers can determine whether the experiment or method validly represent the phenomenon they intended to study.

A study asking how tutoring improves grades, for instance, might define “tutoring” as “one-on-one assistance by an expert in the field, hired by an educational institution.” However, one researcher might define a “good” grade as a C or better, while another uses a B+ as a starting point for “good.” For the results to be replicated and gain acceptance within the broader scientific community, researchers would have to use a standard operational definition. These definitions set limits and establish cut-off points that ensure consistency and replicability in a study.

We will explore research methods in greater detail in the next section of this chapter.

Step 5: Draw Conclusions

After constructing the research design, sociologists collect, tabulate or categorize, and analyze data to formulate conclusions. If the analysis supports the hypothesis, researchers can discuss the implications of the results for the theory or policy solution that they were addressing. If the analysis does not support the hypothesis, researchers may consider repeating the experiment or think of ways to improve their procedure.

However, even when results contradict a sociologist’s prediction of a study’s outcome, these results still contribute to sociological understanding. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns. In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding rewarding careers. While many assume that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results may substantiate or contradict it.

Sociologists carefully keep in mind how operational definitions and research designs impact the results as they draw conclusions. Consider the concept of “increase of crime,” which might be defined as the percent increase in crime from last week to this week, as in the study of Swedish crime discussed above. Yet the data used to evaluate “increase of crime” might be limited by many factors: who commits the crime, where the crimes are committed, or what type of crime is committed. If the data is gathered for “crimes committed in Houston, Texas in zip code 77021,” then it may not be generalizable to crimes committed in rural areas outside of major cities like Houston. If data is collected about vandalism, it may not be generalizable to assault.

Step 6: Report Results

Researchers report their results at conferences and in academic journals. These results are then subjected to the scrutiny of other sociologists in the field. Before the conclusions of a study become widely accepted, the studies are often repeated in the same or different environments. In this way, sociological theories and knowledge develops as the relationships between social phenomenon are established in broader contexts and different circumstances.

Interpretive Framework

While many sociologists rely on empirical data and the scientific method as a research approach, others operate from an interpretive framework . While systematic, this approach doesn’t follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to find generalizable results. Instead, an interpretive framework, sometimes referred to as an interpretive perspective , seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, which leads to in-depth knowledge or understanding about the human experience.

Interpretive research is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings. Rather than formulating a hypothesis and method for testing it, an interpretive researcher will develop approaches to explore the topic at hand that may involve a significant amount of direct observation or interaction with subjects including storytelling. This type of researcher learns through the process and sometimes adjusts the research methods or processes midway to optimize findings as they evolve.

Critical Sociology

Critical sociology focuses on deconstruction of existing sociological research and theory. Informed by the work of Karl Marx, scholars known collectively as the Frankfurt School proposed that social science, as much as any academic pursuit, is embedded in the system of power constituted by the set of class, caste, race, gender, and other relationships that exist in the society. Consequently, it cannot be treated as purely objective. Critical sociologists view theories, methods, and the conclusions as serving one of two purposes: they can either legitimate and rationalize systems of social power and oppression or liberate humans from inequality and restriction on human freedom. Deconstruction can involve data collection, but the analysis of this data is not empirical or positivist.

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ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Research Methods in Sociology – An Introduction

Table of Contents

Last Updated on May 4, 2023 by Karl Thompson

An introduction to research methods in Sociology covering quantitative, qualitative, primary and secondary data and defining the basic types of research method including social surveys, experiments, interviews, participant observation, ethnography and longitudinal studies.

research paper sociology

Why do social research?

The simple answer is that without it, our knowledge of the social world is limited to our immediate and limited life-experiences. Without some kind of systematic research, we cannot know the answer to even basic questions such as how many people live in the United Kingdom, let alone the answers to more complex questions about why working class children get worse results at school or why the crime rate has been falling every year since 1995.

So the most basic reason for doing social research is to describe the social world around us: To find out what people think and feel about social issues and how these thoughts and feelings vary across social groups and regions. Without research, you simply do not know with any degree of certainty, what is going on in the world.

However, most research has the aim of going beyond mere description. Sociologists typically limit themselves to a specific research topic and conduct research in order to achieve a research aim or sometimes to answer a specific question.

Subjective and Objective Knowledge in Social Research

Research in Sociology is usually carefully planned, and conducted using well established procedures to ensure that knowledge is objective – where the information gathered reflects what is really ‘out there’ in the social, world rather than ‘subjective’ – where it only reflects the narrow opinions of the researchers. The careful, systematic and rigorous use of research methods is what makes sociological knowledge ‘objective’ rather than ‘subjective’.

Subjective knowledge – is knowledge based purely on the opinions of the individual, reflecting their values and biases, their point of view

Objective knowledge – is knowledge which is free of the biases, opinions and values of the researcher, it reflects what is really ‘out there’ in the social world.

While most Sociologists believe that we should strive to make our data collection as objective as possible, there are some Sociologists (known as Phenomenologists) who argue that it is not actually possible to collect data which is purely objective – The researcher’s opinions always get in the way of what data is collected and filtered for publication.

Sources and types of data

In social research, it is usual to distinguish between primary and secondary data and qualitative and quantitative data

Quantitative data refers to information that appears in numerical form, or in the form of statistics.

Qualitative data refers to information that appears in written, visual or audio form, such as transcripts of interviews, newspapers and web sites. (It is possible to analyse qualitative data and display features of it numerically!)

Secondary data is data that has been collected by previous researchers or organisations such as the government. Quantitative sources of secondary data include official government statistics and qualitative sources are very numerous including government reports, newspapers, personal documents such as diaries as well as the staggering amount of audio-visual content available online.

Primary data is data collected first hand by the researcher herself. If a sociologist is conducting her own unique sociological research, she will normally have specific research questions she wants answered and thus tailor her research methods to get the data she wants. The main methods sociologists use to generate primary data include social surveys (normally using questionnaire), interviews, experiments and observations.

research paper sociology

Four main primary research methods

For the purposes of A-level sociology there are four major primary research methods

  • social surveys (typically questionnaires)
  • experiments
  • participant observation

I have also included in this section longitudinal studies and ethnographies/ case studies.

Social Surveys

Social Surveys – are typically structured questionnaires designed to collect information from large numbers of people in standardised form.

Social Surveys are written in advance by the researcher and tend to to be pre-coded and have a limited number of closed-questions and they tend to focus on relatively simple topics. A good example is the UK National Census. Social Surveys can be administered (carried out) in a number of different ways – they might be self-completion (completed by the respondents themselves) or they might take the form of a structured interview on the high street, as is the case with some market research.

Experiments

Experiments – aim to measure as precisely as possible the effect which one variable has on another, aiming to establish cause and effect relationships between variables.

Experiments typically start off with a hypothesis – a theory or explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation, and will typically take the form of a testable statement about the effect which one or more independent variables will have on the dependent variable. A good experiment will be designed in such a way that objective cause and effect relationships can be established, so that the original hypothesis can verified, or rejected and modified.

There are two types of experiment – laboratory and field experiments – A laboratory experiment takes place in a controlled environment, such as a laboratory, whereas a field experiment takes place in a real-life setting such as a classroom, the work place or even the high street.

Interviews – A method of gathering information by asking questions orally, either face to face or by telephone.

Structured Interviews are basically social surveys which are read out by the researcher – they use pre-set, standardised, typically closed questions. The aim of structured interviews is to produce quantitative data.

Unstructured Interviews , also known as informal interviews, are more like a guided conversation, and typically involve the researcher asking open-questions which generate qualitative data. The researcher will start with a general research topic in and ask questions in response to the various and differentiated responses the respondents give. Unstructured Interviews are thus a flexible, respondent-led research method.

Semi-Structured Interviews consist of an interview schedule which typically consists of a number of open-ended questions which allow the respondent to give in-depth answers. For example, the researcher might have 10 questions (hence structured) they will ask all respondents, but ask further differentiated (unstructured) questions based on the responses given.

Participant Observation

Participant Observation – involves the researcher joining a group of people, taking an active part in their day to day lives as a member of that group and making in-depth recordings of what she sees.

Participant Observation may be overt , in which case the respondents know that researcher is conducing sociological research, or covert (undercover) where the respondents are deceived into thinking the researcher is ‘one of them’ do not know the researcher is conducting research.

Ethnographies and Case Studies

Ethnographies are an in-depth study of the way of life of a group of people in their natural setting. They are typically very in-depth and long-term and aim for a full (or ‘thick’), multi-layred account of the culture of a group of people. Participant Observation is typically the main method used, but researchers will use all other methods available to get even richer data – such as interviews and analysis of any documents associated with that culture.

Case Studies involves researching a single case or example of something using multiple methods – for example researching one school or factory. An ethnography is simply a very in-depth case study.

Longitudinal Studies

Longitudinal Studies are studies of a sample of people in which information is collected from the same people at intervals over a long period of time. For example, a researcher might start off in 2015 by getting a sample of 1000 people to fill in a questionnaire, and then go back to the same people in 2020, and again in 2025 to collect further information.

Secondary Research Methods

The main type of secondary quantitative data which students of A-level sociology need to know about are official statistics, which are data collected by government agencies, usually on a regular basis and include crime statistics, the Census and quantitative schools data such as exam results.

Secondary qualitative data is data which already exists in written or audiovisual form and include news media, the entire qualitative content of the internent (so blogs and social media data), and more old-school data sources such as diaries, autobiographies and letters.

Sociologists sometimes distinguish between private and public documents, which is a starting point to understanding the enormous variety of data out there!

Secondary data can be a challenge to get your head around because there are so many different types, all with subtly different advantages and disadvantages, and so this particular sub-topic is more likely to demand you to apply your knowledge (rather than just wrote learn) compared to other research methods!

Related Posts 

Factors Effecting the Choice of Research Method

Positivism and Interpretivism – A Very Brief Overview

my main research methods page contains links to all of my posts on research methods.

Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle 

research paper sociology

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and Methods Revision Bundle – specifically designed to get students through the theory and methods sections of  A level sociology papers 1 and 3.

Contents include:

  • 74 pages of revision notes
  • 15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
  • Five theory and methods essays
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Thanks for the feedback, I do go through and refine as and when I can. Although for the sake of A-level sociology the distinction between research design and research methods would be lost on something like 95% of the students I taught – most just aren’t that interested – hence why I just stick with simple terminology like ‘methods’. Those that take this on to degree level, that’s where those sorts of distinctions start to matter, but point taken, I could be tighter in many places!

