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A paradigm is a description of the world of human behavior; it is a description of society. A paradigm is a description of the interactions of human beings within any society. Paradigms are broad viewpoints or perspectives that permit social scientists to have a wide range of tools to describe society, and then to build hypotheses and theories. Paradigms don't do anything but DESCRIBE! They analyze based on their descriptions. That is all they do. They are scientific tools. Paradigms cannot occur or happen! Societies are not Conflictualist, Functionalist, or Symbolic Interactionist. People and social events are not based on paradigms: a paradigm is a viewpoint, a perspective, a guiding principal, a belief system. Paradigms cannot be proven or disproven, but they lead to the development of theories which are provable.
The Conflict paradigm does a very good job of explaining racism, sexism, ageism, socioeconomic inequality (wealth and poverty), etc.
The Conflict paradigm describes the inequalities that exist in all societies around the globe. Conflict is particularly interested in the inequalities that exist based on all of the various aspects of master status—race or ethnicity, sex or gender, age, religion, ability or disability, and SES. SES is an abbreviation of s ocio e conomic s tatus and is comprised of the combined effects of income, education, and occupation. Every society is plagued by inequality based on social differences among the dominant group and all of the other groups in society, according to the Conflict paradigm. When we are analyzing any element of society from this perspective, we need to look at the structures of wealth, power, and status and the ways in which those structures maintain the social, economic, political, and coercive power of one group at the expense of all other groups.
The war in Iraq which began in 2003, according to the Conflict paradigm, was being fought in order to extend the power and control of the United States, and to create an American empire in the non-white, non-Christian world.
TheSeptember 11, 2001 terrorist attack was caused by American foreign policy vis á vis the Middle East as a whole, the first Gulf War, American support of the Israeli government and Israel’s treatment of its Palestinian population. The Bourgeoisie (the United States and most of Western Europe) has exploited for decades the people and natural resources of the Middle East without offering economic and educational support to the people. The U.S. and Western Europe have supported dictatorial regimes, ignored human rights abuses, and generally turned their backs on the plight of the majority of Middle Easterners and Muslims in general throughout the world. Thus, the terrorists (as representatives of the Proletariat), attacked, or attempted to attack, the centers of American power: the World Trade Center (economic power), the Pentagon (military power), and the U.S. Capital (political power).
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