Virginia Boucher

Cindy Rouzer

Soc1DE1

Las Positas College

26 May, 2006

These pages contain content for a project assigned through Sociology 1 at Las Positas College for the Fall 2005 Semester.  The instructor is Cindy Rouzer.

The content and bibliographic listings will be updated throughout development of the assignment. Expected completion date is 26 May 2006. (Most Recent update 05/26/2006)

•  This page, bibliographic information and content credits are linked to the left.

•  Use the links on the right to navigate to the content.

A Sociological Examination of Hawaii, USA:
Reflected by Three Perspectives

The three sociological perspectives utilized in this research are the theories of:  

• Functionalist
• Conflict
• Symbolic Interactionist

The Functionalist perspective is based on the premise that society is “made up of interrelated parts that work together”.   Each part, working with the others, fulfills the intended function and results in a society in “normal state” (Henslin, 25-26).  

The Conflict perspective is premised on the belief that society is forever locked in a struggle between those who have power or control of scarce resources and those who are subject to that wielded power or control.  The forces in power strive to retain it and gather more, while those who don’t have power or access to the scarce resources are subjugated and compete to obtain them (Henslin, 28). 

The Symbolic Interactionist perspective is based on the belief that the symbolic meaning of actions or things in society provides definition and perspective to social belief systems.  The symbols are used to establish meaning, develop views and communicate with one another (Henslin, 23).  

There are ten areas of society to be examined within each of the perspectives.  The ten areas and their components are shown in the following table (Henslin, 100):