Dr Arti Rani E-Content 22 Aug 2020
Semester-3
CC-10
Unit-1
Macro and Micro Perspectives in Sociology:
Just as scientists may study the natural world using different levels of analysis
(e.g., physical, chemical, or biological), sociologists study the social world using
different levels of analysis.
The macro-level study of widespread social processes has been the more dominant
approach, and has been practiced since sociology’s origins in the founding work of
figures like Emile Durkheim. Durkheim, for example, studied the large-scale shift
from homogenous traditional societies to industrialized societies, where each
individual played a highly specialized role. The tendency toward macrosociology
is evident in the kinds of questions that early sociologists asked: What holds
societies together? How are norms (and deviance) established and handled by
societies? What factors lead to social change, and what are the results of this
change? Macrosociologists focus on society as a whole, as something that is prior
to, and greater than, the sum of individual people.
Studying social life on the micro-level is a more recent development (in the early
and mid-twentieth century) in the history of the field, and was pioneered by
proponents of the symbolic interactionism perspective, namely George Herbert
