What is sociological Perspective?
What is
sociological Perspective?
By: Mahmudul Hasan Laskar, Assistant
Prof. Dept. of Sociology,
University of Science and
Technology, Meghalaya
Often the word perspective
is uttered to mean one’s own view point. But this is not the right use of the
term perspective in sociology or in any social sciences. Perspective is
distinct from opinion or view point. Opinion or view point is mere expression
of one’s stand on any issue. But perspective is more than just opinion or view.
Perspective is a set of
scientifically derived principles from both abstract and concrete notion of
view point. These principles supposed to have well acquaintance with the empirical
reality.
The set of principles has to
be introduced scientifically and must garner intellectual acceptance in the
practice of respective fields of study. The principles are not just developed
from concrete reality rather derived from blend of empirical experience and the
abstract thinking and imagination of the concern thinker.
Sociological Perspective
means set of principles uses to build thought over the concern issue of society
with the aim of exploring the law behind very existence of society. Existence
of society lies on social structure, social systems and agent-agency
(actor-action), which are abstract entities with concrete instantiations and
whose real essence can only be grasped if we employ sociological perspectives. Term
“sociological” here implies the perspective that either developed the sociology
or perspectives that produced by the sociology. In most cases, it is seen that
various perspectives collectively formed sociology as discipline. But a common
aspect over which the perspectives blended into sociology is societal analysis
of social structure, social systems, actor and action. It is not a research
method rather a guiding mechanism of employing method or methods.
For instance, positivism
developed as perspective of viewing society then in Comte’s time and eventually
germinated the sociology as independent discipline.
Positivism as perspective is
a set of principles Comte developed by assuming the similarity of social world
with that of natural world and by effort of viewing society objectively. Similarly
functionalism appeared as dominant sociological perspective because it
presented a societal analysis of the functions of various parts of society,
social order, integration and social equilibrium. It conceptualized human
action as the response of societal forces and described society as external to
individual.
On the other hand
Phenomenology in sociology brought a revolution in thinking about the
individual action and society’s existence. Phenomenology, actually a branch of philosophy
adopted a societal dimension through the works of Edmund Husserl and Alfred
Schutz. Phenomenology advocated for analysing individual action as the
subjective exercise and considering society as mere product of human action. Most
contemporary sociological perspective is Anthony Giddens’s Structuration, which
tried to integrate both societal and individualistic analysis. It is a bridge
between those perspectives which focuses on social structure only and that of
those perspectives which focuses on individual action and interaction only.
These are just few examples
mentioned to make it clear what sociological perspective is. More analysis of
sociological perspective will be followed in the blog.
……0……..
For
communication write to Mahmudul Hasan Laskar <hasanlaskaramu@gmail.com>
Nice explanation Sir
ReplyDelete