Sociologists study social events, interactions, and patterns, and they develop a theory in an attempt to explain why things work as they do. A sociological theory seeks to explain social phenomena. Theories can be used to create a testable proposition, called a hypothesis, about society (Allan, 2006).

Theories vary in scope depending on the scale of the issues that they are meant to explain. Macro-level theories relate to large-scale issues and large groups of people, while micro-level theories look at very specific relationships between individuals or small groups. Grand theories attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change. Sociological theory is constantly evolving and should never be considered complete. Classic sociological theories are still considered important and current, but new sociological theories build upon the work of their predecessors and add to them (Calhoun, 2002).

In sociology, a few theories provide broad perspectives that help explain many different aspects of social life, and these are called paradigms. Paradigms are philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them. In other words, a paradigm is a broad viewpoint, perspective, or lens that permit social scientists to have a wide range of tools to describe society, and then to build hypotheses and theories. You can also consider paradigms to be guiding principles or belief systems.

In sociology, there are three main paradigms: the structural functionalist paradigm, the conflict paradigm, and the symbolic interactionist paradigm. These are not all of the paradigms, however, and we’ll consider others as well as more specific topic-based variations of each of the “Big Three” theories. As you read through the material in this section, consider which paradigm resonates the most with your own views about society.  In the text, you’ll sometimes see the word paradigm used interchangeably with perspective, theory, or approach. In this section, you’ll learn about how sociologists use paradigms to understand the social world.

Watch the following video for an overview of each of the sociological paradigms: