Sociological Theories for A-Level Sociology

Last Updated on August 27, 2026 by Karl Thompson

Theory and Methods is examined mainly on Paper 3 (Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods), and also on Paper 1 (Education with Theory and Methods). If you are revising Paper 3, this is your page.

There are five theories you need to know for A-level sociology:

1. Functionalism — society as a system of parts working together
2. Marxism — society as a conflict between classes
3. Feminism — society as structured by gender inequality
4. Social action theory — society as built from the meanings individuals give their actions
5. Postmodernism — the argument that the other four are no longer adequate

Alongside these you need the methodological debates that run through the whole topic: positivism and interpretivism, whether sociology is a science, and whether sociology can or should be value free.

This page introduces each of those and links to the full notes. For research methods themselves — questionnaires, interviews, observation, official statistics — see the research methods page.

How theory is examined

On Paper 3 theory and methods carries a 10-mark question and a 20-mark essay, sitting alongside crime and deviance. On Paper 1 it appears as a 20-mark methods-in-context question and a 10-mark theory question at the end of the paper. Paper 3 is where the bulk of the theory marks are, and where most students lose them.

The examiners are not looking for description of each perspective in turn. They are looking for you to set perspectives against each other. Three arguments do most of the work:

Consensus against conflict. Functionalists see shared values holding society together; Marxists and feminists see one group’s interests imposed on everyone else. Almost any theory essay can be built on this disagreement.

Structure against action. Functionalism, Marxism and feminism are all structural theories — society shapes the individual. Social action theory reverses that. Being able to say which camp a theorist sits in, and why it matters, is worth more than remembering another study.

Modernity against postmodernity. The first four theories were built to explain industrial society. Postmodernists argue that society has changed so much that those explanations no longer hold. Late modernists disagree, and that disagreement is examinable in itself.

A useful habit: whenever you learn a study, ask which of these three arguments it could be used in. That is what turns AO1 knowledge into AO3 marks.

Positivism and Interpretivism

The oldest argument in the subject, and the one everything else hangs off. Positivists think sociology can work like a natural science — measuring, quantifying, looking for patterns and causes. Interpretivists think that misses the point, because people attach meanings to what they do in a way that atoms do not.

Positivism and Interpretivism — brief summary notes linking the positivist worldview to quantitative methods and the interpretivist worldview to qualitative ones. Start here.

Positivism, Sociology and Social Research — fuller class notes on the Enlightenment, industrialisation and the origins of positivist sociology.

Auguste Comte: Positivism and the Scientific Study of Society — a deeper look at Comte, who coined the word “sociology”.

Interpretivism as a theory is covered under social action theory below. The two are the same tradition approached from different directions.

Is Sociology a Science?

Is Sociology a Science? covers the positivist case for sociology as a science and the interpretivist case against, then complicates both by asking whether science itself is as objective as it claims — Kuhn on paradigms, Latour on how scientific facts get made, Sayer’s realist position, and postmodern views of scientific knowledge.

This comes up as a 10-mark question often enough that it is worth knowing properly. There is a worked example at the bottom of this page.

Sociology and Value Freedom

Sociology and Value Freedom asks whether sociologists can keep their own values out of their research, and whether they should even try. The positivist answer is yes to both. New Right, Marxist, feminist and social action theorists all disagree, and for different reasons — which makes this a good essay topic, because the disagreements are not reducible to one argument.

Functionalist Theory

Functionalists see society as a system of interdependent institutions — family, education, religion, law — each performing a function that keeps the whole thing stable. The theory comes from Emile Durkheim, who argued that society exists over and above the individuals in it and can be studied through what he called social facts. Talcott Parsons later developed it into a full model of how societies hold together, and Robert Merton modified it substantially by pointing out that not everything in society is functional for everyone.

Three posts cover functionalism, at three different depths:

Functionalism in Sociology: An Introduction — start here if you are meeting the perspective for the first time.

The Functionalist Perspective: Durkheim and Parsons Explained — the second-year version, covering mechanical and organic solidarity, the organic analogy, functional prerequisites and AGIL, social evolution, and the full set of criticisms.

Functionalism Revision Notes for A-Level Sociology — the whole perspective in note form, with mind maps and topic applications.

Marxist Theory

Marxism sees society as structured around class conflict. A small capitalist class owns the means of production; everyone else sells their labour. Institutions like education, religion and the media transmit ruling-class ideas and make an unequal arrangement look natural. Later Marxists complicated the picture — Gramsci on hegemony and consent, Althusser on ideological state apparatuses — and those developments matter, because the crude version is easy to criticise.

Marxist Theory for Sociology — key concepts, the main thinkers, and Marxism applied across the specification topics.

