Answer some questions - Research Paper Example

Discussion Questions Do you think that sociologists should try to reform society, or to study it dispassionately? At the core the term sociology refers to the study of human behavior and social causes of changes as well as stability of human behavior (Chriss, 2007, p.33). This study helps stakeholders in studying different human beings that belong to different societies and this in turn is applied in different fields such as healthcare and business in order to help stakeholders deal with members of different societies.

Keeping in mind that stakeholders do not need to alter the behavior of the members of the society and should rather use these behaviors for further transactions, sociologists do not need to change human behavior and should focus on providing insight regarding different societies. For different stakeholders to be able to transact with members of different societies, they need to understand those societies and for the purpose of understanding of these societies, they need research that is not biased and the information they need should be clear and real (Kuper, 1987, p.227). Due to this, sociologists need to provide insight through research instead of trying to reform it as if they aim at reforming a society, they would study that society from a different point of view that may not actually fit a society.

Thirdly, the sociologists do not need to study society dispassionately and they should not even study society to reform it, they should study society in a passionate manner to sustain their interest in the society and should operate with the sole aim of providing insight for the betterment of the society. Out of the three sociological perspectives, which one would you prefer to use if you were a sociologist why? The three main sociological perspectives through which sociologists and other individuals conduct analysis regarding a society include symbolic interactionism, conflict and functionalist perspective.

The perspective of symbolic interactionism states that individuals attach meanings to things they experience in their environment and then behave according to the meanings they have attached to those things (Andersen, 2008, p.22). Conflict perspective states that individuals who have power and wealth are in a conflict with those who do not have power and wealth and the individuals who have a higher status in the society are manipulating individuals with lower status for their own benefits. They further state that a time will come when those who have the lower status will stand against individuals with higher status to obtain their rights.

The functionalist perspective states that everything that exists in a society is there for particular purpose to serve and different elements of the society operate together to ensure stability within the society. As a sociologist I would prefer to use the perspective of functionalism in order to study society. One of the reasons due to which I have been promoted to use functionalism while studying society is that functionalist deem every single thing as important and believe that all these things should exists if the society needs to operate in a stable manner (Cunningham, 2000, p.46). For example: they believe that