SAP101 Foundations of Sociology and Politics for Community Services Workers Essay 2 Sample

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SAP101 Foundations of Sociology and Politics for Community Services Workers Essay 2 Sample

Assessment instructions

Essay question: How can sociological theories and the concepts of agency and structure help explain your identity development and life experience? You will submit a 1000-word essay (+/- 100 words) in which you draw on two sociological theories from week 1-4 to demonstrate your understanding of these theories and the concepts of agency and structure. You are expected to apply the two theories and concepts of agency and structure to your own lives to Criteria High Distinction Distinction Credit Pass NN (Fail) explore how the interaction between your individual lives and larger societal structures affected who you are as social beings. Students should demonstrate their understanding through specific examples from their lives.

In this assignment, you must draw on the required readings that are found on Moodle under each week’s learning materials. Students are not expected to use additional academic sources. The paper will be written in academic style (formal English) and use APA 7th referencing. You will submit this assessment task as a single Microsoft Word document via Turnitin using the submission link below.

Proposed essay structure:

Introduction: Introduce the topic, aims, and structure of the essay.

Theory 1: Describe the key tenets of the theory and the role of agency and/or structure. Discuss how it informed your identity development, using specific examples from your life.

Theory 2: Describe the key tenets of the theory and the role of agency and/or structure. Discuss how it informed your identity development, using specific examples from your life.

Conclusion: Summarise the key points of this essay and add some concluding thoughts.

Solution

Introduction

Structure and agency in sociological literature are the factors that decide the behaviour of an individual. The agency is the ability of an individual to make its own free decisions. Therefore, the structure is the pattern that restricts or limits the options and possibilities available to the individual.

Main Body

Historical materialism is a theory of history that states the material condition of a society, such as the activity of production, economic relations, ideological superstructure and so on. In this, it is quite important to understand the concept of materialism, which refers to a philosophical position that holds the view that matter is the basic component of everything (Stolz, 2023). This theory for RMIT university Assignment Help postulates that to shape development, the material conditions of society are quite important. Delving deeper insights into the theory, this theory analyses the development of society based on the interaction between productive forces such as technology, labour, resources and by this structure, the social, political and cultural system is determined.

Marx believed that material conditions and economic factors have an impact on the structure and development of society and material conditions signify production by the technological ways and the forces of production. 's theory of Marx is known as Historical materialism as it traces the evolutions of society mankind from one phase to another phase, explaining based on economics and materialism (Dillon 2019). In historical materialism, Marx refers to the structure as the economic structure, which shows how this structure determines the shape of society. In this regard, the economic structure refers to the technological forces of production, such as knowledge, skills, machines, tools and so on. Agency signifies the role of ownership of the means of production, which allows the owner to make a free decision. Therefore, to support the theory, some real-life examples are given. My father used to work as an agricultural labourer in the land of a prosperous landowner. The person has acres and acres of land and it employed many agricultural labourers such as my father. At the outset, when modern equipment such as Tractors, chemical pesticides, and manures were unavailable, the agricultural labourers worked quite hard, making manure, cultivating the land with ploughs, and so on. But with the advent of the Tractor, the role of manual labour slackened, and the land owner dismissed many of its workers at the drop of the hat, leaving some efficient workers. During my tenure as a social worker in the gold coast, Brisbane, during the charity donations, I saw a charity donation, and there was a visible class division among their inhabitants. In that region, some prosperous landowners used to dominate the people of lower strata and deprived them of their basic amenities. This phenomenon can be a real-time example of a class feud of historical materialism. During our tenure, we provided the required amenities to them and also promised them help in future.

Structural functionalism is a sociological theory of Talcott Parson that stresses the complex society. According to Talcott Parson, four principles keep society intact: adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and pattern maintenance (Piga & DOMENICO, 2023). Adaptation signifies the relationship between the system and its surroundings, and the requirements of the members should be fulfilled by giving members of society food and shelter (Jackson, 2019). Goal attainment is an important aspect, states that every person is born on this earth owing to a particular purpose and the purpose required to be fulfilled through others then the presence of birth of the individual will be insignificant. Integration refers to the establishment of the different components of the social system. Pattern maintenance occurs when an individual starts maintaining the value of society and the matter becomes pattern maintenance. Talcott Parson had contributed enough to the field of sociology that it changed the field of sociology drastically. Talcott Parson revolutionised the different perspectives in sociology.

In Structural functionalism, there remains a core focus, which is the structure of the social system and its subsystems, such as social interactions, structure and there remain four primary subsystems, such as economy, politics, law and culture, to keep up society, social order and system equilibrium (Finn, 2024). In different social structures, such as in school and playgroups, there will be different behaviours of an individual as a child learns to deal with social structure through the socialization process (Germov & Poole, 2019). In such cases, there are certain behaviour patterns associated with the social structure. The pattern of behaviour is reflected in the drawing room of a home in the presence of parents and is not seen among friends during gossiping and casual conversations with little abusive language (Giddens & Sutton, 2021). Thus, it is seen that social structure has a role in the behaviour pattern of the individual, and by agency, an individual selects his behaviour pattern.

As an example, in the cognitive world of every individual, ideal behaviour remains. As a social worker, I, on behalf of my NGO, arranged a feast for our children. In that case, I experienced an astounding experience. That day the lunch was quite delayed as the cook turned up late. Then, one of our dependent children, Oliver, continuously cried for food and misbehaved with some of our staff. This was unexpected to us as Oliver was known for calm, composure and introverted nature. After some days Oliver confessed that on that day, he was quite hungry which is why he could not control his temper, this portrays there are some behaviours associated with every social structure that are deviated by other forces such as biological needs as happened in that case. Another example is one of my experiences as a social worker, which happened at the outset of my career. In our home, we rescued some children from the den of the criminal, and the children were given food that acted eccentrically, such as making some kind of prayer. Upon interrogation by our psychologist, it was revealed that in their previous shelter, they were allowed food after acknowledging their master for the food. As the children stayed there for a long time, this practice caught under their socialization process.

Conclusion

Historical materialism depicts mankind's evolutionary history in the context of a society's material condition. Structural functionalism is another important sociology theory that states that every structure of society is synonymous with certain patterns of behaviour, and the socialisation process is an important guiding factor of such behaviour.

Reference List

Dillon, M. (2019). Introduction to Sociological Theory: Theorists, Concepts, and Their Applicability to the Twenty-First Century. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unsw/detail.action?docID=1566387.

Finn, D. K. (2024). Virtue, Trust, and Moral Agency in Business. Christian Scholar's Review, 53(3), 5-22. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/virtue-trust-moral-agency-business/docview/3072014873/se-2

Germov, J., & Poole, M. (Eds.). (2019). Public sociology: An introduction to australian society. Taylor & Francis Group.

Giddens, A., & Sutton, P.5 W. (2021). Essential concepts in sociology. John Wiley & Sons.

Jackson, L. M. (2019). The psychology of prejudice: From attitudes to social action (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000168-000
Piga, T. R., & DOMENICO, S. (2023). The process of construction of social values: revisiting the concept of social value from the point of view of the symbolic interactionism tradition. Cadernos EBAPE. BR, 21, e2022-0161. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/process-construction-social-values-revisiting/docview/2864325979/se-2

Stolz, J. (2023). The theory of social games: outline of a general theory for the social sciences. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1), 1-12. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/theory-social-games-outline-general-sciences/docview/2831686369/se-2

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