Explaining functionalism, marxism, and symbolic interactionism and some differences between these 3 sociological perspectives

Functionalism focuses on what is good for the whole of society. Functionalists took a similar way as biologists to explain this perspective. Social systems were dissected into their parts, or institutions (family, education, economy, polity, and religion), and these parts were examined to find out how they worked and their importance for the larger social system. The idea of the functionalists was to create a science of society that could examine the parts of human …

…day of a persons life; and how this influences a persons performance. Society is analyzed as a whole by both Marxism and functionalism. This means that both are structural approaches. Symbolic interactionism is not a structural perspective; it argues that society cannot be understood as a whole at all. For society is not a thing external to individuals, which influences their beliefs and behavior. Rather, it is nothing but how individuals make sense of it.