SOCIAL SCIENCE

Branch of science that deals with the institution and functioning of human society and with the
interpersonal relationships of individuals as members of society.

THEORIES

Beliefs, policies, or procedures proposed or followed as the basis of action.

CONCENSUS & CONFLICT THEORY

Difference between Consensus & Conflict

CONSENSUS CONFLICT

 Shared norms & values  dominance of some social groups

 Social order ( tacit agreements)
 Social change (slow & orderly fashion)
 Examine value integration in society
 General or widespread agreement
 Emphasis on social order & stability/
social regulation
 Concerned with maintenance or
continuation of social order
 social order (manipulation & control by
dominant groups)
 social change (rapid & disorderly fashion)
 examine conflicts of interests & coercion
 disagreement or clash
 emphasis on conflict in human society
 deals with the incompatible aspects of
society

 Emerged out of the sociology of social  emerged out of the sociology of conflict,
order & social stability/ social regulation crisis, and social change

CONFLICT THEORY

 focuses on the heterogeneous nature of society & the differential distribution of political &
social power.
 Ask how schools contribute to the unequal distribution of people into jobs in society.
 LARGER ISSUES: role that education plays in maintaining the prestige, power & economic &
social position of the dominant.
 Assumes social behavior in best understood in terms of conflict/ tensions between competing
groups.
 Focuses on the struggle of social classes to maintain dominance and power in social system.
 Interested in how society’s institutions ( family, government, religion, education, media) may
help to maintain the privileges of some groups and keep others in subservient position.
Similarities between Consensus & Conflict Theory

Both are:

 Faces of society
 Society depends of existence
 Prerequisites for each other

Effects of Consensus Theories in Education System

 Schools teach and maintain particular “status culture”

 Educational systems may train individuals in specialties to fill needed positions or prepare
“cultivated individuals”

Dominant Social Theorists:

 Karl Marx
 Emile Durkheim
 Max Weber

Prominent Social Theorist:

 Talcott Parsons & Robert Merton

 Louis Althusser & Ralph Dahrendorf
 Herbert Mead & Herbert Blumer