You’re all over the place here. You’re confusing research designs and research methods. A survey for example is research design and can be done by different methods. You talk about ‘structured questionnaires’. What, then, would an unstructured questionnaire look like? Can you find an example? You need to put more work in. This will confuse students.

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APA 7th edition manual

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This guide will introduce you to APA 7 citations, both for the References page of your paper and in-text citations. It is offered in multiple file formats below. 

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This guide will tell you exactly what to do if your resource is missing a citation element. Can't find the author, publication date, page numbers, or something else? Use this guide to find out what to do! This guide is offered in multiple formats below. ​​​​​​​

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  • Typed, double-spaced paragraphs.
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  • Include a page header (also known as the "running head") at the top of every page with the page number.
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70 Catchy Sociology Research Paper Topics That Really Stand Out

Sociology Research Paper Topics

If you are taking sociology in college, you will agree that it is one of the fascinating subjects because it involves dealing with things that define and affect people, such as cultures, customs, and how people’s ways of life change.

Despite being an enthralling subject, many students find it challenging to pick the best sociology topics. To help you address the problem, we have picked the best 70 sociology topics for research that you can use. So, use them as they are or tweak them a little to reflect your preference.

Sociology Research Topics on Teenagers and Children

When growing up, childhood is the most carefree period of life, but it does not mean that kids do not have issues. However, these issues change as they become teenagers, and you can focus on them to formulate your sociological research question for your paper. If you are interested in children and teenagers, here is a list of sociological topics to consider:

  • What is the influence of sports on the mental health of teenagers?
  • Is sexual education good for children?
  • What is the best way to deal with bullying in schools?
  • Exploring the main reasons why kids do not have stereotypes.
  • Should we give religious education priority over academic knowledge?
  • Self-identification in teenagers: What are the causes?
  • How does homeschooling impact children’s socialization abilities?
  • Should adults consider teenagers as equals?
  • Teenage suicides: What are the leading causes?
  • Teachers or parents: Who has a bigger role in preventing early pregnancies?

Sociology Papers Topics on Social Media

Social media has emerged as the new method of communication, both at the personal and corporate levels. As more social media platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook become the new norm, here are some related sociology research topics for college students.

  • Can we consider social media as a reliable source of information?
  • Using social media to improve the hiring process in companies.
  • Understanding the role of influencers on social media users.
  • Comparing the use of Instagram and Facebook in education.
  • Online relationships: Can they be considered real?
  • Cyberbullying on social media.
  • If social media is outlawed today, would our lives be better?
  • How can we use social media to help change people’s behavior?
  • Social media development over time: How will it affect education in the future?
  • Social media development: What is the effect on the development of civil societies?

Good Sociology Research Topics in Marriage and Family

We are all part of a family, and it plays a great impact on who we become later in life. For students who want to explore issues related to families, here are some examples of interesting sociology research topics that can get them top grades.

How should we define a family?

Traditional gender roles taken by men: Would they be better handled by women?

How has marriage changed in the UK?

Exploring the implications of divorce on children.

Are there negative impacts of kids adopted by families of different ethnicities?

Why have the cases of single parenthood increased so much in the last three decades?

Is the institution of marriage outdated?

Should we allow teens to get access to birth control without the permission of their guardians?

Should the government be allowed to decide who can get married?

Reviewing the implications for kids being adopted by LGBT couples.

Understanding the benefits of being married but choosing to stay childless.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of following the traditional gender roles in the family today?

Should all parents be required to take parenting classes before having children?

Do you support the use of the one-child policy in China to reduce population?

Easy Sociology Research Topics

Like we mentioned earlier, sociology is a broad subject, but it is crucial to select the research ideas carefully to avoid getting bored midway. So, if you like to keep things simple and you are wondering, “ What are some good sociology research topics,” here are some good suggestions.

  • Why do more people prefer online communication today?
  • Is anonymity when using the internet important?
  • What are the best techniques for training kids with deviant behavior?
  • For how long should people date before getting married?
  • Exploring the differences between generations X and Z.
  • The benefits of letting the elderly interact with children.
  • What are the negative implications of intergenerational marriage?
  • Exploring the differences between spiritualism and religion.
  • Why do some city administrations only allow some businesses and disallow others in their jurisdictions?

Environmental Sociology Research Topics

People’s behaviors, policies, economic levels, and levels of education, among other aspects have huge implications on the environment. So, what areas of the environment and related topics do you want to explore? Here are some great topic samples to consider.

  • An analysis of domestic inequality and carbon emissions.
  • Is environmental activism alone enough in addressing the problem of global pollution?
  • Exploring the latest trends in environmental justice: A case study of the United States.
  • Food system localization: Comparing the Pros and Cons.

What implications does recycling for environmental reasons have on an individual’s social well-being?

  • Why everyone has a role to play in addressing the problem of climate change.
  • What are the main causes and consequences of global warming?
  • Facing the truth: Can the global society address the problem of global warming?
  • Why conservation should be taught from an early stage of a child development.

Sociology Research Proposal Topics

If you are required to work on a research project, and the proposal needs to get the nod from your lecturer before proceeding, here are some great topics to consider:

  • How do stereotypes of age impact employment?
  • Comparing liberal feminism and radical feminism.
  • What age group is at a higher risk of getting involved in deviant behavior?
  • Do women have fewer professional opportunities compared to men?
  • How are sexuality and gender viewed by students in private versus public schools?
  • Is it more important to be popular or successful in school today?
  • Playing video games for more than 10 hours every week: What impact does it have on students’ learning abilities?
  • Should we make medicinal marijuana legal?

Good Sociology Research Questions in Culture and Cultural Biases

Some of the hottest research questions in sociology about culture and cultural biases include:

  • Are the policies and laws protecting free speech in society enough?
  • What are the best solutions for reducing population growth in the globe?
  • Should we allow prescription drug companies to make direct advertisements to consumers?
  • What are the biases that exist against obese people?
  • Should we have legal penalties for people who use racial slurs?
  • How is gender discrimination in the workplace perpetrated?
  • What role does feminism play in American politics in the 21 st century?
  • What are the differences between labor immigration in Europe and the US?
  • Should the drinking age be lowered?
  • What are some of the best solutions for addressing homegrown terrorism in the United States?

Once You Have Sociology Research Topics, what Next?

If you want to get top grades, the first step is selecting excellent research paper topics. However, whether you have selected environmental, family, or medical sociology research topics, the bigger task is actually ahead, and you should consider seeking writing help from our professionals . We have writing experts who can handle every topic in sociology, be it a sociological research question or sociology of the family research topics. You can never go wrong with a pro on your side!

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Sociological Theory Research Paper

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This sample sociology research paper on sociological theory features: 12600 words (approx. 42 pages) and a bibliography with 127 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our custom writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Theoretical sociology has differentiated into ever more schools of thought over the last 40 years, a trend that is facilitated by the lack of “grand theories” that seek to integrate more specialized theoretical programs. Differentiation is furthered by a lack of consensus over the very nature of theorizing in sociology, with the major fault lines of debate revolving around whether or not sociology can be a natural science. Without a commitment to a common epistemology or a core canon of early theoretical works, an increasing number of theoretical perspectives has emerged from a small early base of theories and philosophies— functionalism, conflict theory, utilitarianism, pragmatism, and phenomenology. And as theories continue to proliferate, the hope of ever reaching a consensus over the key properties of the social universe and the best epistemology for studying these properties has begun to fade. Moreover, there are now many highly specialized theories emerging out of research traditions that are only loosely affiliated with theories built from the ideas of the founding generation.

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It is not a simple task, therefore, to survey theoretical sociology at the beginning of the current century. The best that can be done is to focus on the more general theoretical schemes that built on the early legacy provided by the founding generations of sociologists. These are the theories that dominate theoretical sociology.

The Rise and Fall of Functional Theory

Sociology’s first theoretical approach was decidedly functional, examining social structures and processes for how they meet postulated needs and requisites necessary for societal survival. Both Auguste Comte (1896 [1830–1842]) and Herbert Spencer (1898 [1874–1896]) drew an organismic analogy calling attention to the systemic qualities of the social universe and to the functions of parts for maintenance of social systems. For Spencer, there were four basic problems that all systems, including organismic and societal, had to resolve: production, reproduction, regulation, and distribution. Later, Émile Durkheim ([1893] 1947) postulated only one master functional requisite: the need for sociocultural integration.

Functional theorizing might have died with Durkheim and the abandonment of Spencer’s evolutionism were it not for anthropologists, particularly A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1952) and Bronislaw Malinowski ([1944] 1964), who carried functionalism to the midpoint of the twentieth century. Since preliterate societies had no written history that could be used to explain the origins of cultural features of these societies, assessing the function of a particular cultural pattern for the survival of the society became another way to “explain” why a particular cultural pattern existed (Turner and Maryanski 1979). Radcliffe-Brown (1952) followed Durkheim’s lead and analyzed cultural patterns, such as kinship, for how they resolve integrative problems in preliterate societies, whereas Malinowski adopted Spencer’s more analytical strategy, emphasizing that social reality exists at different system levels (biological organism, social structure, and culture) and that each level of reality has certain functional requisites that must be met if that system level is to be viable in its environment.

It is this latter form of analytical functionalism that came to dominate sociological theory in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, primarily through the work of Talcott Parsons (1951) and colleagues (Parsons, Bales, and Shils 1953; Parsons and Smelser 1956). For Parsons, social reality consists of four action systems (behavioral organism, personality, social, and cultural), and each system must meet four fundamental requisites: (1) adaptation (taking in resources, converting them into usable commodities, and distributing them); (2) goal attainment (establishing goals and mobilizing resources to meet these goals); (3) integration (coordination and control among system parts); and (4) latency (reproducing system units and resolving tensions within them). Each action system was analyzed by Parsons in terms of how it meets these requisites; later, Parsons began to explore the inputoutput relations among the action systems. Near the end of analytical functionalism’s brief dominance of sociological theorizing, particularly in the United States, Parsons (1966) posited a cybernetic hierarchy of control among the action systems, with those high in information (culture) providing guidance for those action systems lower in the hierarchy. Energy was seen as rising up the hierarchy from the behavioral organism through personality and social system to culture, while information from culture guided the organization of status roles in social systems, the motivated actions of the personality system, and the mobilization of energy in the organismic system. At the very end of Parsons’s (1978) reign as the leading theorist in the world⎯indeed, not long before his death⎯he posited a view of the entire universe as four systems meeting the four functional requisites (a strategy that harkened back to Spencer’s Synthetic Philosophy, where physics, biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics could be analyzed in terms of the same elementary principles of evolution).

