Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Sociology Sociological Theories Sociological Theories One of the sociological theories is conflict theory. The conflict theory deals with people’s level on wealth, or class. The conflict theory says that social change is beneficial, contrary to focuses on social order. In the story of the woman and her children, the conflict theory plays a big role on the situation. Police of higher class are threatening the homeless woman. The conflict theory is a constant struggle of people of higher class over powering people of lower class, or the weaker. The police are trying to over power the woman by telling her to leave. Even though the woman and her children were doing nothing wrong, the police used their power to tell her to leave. Also the people of the area showed their conflict theory by telling the police officers to come. They must have felt embarrassed to have a woman of such lower class to be around them. They used their power of class to have the woman removed from their community. The woman wants to be there because she has no home and it is a good community to be in, but the people look at it as an embarrassment to them because it makes their area look bad for someone of such lower class to be around them. The conflict theory is unique to all other theories because it separates people into categories determined by their wealth and standards. Their status is the element that categorizes them, weather it is class, race, or gender. The conflict theory do not always use class, race, and gender all at once. In this situation race and gender is not a main issue, although gender could be a reason, but it would fall under the feminist theory. This story is mainly dealing with class. Through all this conflict the woman feels over powered and dominated because she is not welcome there because of her wealth standards, and at the same time the people of the community feel like they have all this power because of their wealth standards by telling this woman to leave. The symbolic interactionist theory is another theory that plays a part in the situation of the homeless woman and her children. The symbolic interactionist theory deals with the interactions people make to one another by using gestures. In order to understand each other, they have to put themselves in the other person’s position to find out what they are trying to say. The woman could have been using gestures such as the clothes she was wearing. She was probably wearing the same clothes every day. This showed she had no money to spend. Also she had a van parked around where she was always seen sitting. This could be a symbol that she had no home and was forced to live in her van. The woman may not have felt welcome there because the people of the community may have looked at her funny. They might have used such gestures as turning their heads when she looked at them, or trying to avoid her when she tried to talk to them. On the other hand the people may have felt sorry for the woman and her children and could have used gestures such as a sad face. They may have called the police to take her to a homeless shelter. The cops may have used some symbolic gestures such as making a disgusted face or a sad face when they were talking to the woman. There are many possibilities of people using symbols that may have occurred. The functionalist theory is a perspective in which people or social groups depend on each other, or performs certain functions for the society as a whole. The children in this situation depend on their mother in order to take care of them. The mother on the other hand depends on her children for moral support. Together they make a social group called a family. The family might depend on the community and the area around them to be safe. The area might be a safe one so the mother depends on it for her children to grow up in a safe place. The family also depends on the police for their safety in that area. The police keep things in order around where she stays. On the other hand, the police depend on people like the mother. This is because they have a job to do, they make a living off of doing their duty. So the functionalist theory plays a huge role in this situation. This theory is different from all the other theories because it deals with how each social group interacts with one another and how they depend on each other. The last sociological theory is the feminist theory. This theory deals with human life through the experience of a woman. The woman in this situation may have felt proud at first for trying to take care of her children and keeping them in a good area. She was doing all she can to keep her children in good care. But then when the cops came she might have felt upset and independent. She may have felt like the cops didn’t give her a chance to help her children out and get back on her feet. The women in the area may have felt sorry for the homeless woman and saw her as too independent. So they might have wanted to give her help for her and the children by finding a good shelter home for them. The feminist theory is unique from all the other perspectives because it expresses things from a woman’s point of view. 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