Contents of Critical Theories: Diagram

Lecture Notes

In the last lecture, I gave you a diagram to help you visualize the functionalist and conflict theories. Here, you can see my best representation of critical theories. Critical theories are interested in the relationships between culture, ideology, and power: how they are produced, reproduced, and changed. For example, critical theories would be interested in the cultural shift from agricultural labor to factory labor that we discussed over the past two weeks. A critical theorist might ask how ideologies and power relations were affected by the change from farms to factories. You might respond by discussing the rise of team-work, capitalism, and consumerism as ideologies. You might discuss the shifting power relations between laborers and entrepreneurs. Culture, ideology and power are constantly changing and affecting each other. How they line up at any given moment influences the ways that people form their identities, interact with one another, transform their cultures, and make meaning of the world around them.