Functionalism came under increasing attack from many quarters by the early 1960s. From philosophy, the idea that system parts should be analyzed in terms of their functions will produce illegitimate teleologies (outcomes cause the very events that lead to these outcomes) or tautologies (circular arguments in which parts meet needs and needs cause parts to emerge). On a more substantive level, the rise of conflict theories (or their resurrection) in the 1960s led critics to argue that functionalism produced a theory supporting the status quo because, in essence, it argued that existing structures must exist to meet needs for survival (Dahrendorf 1958)⎯a line of argument that biases inquiry against searches for alternative structures.

Functionalism did not completely die, however, because there are many scholars, especially in Europe (e.g., Münch 1987, 2001), who continue to use Parsonsian categories to perform functional analysis, while others retain the emphasis on systems without the same elaborate taxonomy revolving around multiple-system requisites (e.g., Luhmann 1982). In the United States, a brief neofunctionalist movement occurred in which theorists (e.g., Alexander 1985; Alexander and Colomy 1985) abandoned the notion of functional requisites and, instead, focused on the strong points of functionalism: the emphasis on structural differentiation and the integrative effects of culture. Neofunctionalism was not functional, for all its other merits, because what makes functionalism distinctive is the view that social structures and systems of cultural symbols exist because they meet fundamental needs or requisites for survival (Turner and Maryanski 1988).

Another effort to save what is important in functional theory revolves around viewing functional requisites as forces that generate selection pressures for social systems. For example, Jonathan Turner (1995) argues that human social systems are driven by forces⎯much like the forces such as gravity in physics and natural selection in biology⎯that push populations to organize in certain ways or suffer the disintegrative consequences. Many of these forces overlap with what hard-core functionalists have seen as survival requisites. Thus, for Turner, regulation, reproduction, distribution, production, and population drive the formation of macro-level institutional systems; differentiation and integrative forces drive meso-level formations of corporate units like organizations and categoric units such as social and ethnic classes (Turner and Boyns 2001); and another set of forces direct the flow of microlevel interpersonal behavior in encounters (Turner 2002). Such an approach is no longer functional because needs or requisites are not posited, but the approach still retains the appeal of functionalism: analysis of how the universal forces apply selection pressures on populations. Other theorists working from different theoretical traditions have also begun to pursue this selectionist line of theorizing (e.g., Runciman 1989; Sanderson 1995).

The Persistence of Ecological Theorizing

In the works of both Spencer and Durkheim can be found the essence of an ecological theory. Both argued that as populations grow, competition for resources increases, setting into motion selection pressures. Spencer’s famous phrase “survival of the fittest” (uttered some nine years before Darwin’s theory was presented) captures some of this view; those individuals and social structures revealing properties that allow them to secure resources in their environment will survive, while those that do not will be selected out. Durkheim took a more benign view of selection, arguing that if individuals and collective actors cannot secure resources in one resource niche, they will seek resources elsewhere, thus increasing the level of specialization (or social speciation) or differentiation in a society. Thus, from the very beginnings of sociological theorizing, social differentiation has been seen as an outcome of niche density and competition for resources.

The arguments of Spencer and Durkheim were downsized between the 1920s and 1940s by the Chicago School in the United States (e.g., Hoyt 1939; Park 1936). While the members of the department of sociology at Chicago pursued many diverse lines of research, one persistent theme was to view urban areas as a kind of ecosystem, with competition among diverse actors (individuals with varying incomes and ethnic backgrounds as well as varying business and governmental actors) for urban space. Their competition is institutionalized by real estate markets; fueled by these markets, the patterns of control of urban space, the movement of individuals and corporate actors in and out of urban space, and the overall distribution of actors across urban areas can be analyzed with ecological principles. Today, this tradition still operates under the label of urban or human ecology (e.g., Frisbie and Kasarda 1988); it has consistently proven a useful theoretical orientation in understanding processes of urbanization and differentiation within urban areas.

In the 1970s, a new type of ecological analysis, one that focused on the ecology of organizations (Hannan and Freeman 1977), emerged. All organizations can be viewed as existing in a niche, where they seek resources (customers, clients, students, memberships, or any other resource needed to sustain an organization). Once an organization sustains itself in a resource niche, other organizations enter this niche and, in so doing, increase the density of organizations. Thus, the number of organizations in a niche will initially increase, but eventually, niche density becomes so great that selection pressures lead to the “death” of those organizations unable to secure resources or, alternatively, to their migration to a new niche where they can sustain themselves. More than urban ecology, organizational ecology borrowed self-consciously from bioecology, transferring many concepts from ecological analysis in biology to sociology. And perhaps more than urban ecology, organizational ecology remains one of the dominant approaches to understanding the structure and distribution of organizational systems in societies (Carroll 1988).

As urban and organizational ecology flourished, one of the carriers of this tradition from the Chicago School, Amos Hawley (1986), began to move the ecological analysis from the meso level (urban areas and organizations) back to macro-level societal dynamics. In essence, Hawley completed a conceptual odyssey to Spencer’s and Durkheim’s macro-level ecological theorizing, adding new refinements. For Hawley, technology as it affects productivity, modes of transportation, communication systems, and markets will lower mobility costs (for moving people, information, and resources) across space; and as mobility costs decrease, differentiation among corporate units (organizations revealing a division of labor) increases. Differentiation is also influenced by the capacity of the state to control territories, manage capital investments in the economy, regulate markets, and encourage technological development. When centers of power can effectively accomplish these goals, mobility costs are lowered and sociocultural differentiation increases. With increased differentiation, new integrative problems inevitably arise, often posing threats to centers of power that, in turn, lower the capacity of the state to control territories and otherwise act in ways that make markets more dynamic, that increase productivity, that expand transportation, and that extend communication. Thus, the ebb and flow of differentiation in a society is mediated by the operation of centers of power as these centers raise or lower mobility costs. Thus, the legacy of Spencer and Durkheim is very much alive in modern macro-level ecological theorizing. Others (e.g., Turner 1994, 1995) have also followed Hawley’s lead in carrying forward Spencer’s and Durkheim’s macro-level ecological theory.

The Challenge of Biosocial Theorizing

The persistence of Darwinian ideas in ecological theorizing has been supplemented in recent decades by another type of Darwinian theory: sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Both of these approaches emphasize that humans are animals whose phenotypes (physiology as well as behavioral capacities and propensities) are influenced by their genotypes (genetic makeup) as this genotype has been honed by the forces of biological evolution (natural selection, gene flow, genetic drift, and mutation). This approach has been highly threatening to many sociologists because it is often interpreted as a new form of biological determinism that reduces understanding of culture and social structures to genetically driven behavioral propensities. Some of this skepticism was appropriate because early sociobiologists often made rather extreme statements (e.g., Wilson 1975). The basic argument of sociobiology is that behavioral propensities, culture, and social structure are, in essence, “survivor machines” that keep genes responsible for these propensities in the gene pool (Dawkins 1976). If particular behavioral proclivities and the sociocultural arrangements arising from these proclivities enable individuals to reproduce, they operate to maintain the genes of these individuals in the gene pool. Thus, behavioral strategies, social structures, and culture are survival machines, driven by “blind” natural selection to preserve those genes that enhance reproductive fitness (Williams 1966).

Evolutionary psychology (Cosmides 1989; Cosmides and Tooby 1989) adds to this line of argument the notion that there are “modules” in the brain that direct behaviors. These modules have been created by the forces of evolution as they have worked on the neurology of phenotypes (and the underlying genotype) to install behavioral propensities that enhance fitness. For evolutionary psychology, then, universal behaviors are driven by brain modules, as these have been honed by the forces of evolution (Savage and Kanazawa 2004).

These biosocial approaches represent a new way to address a topic that was often part of classical sociological theory: human instincts. Most early theorists had some vision of human instincts, but these views were often vague and disconnected to evolutionary biology. Bio-sociology offers a more sophisticated way to examine what is “natural” to humans as evolved apes, although the number of scholars pursuing this line of theorizing is comparatively small (but growing slowly). What this type of theorizing offers is a chance to reconnect sociology and biology in ways somewhat reminiscent of Comte’s and Spencer’s advocacy. (For sociological efforts to develop bio-sociology, see Horne 2004; Lopreato 2001; Lopreato and Crippen 1999; Machalek and Martin 2004; van den Berghe 1981.)

The Revival of Stage Models of Evolution

Comte, Spencer, Marx, and, to a lesser extent, Durkheim all presented stage models that saw the history of human society as passing through discrete stages of development. These models were, in a sense, descriptive because they reviewed the features of societal types, from simple hunting and gathering through horticulture and variants of horticulture like herding and fishing to agriculture and on to industrialism (post-industrialism was added later as a stage by contemporary sociologists, as was a postmodern stage by other sociologists). Yet these descriptions of societal evolution were always seen as driven by some fundamental forces, converting descriptions of stages into theories about the forces driving movement from one stage to another. For Comte, Spencer, and Durkheim, the driving force was population growth as it unleashed the ecological dynamics summarized above. Moreover, Spencer in particular saw war as an evolutionary force because those societies that won wars were generally better organized (economically, politically, and culturally) than those that were conquered, with the result that winners of wars constantly ratcheted up the complexity of human societies through the evolutionary stages that Spencer described in great detail. For Marx, the driving force of history revolved around changes in technologies and modes of production as these worked to generate “contradictions” that led to class conflict. For two thirds of the twentieth century, stage model evolutionary theory remained recessive. But in the 1960s, it was revived not only by Parsons (1966) in his later works but more significantly by Gerhard Lenski (1966) in his analysis of stratification systems. And later, neo-Marxian approaches like world-systems theorizing (see below) often imply a stage of societal evolution (Sanderson 1999; Wallerstein 1974).

These more recent models of societal evolution avoid the problems of early models, such as seeing each stage of evolution as inevitable and as marching toward an end state personified by Western European countries. Instead, more generic forces such as environment, demographic features (population size, characteristics, and rate of growth), technologies (economic and military), dynamism of markets, levels of production of material goods and services, properties and dynamics of stratification systems, and nature of institutional systems are all seen as interacting in complex ways to drive the structure and culture of societies. Few theories would posit one master force as driving evolution; instead, sets of forces are highlighted in various theories.

