Week 3 blog - Sociological Theory and Culture / by So Jeong Yeon (연소정)

1. Summary

  

◾ Sociological Theory

   

  

In this week’s lecture, we learned about prominent sociological theories such as Structural-Functionalism, Conflict Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, Exchange theory, Feminist Theory and so on.

 

Structural-Functionalism is a sociological theory that focuses on the ways social institutions meet social needs. This theory stresses on ‘social cohesion and stability.’ Conversely, Conflict theory focuses on ‘conflict and change.’ This theory argues that society is best understood as a competition, not as a system for equilibrium and solidarity. Symbolic Interactionism is a theory that argues human action and interaction are understandable through ‘the exchange of communication and symbols.’ It focuses on the micro world, such as interactions of individual people. Exchange theory argues that human acts based on cost-benefit analysis because humans are rational. Finally, Feminist theory is a theory that is concerned with the treatment of women and women’s experience of inequality. 

 

 

 

 
◾ Culture

 

 

We also learned about Culture in sociological perspective. We can define culture as systems of symbols that humans create and use to guide behavior and patterns of social organization. In that regard, we looked at Symbols, Status Symbols and Values, Beliefs, and Norms which are major elements of culture. It is difficult to tell values and norms apart but I got to know the difference of them through this lecture.

 

 

 

2. Interesting items

 

  
There was an interesting question in this lecture when we learned about language and technology which are key systems of symbols. The question is “Can we think of any examples how technology has changed our culture?” I want to think carefully about this question.

 

 

The advent of Social Network Service(SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter changes our culture dramatically. We can make many new friends including a foreign friend easily through SNS. It is not a one-to-one meeting any more. We can also know each other's lives in real time by seeing a posted picture and video. However, while it is possible to meet people on the Internet, SNS is somehow triggering superficial relationships among people. In addition, this brings up many privacy issues.

       

 

3. My opinion of debated topic

 

 

We debated about two questions - “Compared to world average, Korean people are not very religious, value hard work, vlaue material, physical well being over more spiritual well being. Would you agree?” and “Can we think of examples of cultures that were not tolerated in Korea in the past but became accepted in recent years?”  

Among those questions, l’d like to talk about the second one in more detail in this post.

 

Q. Can we think of examples of cultures that were not tolerated in Korea in the past but became accepted in recent years?

In the past, women were not allowed to wear a miniskirt and wander around late at night(applied to men). In addition, woman couldn’t eat together with man at the table. Sadly, they were also not allowed to learn to read, write and go to school. But, nowadays woman can do all of them. Some cultures that were no tolerated in Korea became accepted in recent years. These changes are related to “the enhancement of woman's rights.”