The Premises or Bases of Sociology

The premise of social structure and agency in social theories to study current social issues

The premise of social structure tends to focus on issues of social structure and its impact on the social world in terms of producing social inequality and other positive and negative social issues and how it determines irrespective of individual will the dynamics of that society and the way it progress in the future.

In contrast, agency premises on the micro social world and its importance in transforming the social world and the dynamics of social change and put emphasis on individual social issues than the macro social structural issues of society. It downplays the importance of social structural issues and tends to prefer to study micro social issues and study how people interactions create social world and how they determine the dynamics of change in society in an evolutionary manner.

As explained above these premises determine what social issues they prefer to study and what social issues they neglect to study. As well, they have advantages and disadvantages in fully understanding the dynamics of change and the complexity of change in reality in the social world. That is, the premises of structural and agency premises must be incorporated in social theories to study any current social issues fully and to propose social policies to improve the social well-being of all in a society in the future with less negative environmental consequences and less or excessive inequality and quality of life of human beings and other species.

Conclusions

As explained above the premises of social theories in sociology is contradictory in nature to sole extent. However, they can be incorporated if one considers the value of other alternative or compatible premises to study the current most important social issues fully. The extreme view or premises is not capture the complexity of the social phenomenon in studying any social issues in a interdisciplinary manner may not be adequate. The social scientist must also take insights form political science, psychology. Economics and different paradigms of economics, ecology and biology to study any current social issues and must consider the viability of the premises in different cultural and historical periods.

In addition, the applicability of premises also vary according to the societies they study the social issue and the structure of global economic and social systems on local societies and their negative and positive impacts and the role the social movements in shaping social development in different countries.