Lenski (1966), often in collaboration with others (e.g., Nolan and Lenski 2004), emphasizes the effects of technology (knowledge as it is used to increase production), but these effects are influenced by other forces, particularly the biosocial environment, nature of cultural symbols (values and ideologies), population size and rate of growth, institutional systems (kinship, religion, education, and polity), and patterns of war. Larger populations in stable and resource-rich environments, revealing liberal ideologies encouraging technological innovation, and institutional systems that do not discourage innovations or divert resources away from the economy and that limit warfare will become more complex and able to adapt to their environments. Stephen K. Sanderson (1995) blends ideas from biosociology and Marxian analysis, stressing that natural selection still works on individuals (rather than on society as a whole), but like Lenski, he stresses that societies are driven by demographic, ecological, technological, economic, and political forces. And like all Marxists, Sanderson emphasizes the material conditions of life⎯production and distribution⎯as the base that drives the development of cultural ideologies, political systems, interactions with the ecosystem, and relations with other societies.

While all present-day evolutionary theories stress that it is possible for de-evolution to occur (as Spencer had also argued), they tend to see a direction to evolution toward greater complexity, higher rates of innovation, and increased interdependence among societies connected by global markets. And most theorists would argue implicitly that if human evolution were to be restarted, it would pass through the same evolutionary stages from hunting and gathering to post-industrialism. The virtue of theorizing on stages of evolution is the time perspective gained, with contemporary social formations seen as the outcome of a long evolutionary history driven by a few fundamental forces.

The Revival of Conflict Theorizing

Both Karl Marx (Marx and Engels [1847] 1970) and Max Weber [1922] (1968) posited a conflict view of the social world. Each argued that inequalities generate tensions that, under specifiable conditions, increase the probability (for Marx, a certainty) that subordinates in the system of inequality will become mobilized to engage in conflict with superordinates in an effort to redistribute resources. Marx and Weber presented a similar list of conditions: High levels of inequality, large discontinuities between classes, and low rates of social mobility across classes all set the stage for the emergence of leaders who would articulate a revolutionary ideology. Each added refinements to this general model, but they both saw inequality as potentially unleashing forces that lead subordinates to pursue conflict.

Conflict theorizing remained prominent for most of the twentieth century in Europe, but in the United States, it was recessive until the 1960s. Partly embolded by the European critique of functionalism and by the demise of McCarthyism in the United States as well as by protests against the Vietnam War, conflict theory supplanted functionalism as the dominant theoretical orientation by the 1970s, although today the conflict approach is so integrated into mainstream sociological theorizing that it no longer stands out as a distinctive approach. The essence of conflict theories is the recognition that social reality is organized around inequalities in the distribution of valued resources such as material wealth, power, and prestige and that these inequalities systematically generate tensions, which under specifiable conditions generate various forms of conflict between those who have and those who do not have these valued resources. At first, the conflict theory revival was used as a foil against the perceived conservative bias of functionalism, but over the decades as conflict theory prospered, it developed a number of distinctive variants.

Abstracted Marxism

The first variant of conflict theory sought to make the theory more abstract, drawing from Marx’s analysis of class conflict and extending it to all social systems where inequalities of authority exist (Dahrendorf 1959). This approach took what was useful from Marx, modified the Marxian model with ideas from Weber and Georg Simmel, and generated an abstract theory of conflict in all social systems. In the several versions of this abstracted Marxism (Dahrendorf 1959; Turner 1975), the conditions generating awareness among subordinates of their interests in changing the system inequality are delineated, and these follow from Marx but add the important proviso that the more organized are subordinates, the less likely they are to engage in violent conflict (instead, they will negotiate and compromise). Indeed, in contrast to Marx, these approaches argue that incipient organization, emerging ideologies, and early leadership will lead to open and often violent conflict, whereas high levels of political organization, clearly articulated ideologies, and established leaders lead to negotiation and compromise, a line of theoretical argument that goes against Marx but takes into account Weber’s [1922] (1968) and Simmel’s [1907] (1990) critiques of Marx.

Analytical Marxism

Another variant of Marxism is what Erik Olin Wright (1997) has termed analytical Marxism, an approach that incorporates many of the key ideas of Marxian theory on the dynamics of capitalism while trying to explain with an expanded set of concepts the problems in Marx’s approach, particularly (1) the failure of industrial societies to polarize, (2) the lack of revolutionary conflict in industrial societies, (3) the rise of the state as a source of employment (thus making problematic whether government workers are proletarians or state managers), (4) the expansion of the middle classes in industrial and postindustrial societies, (5) the contradictory class locations of individuals in industrial and post-industrial societies (as both workers and managers), (6) the multiple-class locations of many families (where one person is a manager or owner, while another is a wage worker), and (7) the blurring of class distinctions as some skilled blue-collar workers become high wage earners or even owners of highly profitable small businesses, while many white-collar workers become lower-wage proletarians in service industries.

These and other events that have gone against Marx’s predictions have troubled present-day Marxists (for a review, see Burawoy and Wright 2001), and so they have set about revitalizing Marxian theory to explain contemporary conditions. In Wright’s (1997) version of analytical Marxism, for example, a distinction between economic power (control of others and the ability to extract their economic surplus) and economic welfare (ratio of toil in work to leisure time), coupled with people’s “lived experiences” and contradictory class location, dramatically changes the nature of exploitation and, hence, individuals’ awareness of their interests and willingness to engage in collective organization. Moreover, the notion of “ownership” and “control” is broadened to include four basic types of assets: labor-power assets, capital assets (to invest in economic activity and extract surplus value), organizational assets (to manage and control others and thereby extract surplus), and skill or credential assets (to extract resources beyond the labor necessary to acquire skills and credentials). Depending on the nature and level of any of these assets for individuals and families, the rate of exploitation will vary, being highest among those who have only labor assets and lowest among those who have the other types of assets. Additionally, Wright has sought to account for the fact that the state employs a significant proportion of the workforce yet cannot be seen as part of the bourgeoisie. Here, Wright emphasizes a “state mode of production” made possible by the resources that come from taxes, tariffs, and fees; and from this mode of production comes conflicts between managers, who ally themselves with capitalists and political decision makers, on the one side, and government workers, who provide the actual services, on the other. These two classes of workers in government reveal conflicting class interests and, hence, increased potential for class conflict. In the end, Wright and other analytical Marxists work hard to retain the basic concern with emancipation of subordinates in Marx’s thinking while adjusting Marxian concepts to fit the reality of postindustrial societies.

World-Systems Theory

This approach retains many ideas from Marx on the dynamics of capitalism but shifts the unit of analysis from nation-state to systems of societies and globalization (Chase-Dunn 2001). Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) codified this mode of analysis, building on earlier work by dependency theorists (e.g., Frank 1969), into a conceptualization of world systems. One type of global system is a world empire revolving around conquest and extraction of resources from the conquered, which are then spent on elite privilege, control, and further conquest. Such systems eventually face fiscal crises, leading to showdown wars with other expanding empires. Of more interest to worldsystems theorists like Wallerstein is a world economy driven not only by war but also by the flow of capital and technology through world markets. Such world economies are composed of (1) “core states,” which have power, capital, and technology; (b) “peripheral states,” which have inexpensive labor, natural resources, and insufficient power to stop their conquest, colonization, and exploitation; and (c) “semiperipheral states,” having some economic development and military power, which, over time, can allow them to become part of the core. Thus, for world-systems theorists, the core is seen to exploit the periphery, frequently aided by the semiperiphery, with analysis emphasizing the economic cycles of varying duration (Juglar, Kuznet, and Kondratief cycles) and the flow of resources from periphery to core. From such exploitation, conflict within and between societies can emerge. There are many variants of world-systems theory, which adopt the broad strokes of Wallerstein’s approach but emphasize somewhat different dynamics. For example, Christopher Chase-Dunn (1998) introduces new variables, such as population growth, intensification of production and environmental degradation, and immigration and emigration processes, to world-system dynamics leading to conflict within and between nations (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997). Thus, Marxian ideas have been given new life by the shift to globalization.

Abstracted Weberianism

Just as Marx’s ideas have been abstracted and extended, so Weber’s analysis of conflict has been converted to more general and abstract theories of conflict. Randall Collins (1975, 1986), for example, has blended Weber’s analysis of domination with ideas from other theoretical traditions. Collins (1981) argues that macro-level social structures like organizations and stratification systems are built from micro-level interaction rituals that sustain class cultures, authority systems in organizations, and inequalities in resources. People carry varying levels of cultural capital, emotional energy, material wealth, prestige, and power; and they use these resources in face-to-face interaction, with those high in these resources generally able to dominate others and augment their shares of resources. True to his Weberian roots, Collins then analyzes the varying cultures of social classes, the power of the state, the ideologies used to legitimate state power, the economy, and even the geopolitics between nations in terms of the relative resources of actors. Those who receive deference because of their resources will have different cultures and orientations than those who must give deference; the nature of control in organizational systems will varying depending on the relative reliance on coercion, material resources, or symbolic resources; the scale of the state depends on a surplus of economic resources, the degree of consensus over symbols, and the ability to use resources to expand the administrative and coercive bases of power; and geopolitics will reflect the technological, productive, geographical, and military advantages of states. Thus, like Marx, Weber’s ideas stand at the core of new forms of conflict theorizing.