Feminist Theory

Feminism argues that society is structured by gender inequality, and that sociology itself ignored this for most of its history. It is not one theory but several: liberal feminism looks to gradual reform, Marxist feminism ties women’s oppression to capitalism, radical feminism locates it in patriarchy itself, and difference or postmodern feminism argues that the others speak for a narrower group of women than they claim to.

Feminism and feminist theory are not the same thing, and students often use the words interchangeably. Feminism is a political movement for gender equality. Feminist theory is the body of sociological work analysing how gender inequality is produced and reproduced. An exam answer needs the second.

Feminist Theory: A Summary — the main notes on all four strands, with the standard criticisms of each.

Social Action Theory

Social action theories start from the opposite end to the structural theories above. Rather than asking how society shapes people, they ask how people build society through interaction and the meanings they attach to it. Max Weber argued that explaining social behaviour requires understanding the subjective meaning behind it, not just the external causes. Symbolic interactionists examine how meaning is negotiated in everyday encounters; labelling theorists show how identities get imposed; Goffman analysed social life as performance.

Social Action Theory: A Summary — the overview, covering the structure-action distinction, Weber, symbolic interactionism, Goffman and labelling theory.

Max Weber’s Social Action Theory — Weber in more depth, including his four types of action.

HOWEVER, the usual criticism is worth remembering: social action theories explain the small scale well and struggle with the large scale. They can tell you what happens in a classroom. They have less to say about why the education system is shaped the way it is.

Postmodernity and Postmodernism

Postmodernists argue that society changed fundamentally in the late twentieth century — globalisation, media saturation, consumer choice and fragmented identities — and that the grand theories built to explain industrial society no longer work. Lyotard called them “metanarratives” and thought they had lost credibility. Baudrillard argued that media images have become more real to us than reality. Bauman described a world of liquid, unstable social bonds.

Postmodernism: An Introduction — the key ideas and the main criticisms.

From Modernity to Postmodernity — what actually changed between the two eras, which is the part students most often skip.

The obvious criticism, and one you should make: if no grand narrative can explain society, that claim is itself a grand narrative. Postmodernism also offers little basis for saying any arrangement is better or worse than another, which is a problem for a discipline that grew up wanting to improve things.

Late Modernism

Late modernists accept that society has changed and reject the conclusion that sociology should give up. Anthony Giddens argues that we are in a more intense phase of modernity rather than something after it, and that individuals reflexively construct their identities under conditions they did not choose. Ulrich Beck argues that the defining feature of the present is manufactured risk — dangers we have created ourselves and cannot fully control.

Critical Responses to Postmodernism — Beck on risk and reflexivity, Giddens on structuration.

Giddens: Modernity and Self-Identity — the short version, in fourteen points.

Ulrich Beck: Global Risk Society — why new technological risks have eroded trust in scientists and governments.

Post and Late Modern Views of the Family and of Education — the two positions applied side by side to one topic each, which is the quickest way to see the difference.

Neoliberalism and the New Right

Not a sociological theory in the same sense as the others, but an ideology that has shaped British social policy since 1979, and one you need for education, families and crime.

Neoliberalism and the New Right — low taxation, deregulation and privatisation, and how the New Right added a strong state and traditional family values to the neoliberal economic programme.

The Neoliberal Theory of Economic Development — the same ideas applied globally, useful for global development.

Grenfell Tower: Profits Before Safety — a case study in what deregulation can cost.

Sociology and Social Policy

Whether sociology should try to influence government policy, and whether it succeeds, is examinable on both papers.

Perspectives on Social Policy — positivist, Marxist, feminist, social action and New Right views on what sociology’s relationship to policy should be.

Exam questions on theory and methods

Both of these could appear on Paper 1 or Paper 3.

Outline and explain two arguments against the view that sociology is a science (10) — a full-mark AQA student response with the official examiner commentary and my own, including where I disagree with the marking.

Outline and explain two reasons why Interpretivists prefer to use qualitative research methods (10)

For everything on exam structure and essay technique, see the exams and past papers page.

A-Level Sociology Revision Mega Bundle 

The Theory and Methods bundle is also in my best value A level sociology revision mega bundle – which covers the entire AQA A-level specification, comprising SIX individual revision bundles: the family, education, theory and methods, beliefs, global development and crime and deviance.

Contents include:

1. over 200 pages of revision notes
2. 60 mind maps in pdf and png formats
3. 50 short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers.

Signposting and Related Pages

This page has been written for students studying Theory and Methods as part of the AQA’s A-Level Sociology course, examined on Paper 3 (7192/3) and Paper 1 (7192/1).

For a condensed version of everything above in nine short sections, see Theory and Methods for A-Level Sociology: The Basics — deliberately brief and distraction-free, which makes it the better page in the last week before the exam.

For the methods half of Theory and Methods, see the research methods page.

Theory gets applied across every topic on the specification. The clearest examples are on the crime and deviance and sociology of education pages.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com