What is the Difference between Macro and and Micro Sociology?
Sociologists study the aspects of society at the macro level as well as the micro level. Both macrosociology and microsociology have differences in scope, method, and levels of analysis, but they are valuable to the field of sociology.
Macrosociology is like a zoom lens perspective on society whereas microsociology is like a wide-angle lens perspective on society. Let’s understand the difference between macrosociology and microsociology.
Macrosociology and Microsociology: Explained!
What is Macrosociology?
Macrosociology is a sociological approach that focuses on analyzing social systems and populations on a large scale, at the level of social structure, often at a large and necessary level of theoretical abstraction. Macrosociology deals with broad societal tendencies that can then be applied to smaller characteristics of society.
Macro sociologists study the relationships between society and social processes and systems and examine the overall structural processes of society.
Macrosociology comprises activities that study and compare global societies, as well as their main aspects, through their institutions. This is what the great theorists of Sociology such as Comte, Spencer, Marx, etc. did.
Macrosociology helps to identify large-scale patterns and trends in society. It also provides insights that allow for analysis of similarities and differences between societies. In addition, macrosociology provides a framework in which to assess the stability and changes occurring within a society.
Macrosociology provides insight into the social canvas that is the background to an individual’s daily life. Sociologists can get a better idea of why people live the way they do and make the decisions they do by gaining a better understanding of the cultures and societies that influence them.
The major social groups, organizations, and social systems studied by macrosociology are varied. Since macrosociology focuses on society as a whole, it will include all subcultures and influential forces. Some examples of macrosociological entities are:
- Political systems
- Economic systems
- Religious institutions
- Family lifestyles
- Educational systems
What is Microsociology?
Microsociology is the branch of sociology that focuses on the study of social groups, small groups and groupings of such groups, or the immediate areas in which such groups operate. Small social groups include the family , primary work, scientific, sports, military, etc. communities, schools, religious sects, and others.
Microsociology studies the various types of social relationships that occur between members of a community, and the different ways in which they are integrated into society as a whole.
Microsociology involves the study of people at a more interpersonal level, such as in face-to-face interactions. Microsociology analyzes the concrete facts of every person’s daily life in his or her own environment and is closely related to social psychology.
Some French sociologists consider microsociology as the study of small units of observation, whether they are restricted groups such as the family, a particular sector of the population or the individual itself.
Microsociology emerged in the 1930s as a current of bourgeois sociology. Its methodological basis is the philosophical principles of positivism , the theoretical basis is the work of Durkheim , F. Tonnis, etc., and the empirical basis is the data from research into various social problems of bourgeois society.
According to microsociology, social harmony can be achieved on the basis of particular measurements (sociometry) through the reassembly of macrostructures (“sociometric revolution”) so that unity of desires and feelings of individuals is created as a result.
Microsociology, a reactionary utopia about reorganizing society without compromising its economic foundations, tends to conceal social antagonisms and class struggle in contemporary bourgeois society.
Microsociological analysis has been seen as a practically essential requirement for any researcher who wants to truly verify his hypothesis.
Macrosociology vs Microsociology
One of the most widely used classification criteria is that which distinguishes between two basic fields: macrosociology and microsociology; two ways of approaching the same phenomenon of sociability. If the analysis is well done, one leads to the other. From microsociology we will irreversibly arrive at macrosociology, and vice versa. Currently, the distinction between micro and macro has more of a classificatory value, of the activity of sociologists and of the major fields of Sociology, than an analytical one.
Macrosociology involves the study of large-scale social processes such as social stability and social change while microsociology looks at small-scale interactions between individuals, such as conversation or group dynamics.
Macrosociology deals with issues such as war, the plight of Third World countries, poverty, and environmental deprivation, while microsociology analyzes issues such as the role of women, the nature of the family, and migration.
The distinction between macrosociology and microsociology is largely limited to a question of degree and perspective. Thus, Macrosociology will ultimately be part of macro social analysis, and its reality will come from micro social analysis.
Both macro and micro approaches have been the subject of various criticisms and the adoption of one or the other approach has been seen in connection with the two major methodological currents of modern Sociology, the objective-structural and subjective-symbolic approaches; holism adopts the macrosociological vision, while individualism adopts the microsociological vision.
The classification of sociology into microsociology and macrosociology comes from the Russian-born French sociologist Georges Gurvitch, who defined microsociology as the study of the different types of social ties or “forms of sociability” that are established between the members of a community, that is, the multiple ways of “being linked by the whole and within the whole”.