Historical-Comparative Analysis

The ideas of Marx and Weber are often combined in historical-comparative analysis of conflict processes. These analyses tend to focus on several classes of historical events, particularly the rise of democracies, revolutionary conflict, and empire formation and collapse. All of these theories focus on the state and the mobilization of masses (and often factions of elites) for conflict against the state. There are two lines of argument in these theories. One lists the conditions that lead masses and elites to mobilize for conflict against the state, while the other specifies the forces weakening the state’s power and its capacity to repress dissent and conflict (Li and Turner 1998). The first line of argument owes more inspiration to Marx, and to a lesser extent to Weber, while the second is more indebted to Weber than to Marx. Some adopt Marx’s ideas and extend them to nonindustrial societies, as is the case with Jeffrey Paige’s (1975) analysis of agrarian revolutions in which cultivators (agricultural workers) and noncultivators (owners of land and their allies in government) evidence a clear conflict of interest, with revolution most likely when cultivators can communicate, develop ideologies, and mobilize for collective action and when noncultivators do not enjoy large resource advantages over cultivators. Barrington Moore’s (1966) analysis of the rise of democracy employs an argument very similar to that developed by abstracted Marxian theories, emphasizing that subordinates can effectively engage in conflict when they live in propinquity, communicate, avoid competition with each other, and perceive that they are being exploited by elites who no longer honor traditional forms of relations with subordinates (primarily because of the effects of markets in breaking down traditional patterns of social relations). Charles Tilly (1978, 1993) similarly develops a model of resource mobilization that draws from Marx and Weber, emphasizing that when subordinates have been kept out of the political arena, when segments of elites have similarly been disenfranchised, and when the state has been weakened (due to fiscal crises, inefficient tax collection, and poor administration), mobilization for conflict is likely. Theda Skocpol’s (1979) analysis of revolution draws from Weber the effects of losing prestige in the world system, which comes with defeat in war, coupled with fiscal crises, which give subordinates opportunities to mobilize for conflict. Jack Goldstone (1991) introduces a demographic variable into these theories of revolutionary conflict, arguing that population growth will over the course of a century cause price inflation, displacement of peasants from the land, urban migrations, disaffection of some elites, and fiscal crises for the state. In turn, these lagged outcomes of population growth weaken the power of the state to repress mobilizations by peasants, migrations of restive peasants to urban areas, and disaffection of some elites. Finally, Randall Collins (1986) develops a Weber-inspired model of empire formation, arguing that expansion of empires increases when a society has a marchland advantage (natural barriers protecting its backside and flanks) and when, compared with its neighbors, it has a larger population, greater wealth, higher levels of productivity, more advanced technologies, and betterorganized armies. But, as the empire expands, it will eventually lose its marchland and military advantages (as enemies copy its technology) while increasing its logistical loads to sustain the empire. Eventually, an empire will have a showdown war with another empire, causing it to collapse and implode back to its original home base. As is evident, then, Marx and Weber’s theoretical legacy lives on in yet another theoretical venue, historical-comparative analysis of state and empire formation, revolutionary conflict, and war.

Critical Theorizing

From sociology’s very beginnings, thinkers have often argued that sociology could be used to reconstruct society. Comte, for example, viewed positivism as a means for creating a better society, but his approach as well as that of his followers, such as Spencer and Durkheim, was not sufficiently critical of the condition of early industrial societies. Instead, it was Marx’s critique of the evils of capitalism that pushed for a critical edge to theorizing, but as critical theorists in the early twentieth century sought to retain the emancipatory thrust of Marx’s ideas, they had to take into account Weber’s prediction that the state would increasingly dominate social relations through rational legal authority.

At the University of Frankfurt, early critical theorists like Max Horkheimer ([1947] 1972, [1947] 1974) and Theodor Adorno [1966] (1973) emphasized that critical theory must describe the social forces that work against human freedom and expose the ideological justifications of these forces. Theorists must confront each other, debating ideas, and from these debates “truth” will emerge, but this truth is not that of science but a practical knowledge that comes from human struggles against the forces of oppression. Others in the Frankfurt School, as it became known, took a more idealist turn. György Lukács [1922] (1968), for example, borrowed from Marx the idea of the “fetishism of commodities” and converted it into a notion of “reification” in which all objects, including people, become commodities to be marketed, whose worth is determined by their “exchange value,” another concept taken from Marx and Adam Smith ([1776] 1976). Lukács saw this process of reification to be an evolutionary trend, coming to a similar conclusion as Weber’s “steel cage” argument, but he proposed a way out: There are limits to how far human consciousness will tolerate reification, and so it is necessary to unlock this innate source of resistance to reification⎯a theoretical position that pushes critical theory into subjectivism.

Outside the Frankfurt School proper, critical theory also took a cultural turn. For example, in Italy, Antonio Gramsci [1928] (1971) returned to the early Marx, where the importance of ideology was emphasized in the critique of the Young Hegelians. For Gramsci, the power of the state is used to manipulate workers and others through the propagation of ideologies about civic culture that are seemingly inoffensive but that nonetheless become the dominant views of even those who are oppressed. Thus, workers come to believe in the appropriateness of markets, the commodification of objects and symbols, the buying and selling of labor as a commodity, the rule of law to enforce contracts unfavorable to workers, the encouragement of private charities (rather than structural reform) to eliminate suffering, the curriculum in schools, the state’s definition of a “good citizen,” and many other taken-forgranted beliefs of the oppressed population. Thus, the state controls a population not so much by a “steel cage” of repression and rational-legal domination as by a “soft” world of symbols that the oppressed accept as “natural and appropriate”⎯a more sophisticated version of Marx’s arguments about “false consciousness.” In France, Louis Althusser (1965) adopted a structuralist metaphor, seeing the individual as trapped in a “deeper” structural order dominated by the state, capitalist economic relations, and capitalist ideologies; and because people see this order as the way things must be, they do not perceive that they can escape from this structure. By failing to see the state and ideology as crude tools of power and by seeing self as subordinate to deep structures directing all social life, individuals come to believe that resistance to these oppressive structures is futile.

The tradition of the Frankfurt School has been carried forth by a number of scholars, the most notable being Jurgen Habermas (1981/1984), who begins by seeing science as one form of domination as the state propagates an ideology revolving around “technocratic consciousness.” Habermas develops a broad evolutionary view of human history, incorporating theoretical elements from many contemporary theoretical traditions, but the basic argument is that the “lifeworld” (an idea borrowed from phenomenology) is being “colonized” by the state and economy; as this process proceeds, people’s capacity for “communicative action” is reduced. For Habermas, communicative action is the process whereby meanings are formed, creating the lifeworld that is the principal means of integration for societies. As the lifeworld is colonized, the reproduction of the lifeworld is interrupted; and societal integration is maintained only by “delinguistified media” such as money and power. Habermas develops a larger philosophical scheme, but his arguments carry forth the legacy of the Frankfurt School.

Within the United States, the issues raised by the old and new Frankfurt School, and those outside Germany working with its legacy, have been less influential than the rise of a wide variety of more specific critical approaches. These critical approaches often borrow from Marx and philosophy, but they owe more inspiration to prominent social movements, particularly the civil rights and women’s movements. These theories are generally philosophical, often anti-science, and critical of the social relations and ideologies that oppress specific subpopulations, such as members of ethnic minorities, women, and workers. Over the last two decades, this line of theorizing, if it can be called theory proper, has gained a strong foothold not only in sociology but also in many other disciplines such as English. Just how successful these ideologically loaded “theories” will be in the next decades is an open question, although they are now well established throughout academia and thus have a resource base that can sustain them. The result is that the debate of earlier generations of sociologists over the prospects for scientific theorizing has taken on a new polemical intensity, exceeding by far the comparatively muted debates among the founding generation of sociologists over the prospects for scientific sociology.

Postmodern Theorizing

One of the most prominent new lines of theorizing in sociology is postmodernism, which, like critical theories, tends to be hostile to science (Lyotard 1979; Rorty 1979) and often takes a cultural turn from its Marxist origins. Economic postmodernism draws ideas not only from Marx but also from early theorists who were concerned about the “pathologies” of modernization, whereas cultural postmodernism emphasizes the increasing dominance of culture at the same time that symbols have become fragmented, commodified, and at times trivialized in ways that make individuals overly reflexive and unable to sustain a stable identity. Both economic and cultural postmodernists emphasize the dramatic transformations that come with global markets driven by capitalism; indeed, these transformations are so fundamental as to mark a new stage of human evolution: the postmodern.

Economic postmodernists stress particular dimensions of the transformation that come with globalization (Harvey 1989; Jameson 1984; Lash and Urry 1987). One point of emphasis is the effect of high volume, velocity, and global markets fueled by advertising. The result has been the commodification of objects, people, and, most important, cultural symbols that are ripped from their indigenous locations, commodified, and marketed across the globe. Marxist-oriented postmodernists, who often overlap with world-systems theorists, emphasize the rapid movement of capital over the world and its deconcentration from historical centers of capital. Advances in transportation and communication technology have also compressed time and space in ways that facilitate the flow not only of capital but also of goods, people, and symbols around the globe. Finally, economic postmodernists tend to emphasize the growing dominance of imaging technologies of reproduction over those for production.

Cultural postmodernists focus on the consequences of the transformations described by economic postmodernists (Baudrillard 1981/1994; Gergen 1991; Kellner 1995). The first significant consequence is the increasing dominance of culture and symbols over material structures. People increasingly live in a world of fragmented symbols, which has more impact on their identities and behaviors than material conditions. The increase in the power of culture is made possible by media technologies and markets that detach culture from local groups, local time, and local space and that send commodified cultural elements via media technologies or via markets around the global system. Indeed, humans live in a simulated world of symbolizations of symbols, viewed through the eyeglass of the media (Baudrillard 1981/1994). As a result of its detachment from its material base and free-floating signifiers, culture loses its capacity to provide stable meanings for individuals. As an outcome of this inability of culture to provide meanings and anchorage of individuals in local groups, self becomes more salient than group, leading to increased reflexivity about self in an endless loop of searching for meanings and for a true sense of self. Thus, at the very time that self is ascendant, it reveals less stability, coherence, and viability.

These themes in contemporary postmodern theory can all be found in the founding generations of sociologists. For example, Durkheim’s concern over anomie and egoism; Marx’s views on alienation; Simmel’s analysis of the marginal and fractured self; Smith’s, Comte’s, Spencer’s, and Durkheim’s concerns about the differentiation and fragmentation of society; Weber’s portrayal of rationalization and emphasis on efficiency over other types of action; Marx’s and the later critical theorists’view of the power of ideology; and many other “pathologies” of modern societies that early theorists emphasized have all been recast in postmodern theory. In a very real sense, then, postmodern theorizing represents an extension of the concerns of early theorists about the effects of modernization on society and humans. Yet much postmodern theory consists of conjectures that have not been seriously tested, although many postmodernists, particularly the cultural postmodernists, would consider empirical tests in the mode of science to impose a “failed epistemology” on their modes of inquiry. Moreover, a great deal of postmodern theory overlaps with critical theorizing because few consider the “postmodern condition” to be a good thing; thus, postmodernism is heavily ideological in critiquing the contemporary world, often assuming implicitly that human nature has somehow been violated.

Like critical theorizing, postmodern theory is part of a much larger intellectual and cultural movement that extends across disciplines as diverse as architecture, social sciences, and the humanities. Within sociology, it has enjoyed a strong following for the last two decades, although there are signs that cultural postmodernists are losing ground, with the economic postmodernists moving more squarely into Marxian-inspired world-systems analysis.

Interactionist Theorizing

Contemporary interactionist theorizing reveals a number of variants, each of which draws from a different theoretical tradition. Symbolic interactionism carries forth the pragmatist tradition synthesized by George Herbert Mead (1934); dramaturgical theory draws primarily from Durkheim’s ([1912] 1947) analysis of rituals; interaction ritual theory also draws from Durkheim and dramaturgy while introducing elements from other modern theories; ethnomethodology represents the modern application of phenomenology (Husserl [1913] 1969; Schütz [1932] 1967), coupled with elements from other traditions; and there are several efforts to develop syntheses among all these strands of theorizing about face-to-face interaction.

Symbolic Interactionism

The ideas of Mead have been applied to a wide variety of topics, from roles (Turner 1968) and identity processes (McCall and Simmons 1978; Stryker 1980, 2001) through the sociology of emotions (Burke 1991; Heise 1979; Scheff 1988) to theories of collective behavior (Snow and Benford 1988; Turner and Killian 1987). The basic argument is that social reality is ultimately constructed from face-to-face interactions among individuals who communicate symbolically, develop definitions of situations, draw on cultural resources, play roles, and seek to verify self and identity (Blumer 1969). Identity theories are perhaps the most prominent theoretical wing of interactionist theory today (for recent statements by various theorists, see Burke 2006; Burke et al. 2003). Here, theorists view more global self-conceptions and situational role identities as a cybernetic control system, with individuals presenting gestures so as to get others to verify their self and identity. These theories also overlap with theories of emotions, since verification of self arouses positive emotions, whereas failure to verify self generates negative emotional arousal and leads to adjustments in behaviors or identities that bring identity, behavior, and responses of others into line. Some versions of symbolic interactionism extend these Gestalt dynamics not only to person but also to others, the identity of others, and the situation, with individuals seen as motivated to keep sentiments about these aspects of interaction consistent with each other (Heise 1979; Smith-Lovin and Heise 1988). As noted earlier, another set of symbolic interactionist theories incorporates Freudian dynamics to explain the activation of defense mechanisms when self and identity are not confirmed or when individuals fail to realize expectations or experience negative sanctions (Scheff 1988; J. Turner 2002). Role theory has also been influenced by symbolic interactionism, with each individual reading the gestures of others to determine the latter’s role and with individuals also seeking to have others verify their roles and the self and identity presented in these roles (R. Turner 2001). Theories of collective behavior and social movements also adopt symbolic interactionists ideas, emphasizing the collective contagion and emotional arousal of crowd behaviors and the processes by which members of social movements frame situations in ways that direct collective actions (Snow and Benford 1988).

Dramaturgical Theories

Erving Goffman (1959, 1967) was the first to downsize Durkheim’s ([1912] 1947) analysis of rituals and emotions as the basis of social solidarity in the most elemental social unit, the encounter, or episode of interaction. While Goffman was often seen as a symbolic interactionist, he was a Durkheimian who emphasized the importance of the cultural script, the dramatic presentations of self to an audience, and the strategic behaviors that individuals employ in presenting self on a stage in which props, sets, space and ecology, and interpersonal demography are employed to make a dramatic presentation and to realize strategic goals. In contrast to most symbolic interactionists, dramaturgy views self as purely situational and as something that individuals “put on” in presenting a “line” or in strategic acts of “impression management.” Thus, in addition to the use of the front stage to manage a line, forms of talk, use of rituals, presentations of roles, and keying of frames (of what is to be included and excluded from the interaction) are all synchronized to present self in a particular light and to achieve strategic ends.

Interaction Ritual Theorizing

Randall Collins (2004) has extended Durkheim’s and Goffman’s analysis to a more general theory of ritual. For Collins, the elements of what Goffman termed the “encounter” constitute a more inclusive ritual where individuals reveal a focus of attention, common mood, rhythmic synchronization of bodies and talk, symbolization of the positive emotional energy from rhythmic synchronization, and enhanced solidarity. When these elements of the ritual do not unfold, however, negative emotional energy is aroused, and solidarity becomes more problematic. Unlike most interactionists, Collins does not see self as a critical motivational force in these rituals. Moreover, he tries to develop a more general theory of meso and macro structures using interaction rituals as the “micro foundation” of all social structures (Collins 1981). More recent theories (Summer-Effler 2002, 2004a, 2004b) in this tradition have blended more symbolic interactionist elements into interaction ritual theory by expanding the analysis of emotions and introducing self and identity as key forces.

Ethnomethodology

Ethnomethodology emphasizes the methods or interpersonal techniques, especially in talk and conversation, that individuals employ to construct, maintain, or change their presumptions about what they share. This basic idea is adopted from phenomenology, a philosophical tradition (e.g., Husserl [1913] 1969) given a sociological character by Alfred Schütz ([1932] 1967). For Schütz, much interaction involves signaling to others not to question the presumption that parties to an interaction share a common view of reality. For ethnomethodologists, the gestures and signals that individuals exchange are “indexical” in that they have meaning only in particular contexts; and these signs are used to construct a sense of common meaning among individuals. Most ethnomethodological research examines finely coded transcripts of conversations to determine the ethno or folk methods that individuals employ to create or sustain a sense of reality. For example, turn-taking in conversations, gestures searching for a normal conversational form, ignoring gestures that may disconfirm reciprocity of perspectives, patterns of overlaps in conversations, allowing ambiguities in meanings to pass, or repairing in subsequent turns minor misunderstandings are all techniques that individuals employ to create and sustain the sense that they share a common intersubjective world (Garfinkel 1967; Sacks 1992; Schegloff 2001). The data presented by ethnomethodologists have been adopted by other theories, but unfortunately, the theoretical arguments of ethnomethodology appear to have taken a backseat to empirical analyses of conversations, often moving ethnomethodology into some version of linguistics.

Integrative Approaches

All of the above theoretical approaches involved some integration of both classic and contemporary theories. But some contemporary theorists have sought to develop more general and robust theories of interpersonal processes by integrating concepts and propositions from a variety of interactionist theories. Jonathan Turner (2002), for example, has blended elements from symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, interaction ritual theory, the sociology of emotions, role theory, expectation states theory, and ethnomethodology into a view of encounters as driven fundamental forces: emotions, transactional needs, symbols, status, roles, demography, and ecology. Yet relatively few theories are as integrative as Turner’s efforts; most microsociology tends to remain narrow in focus, producing a delimited set of generalizations and data sets designed to test these generalizations.

Exchange Theorizing

Exchange theory draws from both the behaviorist tradition of Edward Thorndike, Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson (1913), and B. F. Skinner (1938) and the utilitarian tradition of the Scottish moralists. The basic argument is that individuals seek to gain profits in exchanges of resources with others, with profit being a function of the resources received, less the costs and investments spent in seeking these resources. All exchanges are also mediated by norms of fair exchange and justice, with the most prevalent norm of justice emphasizing equity or the distribution of rewards in proportion to relative costs and investments among actors. However, all exchange theories introduce the notion of power, in which one actor has the capacity to receive more rewards than others. Power is typically defined as the dependence of other actors on a powerful actor for valued resources, and the greater is the dependence of actors, the greater is the power of resource-holders over them.

Over the last four decades, exchange analysis has ventured into other areas of theorizing. Initially, exchange theory and network analysis were combined to understand the dynamics of networks in terms of the exchange dynamics that arise from power dependence (Cook and Rice 2001). The general finding is that power-advantaged actors use their advantage to exploit dependent actors by demanding additional resources. Under these conditions, dependent actors will seek other exchange partners, leave the exchange, learn to do without resources, or introduce new resources into the exchange that are highly valued by the previously advantaged actor (thus creating mutual dependence). Other findings emphasize that actors will develop commitments to exchanges, or engage in suboptimal exchanges, in return for certainty of exchange payoffs.

Another area where exchange theory has more recently penetrated is the sociology of emotions, in which powerdependence processes and network structures are analyzed in terms of the emotions that are aroused during the process of exchange (Lawler 2001). From theory and research, several generalizations emerge (Turner and Stets 2005). When payoffs are profitable and meted out in accordance with the norms of justice, positive emotions are aroused, whereas when payoffs are unprofitable, below expectations, and violate the norms of justice, negative emotions are aroused. If individuals are over-rewarded or their over-reward leads to unfair under-reward for others, they will experience guilt. Positive rewards in negotiated and reciprocal exchanges reveal a proximal bias in attributions (leading to feelings of pride), while negative rewards or under-rewards in such exchanges evidence a distal bias (arousing anger toward others, the situation, or group). High-power individuals are more likely to make selfattributions for success in profitable exchanges and external attributions for under-rewards than are low-power actors. The more profits are received in dense networks engaged in coordinated actions, the more likely are positive exchange outcomes to cause actors to make external attributions to the group, and the more they will become attached to the group. These and other generalizations document that exchange theories are becoming integrative, crossing over into other areas of theory and research in sociology.

Structuralist Theory

All sociologists study social structures, but structuralist theorizing in sociology has special connotations. There are, in essence, two branches of structuralist theorizing, both of which derive considerable inspiration from Durkheimian sociology. One branch emphasizes material conditions as influencing the nature of social relations among individuals and collective actors. Marx, Georg Simmel, and especially the early Durkheim all agreed that structure is a set of connections among parts, with the goal of theorizing being to discover the cause of these connections and their dynamic properties. The other branch of structuralism seeks to discover the “deep structures” or “generative rules” guiding the formation of culture systems and social structural arrangements. What is observable empirically is seen as a surface manifestation of a deeper underlying system of generative rules and, in some theorists’ minds (e.g., Lévi-Strauss [1958] 1963, 1979), rules directed by the neurology of the human brain.

The materialist version of structural analysis can be found in any theory that tries to explain the properties of social relations. One of the more prominent approaches in this tradition is network analysis, which views structures as nodes connected by relationships involving the flow of resources. In network theory, the form of the relationship is critical because different forms will reveal varying dynamic properties (for a review, see Turner 2002). The structuralism that also comes from Durkheim, via structural linguistics (de Saussure [1915] 1966; Jakobson 1962–1971) and structural anthropology, has inspired a revival of cultural sociology, even though some theories oftentimes see structure as being generated by the biology of the brain. But structuralism inspired a new concern with cultural codes and the practices that carry these codes to situations and that change or reinforce them. The structuralism movement enjoyed a certain cache during the 1970s and 1980s, but by the turn into the twenty-first century, the interests of structuralists had been incorporated into the “cultural turn” of sociological theorizing. The more materialist versions of structural analysis continue, as they always have, in a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, although network analysis⎯the most formal of these materialist approaches⎯has become ever more concerned with computer algorithms for describing rather than explaining network structures.

The Cultural Turn in Sociological Theory

Over the last decades of the twentieth century, sociological theory has taken a cultural turn. There were, of course, classical antecedents to this turn, but all of them tended to see culture as a dependent variable, as something that is shaped by social structural arrangements. For Marx, culture is a “superstructure” driven by the material “substructure”; for Durkheim, the collective conscience is related to the nature, number, and relationships among system parts, although his work did inspire cultural structuralism; and for the modern functionalists, culture is conceptualized in highly analytical terms as a system composed of abstract elements such as value orientations. Only Weber ([1905] 1958) appeared to emphasize culture as a causal force, as illustrated by his analysis of the Protestant Ethnic and the rise of capitalism (although his analysis in terms of ideal types tended to reduce the culture of Protestantism and capitalism to a few analytical elements). As we saw, the critical theories of the Frankfurt School and others in this tradition like Gramsci often migrated to the analysis of ideologies, but again, culture was always connected to material and political interests. And during the 1960s, as Marxism and conflict sociology reemerged in the United States, culture was once again seen as an ideology reflecting the material interests of contending groups.

Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith (2001) have termed most sociological analyses of culture a “weak program” because culture is not explored as an autonomous system but, instead, as a dependent variable or superstructure to material conditions. They even criticize work that focuses explicitly on culture, including the Birmingham School’s analysis of symbols in terms of Marxian structural categories, the efforts of Pierre Bourdieu (1977) to understand “habitus” and its connection to material conditions, and the works of poststructuralists like Michel Foucault (1972), whose “archeology” of knowledge ultimately uncovers the effects of power on culture. Similar cultural programs, such as Wuthnow’s (1987) analysis of the moral order, are seen to emphasize the connection between the moral order and the material resource bases generated by wealth, leadership communication networks, political authority, and other structural properties. Likewise, Michèle Lamont’s (1999) analysis of culture as marking group boundaries is viewed as explaining culture by its attachment to stratification and economic systems.

In contrast to these “weak programs,” Alexander and Smith (2001) propose a “strong program” where culture is treated initially as an autonomous sphere with deep textual analysis of its symbols in their specific context. Both the weak and strong programs emphasize cultural codes, discursive practices by which these codes are used, rituals directed at the code, and the objects denoted by codes, discourse, and rituals, but the strong program avoids connecting cultural analysis to material conditions, as least until the full exploration of the cultural codes has been completed. For example, Alexander’s (2004) strong program of “cultural pragmatics” emphasizes that there are deep background “representations” that generate “scripts” and “texts” that actors decode and interpret; and these need to be analyzed before they are connected to individuals’ actions in front of audiences. Although power and productive relations influence how actors extend culture to audiences through ritual performances, the elements of culture need to be analytically separated from their structural contexts, and their scripts and texts need to be thickly described. Only then can they be reattached to ritual, social structure, and audience to explain ritual practices and audience reactions. And as actors extend culture to audiences, they experience cathexis, which, in turn, influences the nature of the texts, discourse, and rituals.

Whatever the merits of these kinds of arguments, it is clear that cultural sociology has made an enormous comeback over the last decade of the twentieth century, and indeed, theorizing about culture is becoming as prominent in the first decade of this century as conceptualizations of material conditions were at the height of conflict theory in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, for all the emphasis on thick description of texts, most analyses eventually become highly analytical, abstracting from these texts particular sets of codes that, in turn, are attached to material conditions.

Problems and Prospects for Sociological Theory in the 21st Century

The decline of grand theory when it is most needed.

At the very time when sociological theory has differentiated into a variety of approaches, general and integrative theorizing has declined. All of the early theorists, especially Spencer, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, were generalists who sought to explain a wide range of phenomena across long reaches of history. Functional theory in the modern era, particularly that practiced by Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, was also grand, but with the demise of these versions of grand theory, such theorizing fell out of favor and has been replaced by narrower theories confined to one level of analysis and held in check by scope conditions. Relatively few theories today seek to explain all phenomena at the micro, meso, and macro levels. There are some exceptions, however. For example, Anthony Giddens’s (1984) structuration theory is grand in the sense that it attempts to explain all levels of reality, although his scheme is more of a conceptual framework for describing a wide range of empirical cases. Jonathan Turner’s (1995, 2002) efforts of theorizing approximate a grand approach because he consciously seeks to integrate existing theories at all levels of social reality. Randall Collins’s (1975, 2004) interaction ritual theory is another approach that seeks to explain reality at the micro, meso, and macro levels. Still, most theorists shy away from this kind of integrative effort, at the very time that sociological theory is fragmenting into diverse and often hostile camps. In the future, it will be necessary for more integrative and, indeed, grand approaches to make a comeback if sociological theory is to reveal any coherence in the twenty-first century.

The Continuing Debate over Science

From the beginning, sociologists have debated the prospects for scientific sociology resembling that in the natural sciences. The founders were split, with Comte, Spencer, Simmel, and Durkheim pushing for scientific sociology, while Marx and Weber had doubts about the prospects for universal laws that could explain reality at all times and in all places. This split over the prospects for scientific sociology continued through the whole of the twentieth century and divides sociological theory (Turner and Turner 1990).

There are those who wish to perform rigorous analytical work but who view a sociology that apes the natural sciences as impossible; there are those who see the epistemology of the natural sciences as not only impossible but as a tool of repression; there are still others who see science as proposing grand narratives when the world does not reveal such an obdurate character; there are many who seek sociology as an art form or as a clinical field in which investigators use their intuiting to solve problems; and there are many who argue that sociology should be explicitly ideological, seeking to change the world. There is, then, a rather large collection of anti-scientists within sociology, especially sociological theory.

The end result is that scientific sociology is not accepted by many sociologists. Yet an enormous amount of theoretical growth and accumulation of knowledge has occurred over the last four decades, at the very time when many were having doubts about the appropriateness or possibility of a natural science of society. Thus, much of the new scientific understanding about the dynamics of the social world is ignored or viewed with hostility by those who have other agendas. Indeed, should sociology ever have its Einstein, only a few would take notice.

Chauvinism and Intolerance

Even among those who are committed to the epistemology of science, there is both chauvinism and intolerance. Some proclaim that certain processes occurring at a particular level of reality are the key properties and processes of the social universe, while being dismissive of those who think otherwise. And among those who do not believe that science is possible or even desirable, there is a smug condescension that is equally dismissive. For the former, theory becomes narrow and focused, building up barriers to other theoretical approaches, while for the latter group, theory becomes anything and everything⎯ideology, practice, philosophizing, textual analysis, moral crusading, critique, and virtually any activity. In being anything and everything, it becomes nothing in the sense of accumulating knowledge about the social world. Social theory, when not disciplined by the epistemology of science, becomes driven by intellectual fads and foibles, constantly changing with new social, cultural, and intellectual movements but never establishing a base of knowledge.

Conclusions

This summary cannot really do justice to the diversity of activity that occurs under the rubrics of “social” and, more narrowly, “sociological” theory. Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall, split into so many pieces that even grand theorists may never be able to put him back together again. In one sense, the proliferation of theories is a sign of vitality, especially among those narrow theories that seek to develop cumulative knowledge. But it is also an indicator of weakness because at some point, sociological theory will need to develop a more integrated set of principles and models about social reality. This effort is hindered by those who simply do not accept the epistemology of science. As a result, efforts to integrate theories will often be sidetracked by debate and acrimony as factions become intolerant of each other. As a consequence, at a time when enormous progress has been made in denoting the basic properties of the social universe, in developing abstract models and principles on the operative dynamics of these properties, and in assessing these theories with systematically collected data, it is not clear how many sociologists are listening. Fifty years ago, it seemed that sociology was ready to take its place at the table of science; today, this prospect seems more remote, despite the fact that sociology is far more sophisticated theoretically than five decades ago. Thus, as we move toward the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, it is not clear just what the prospects for sociological theory will be. Will the scientists prevail? Will the anti-science factions win out? Or will the fight continue for another 100 years? Realistically speaking, this last prognosis is the most likely scenario.

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A-level Sociology (AQA) Revision Notes

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, Ph.D., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years experience of working in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

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Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Revision guide for AQA A-Level (7192) and AS-Level Sociology (7191), including straightforward study notes, independent study booklets, and past paper questions and answers. Fully updated for the summer 2021 term.

Download Past Paper Questions With Answers

Thanks to the Hectic Teacher for allowing us to link to these resources:

Paper 1: Education with Methods in Context

  • Study Booklet Part 1
  • Study Booklet Part 2
  • Study Booklet Part 3
  • Complete Revision Notes
  • Short Questions and Answers
  • the role and functions of the education system, including its relationship to the economy and to class structure
  • differential educational achievement of social groups by social class, gender and ethnicity in contemporary society
  • relationships and processes within schools, with particular reference to teacher/pupil relationships, pupil identities and subcultures, the hidden curriculum, and the organisation of teaching and learning
  • the significance of educational policies, including policies of selection, marketisation and privatisation, and policies to achieve greater equality of opportunity or outcome, for an understanding of the structure, role, impact and experience of and access to education; the impact of globalisation on educational policy.

Methods in Context

  • Students must be able to apply sociological research methods to the study of education.

Paper 2: Research Methods and Topics in Sociology

Research methods, topic 2: families and households, topic 5: beliefs in society, topic 6: global development.

  • Revision Notes
  • Knowledge Organiser
  • quantitative and qualitative methods of research; research design
  • sources of data, including questionnaires, interviews, participant and non-participant observation, experiments, documents and official statistics
  • the distinction between primary and secondary data, and between quantitative and qualitative data
  • the relationship between positivism, interpretivism and sociological methods; the nature of ‘social facts’
  • the theoretical, practical and ethical considerations influencing choice of topic, choice of method(s) and the conduct of research
  • the relationship of the family to the social structure and social change, with particular reference to the economy and to state policies
  • changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, separation, divorce, childbearing and the life course, including the sociology of personal life, and the diversity of contemporary family and household structures
  • gender roles, domestic labour and power relationships within the family in contemporary society
  • the nature of childhood, and changes in the status of children in the family and society
  • demographic trends in the United Kingdom since 1900: birth rates, death rates, family size, life expectancy, ageing population, and migration and globalisation
  • ideology, science and religion, including both Christian and non-Christian religious traditions
  • the relationship between social change and social stability, and religious beliefs, practices and organisations
  • religious organisations, including cults, sects, denominations, churches and New Age movements, and their relationship to religious and spiritual belief and practice
  • the relationship between different social groups and religious/spiritual organisations and movements, beliefs and practices
  • the significance of religion and religiosity in the contemporary world, including the nature and extent of secularisation in a global context, and globalisation and the spread of religions
  • development, underdevelopment and global inequality
  • globalisation and its influence on the cultural, political and economic relationships between societies
  • the role of transnational corporations, non-governmental organisations and international agencies in local and global strategies for development
  • development in relation to aid and trade, industrialisation, urbanisation, the environment, and war and conflict
  • employment, education, health, demographic change and gender as aspects of development

Crime and Deviance

  • Study Booklet Part 4
  • Example Essays

Theory and Methods

  • Independent Study Booklet Part 1
  • Independent Study Booklet Part 2
  • Methods Flash Cards
  • Theory Flash Cards
  • crime, deviance, social order and social control
  • the social distribution of crime and deviance by ethnicity, gender and social class, including recent patterns and trends in crime
  • globalisation and crime in contemporary society; the media and crime; green crime; human rights and state crimes
  • crime control, surveillance, prevention and punishment, victims, and the role of the criminal justice system and other agencies
  • consensus, conflict, structural and social action theories
  • the concepts of modernity and post-modernity in relation to sociological theory
  • the nature of science and the extent to which Sociology can be regarded as scientific
  • the relationship between theory and methods
  • debates about subjectivity, objectivity and val
  • the relationship between Sociology and social policy

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ao3 in sociology a-level.

AO3 is an assessment objective for analysing and evaluating sociological theories, concepts, evidence and research methods in order to present arguments, make judgements and reach conclusions.

Examples of AO3 points include:

  • Evaluate from other PERSPECTIVES – What would other perspectives say about the theory / concept? Is there a counter-argument?
  • Evaluate – HISTORICAL CRITICISM – Is the theory/ concept dated? When was the concept developed? Is it still relevant today, or has society changed so much that it is no longer relevant? Has society changed in such a way that some aspects of the theory are now more relevant?
  • Evalaute – POWER/ BIAS/ VALUE FREEDOM? Who developed the concept/ theory – whose interests does it serve? For example, “x” theor is ethnocentric because….

What is the fastest way to revise sociology?

There is no great mystery about how to study for sociology A-level. Many students, although they’re not naturally that ‘academic’ still score A and A* grades through sheer hard work, focus and determination.

Before you start you need to satisfy yourself that you have good syllabus notes to work from. Although most textbooks are fine in places they have a tendency to either not give enough detail on certain topics or give too much information (which can be just as bad).

As long as you have great syllabus notes and lots of past paper questions the rest is really up to you. If you want to score an A* or A grade you need to act like someone who’s going to score these grades.

You are competing against people who are going to put in a hell of a lot of hard work so you need to work as hard as or harder than them. And you need to think about what hard work really is.

What are the most effective ways of revising subject knowledge?

  • Ask “How” and “Why” questions  when revising and try to connect ideas (this method is called “elaboration”)
  • No cramming . Distribute your revision over time and use a spaced system of repetition
  • Switch topics regularly  when revising (this is called “ interleaving ” and it will help you to identify connections between different topics)
  • Words and visuals . Combine words and visual representations to create two ways of remembering key ideas (this is called “dual coding”)
  • Teachers! Students! Please get in touch if you have any A-level sociology notes you would like to share. We would really like to cover all 8 topics for paper 2.
  • Please contact us via email [email protected] .

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  3. Research Paper Sociology Virenkumar Khobragade

  4. Class 12th Paper Sociology # UP Board Exam 2024#

  5. #Sociology #Research |Steps in social research| Literature Review

  6. Sociology question paper 2024 || BA 1st semester sociology question paper 2023-24

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  1. Sociological Research Online: Sage Journals

    Call for papers. 30th Anniversary Special Issue Call for Papers - become a part of our history and future! Deadline: 30 November 2023. Find out more via the link below. This peer-reviewed journal publishes high-quality research in applied sociology, focusing on theoretical, empirical and methodological discussions which engage ...

  2. American Journal of Sociology on JSTOR

    Current issues are now on the Chicago Journals website. Read the latest issue. Established in 1895 as the first US scholarly journal in its field, the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) presents pathbreaking work from all areas of sociology, with an emphasis on theory building and innovative methods.AJS strives to speak to the general sociology reader and is open to contributions from across ...

  3. Sociology

    Faced with data restrictions and harassment, researchers are mapping out fresh approaches to studying social media's political reach. Heidi Ledford. News 31 Jan 2024 Nature. Volume: 626, P: 463-464.

  4. Journal of Sociology: Sage Journals

    Journal of Sociology features high quality sociological scholarship in all its forms. We are dedicated to showcasing theory as well as applied sociology, quantitative and qualitative research. Interdisciplinary pieces are welcome, as are submissions … | View full journal description. This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication ...

  5. PDF Writing for Sociology Guide

    response papers to essay exams to full-edged research papers. We ask you to write because we want you to learn a skill that you will need in the fu-ture, whether you decide to become an activist or an attorney, a professor or a physician, a social worker or a software engineer. We also ask you to write

  6. PDF A Guide for Junior Papers and Senior Theses

    This pdf document provides a comprehensive guide for sociology students who are writing junior papers or senior theses at Princeton University. It covers topics such as choosing a research question, conducting literature review, designing methods, analyzing data, and presenting results. It also offers tips on writing style, citation, and formatting.

  7. High Impact Sociology Research

    High Impact Sociology Research. Oxford University Press publishes a portfolio of leading Sociology journals. To keep up to date with the latest research your peers are reading and citing, browse our selection of high impact articles on a diverse breadth of topics below. All articles are freely available to read, download, and enjoy until May 2023.

  8. The current phase of social sciences research: A thematic overview of

    The present paper expanded and updated the literature and proposed bringing the resources available to the social science researchers to enhance research outcomes. Overall, the paper recommends continuous strives for tools, and process enhancement and a demonstration of integrity by the stakeholders in SSR conduct to achieve field acceptance.

  9. How to Write Sociology Papers

    Select a topic early. Start thinking about topics as soon as the paper is assigned and get approval of your topic choice from the professor before starting the research on the paper. When choosing a topic, think critically. Remember that writing a good sociology paper starts with asking a good sociological question. 2.

  10. Sociology Research Papers

    Drawing on empirical data from two recent research studies in post-Apartheid South Africa, this paper asks what it means to be poor, young and black, and belong in a society that has suffered debilitating and dehumanising racial subjugation, actively excluding people from citizenship, and how poverty serves to perpetuate this exclusion.

  11. 2.2 Research Methods

    Recall the 6 Steps of the Scientific Method. Differentiate between four kinds of research methods: surveys, field research, experiments, and secondary data analysis. Explain the appropriateness of specific research approaches for specific topics. Sociologists examine the social world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study ...

  12. Sociology Research Paper

    Sociology Research Paper. This sample sociology research paper features: 10800 words (approx. 36 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 59 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers ...

  13. Sociology with Sage

    TEACH RESEARCH PUBLISH Whether you're preparing to teach a course, conducting research, or looking to publish your next research paper, Sociology at Sage provides top-quality, easy-to-access materials to help you make the best use of your time and excel in your field. As a global independent publisher, we are at the forefront of research and scholarship, marked by our

  14. 2.1 Approaches to Sociological Research

    Describe the differences in accuracy, reliability and validity in a research study. When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behavior is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in.

  15. The Relevance of Inequality Research in Sociology for Inequality

    The breadth of inequality research in sociology—even American-focused research—is too great to be covered in a single article. ... Papers in the Annual Review of Sociology that involve inequality should routinely see as their mission a description of recent work that bridges between descriptive and explanatory research on the one hand and ...

  16. Research Methods in Sociology

    Four main primary research methods. For the purposes of A-level sociology there are four major primary research methods. social surveys (typically questionnaires) experiments. interviews. participant observation. I have also included in this section longitudinal studies and ethnographies/ case studies.

  17. (PDF) Sociological Theory and Practice: Introduction

    Sociological Theory and Practice. July 2021. Olayinka Akanle. A.O. Olutayo. Sociological theory is a central and fundamental element of Sociology. While arguments about continued relevance of ...

  18. Research Articles in Sociology: Variation within the Discipline

    to describe a phenomenon within a social group or to evaluate a member of a group. Between has a similar function, but. as opposed to among. oscillations. In sociology RAs, among between. spatial ...

  19. Research Guides: Sociology: APA (7th ed.) resources

    Learn about Sociology resources and access peer-reviewed articles and individual Sociology journals, APA resources, and more. ... APA 7th edition recognizes two kinds of paper formats - student papers (undergraduate students) and professional research papers (graduate students and professionals). At Clackamas CC, you will use the student paper ...

  20. 70 Excellent Sociology Research Paper Topics for You

    70 Catchy Sociology Research Paper Topics That Really Stand Out. If you are taking sociology in college, you will agree that it is one of the fascinating subjects because it involves dealing with things that define and affect people, such as cultures, customs, and how people's ways of life change. Despite being an enthralling subject, many ...

  21. Sociology Research Paper on Sociological Theory

    This sample sociology research paper on sociological theory features: 12600 words (approx. 42 pages) and a bibliography with 127 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help.

  22. A-level Sociology (AQA) Revision Notes

    On This Page: Revision guide for AQA A-Level (7192) and AS-Level Sociology (7191), including straightforward study notes, independent study booklets, and past paper questions and answers. Fully updated for the summer 2021 term. Thanks to the Hectic Teacher for allowing us to link to these resources:

  23. Research_and_Reflection_Paper_on_Literacy_Development1

    Sociology. Research and Reflection Paper on Literacy Development 2 One of the foundational theories on the development of literacy I research was the connectionist theory. This theory used proponents of the part-to-whole theory declare that literacy knowledge that is built on a sequence of skills and experiences.