Vapouround magazine Issue 04 | Page 92

F E AT U R E based on viewing the world through the Structural Functionalist Perspective, another telescope is the lens you could use to view society from a Symbolic Interactionist Perspective, the last telescope allows you the opportunity to view the world below you through the Conflict Perspective. All in all, there are three main visionary windows for viewing and interpreting the society in which you occupy in an imaginative and innovative fashion, hence assisting the development of your overall opinion about how you see the world. Given the development of the simple act of vaping slowly, but surely transforming into such a threatening social issue, we must analyze the theoretical perspectives of Sociology. In one of the textbooks I used to implement in the courses I taught in college, Sociology in Modules , the author writes, “Think of society as a living organism in which each part of the organism contributes to its survival. This explanation sums up the Structural Functionalist Perspective, which emphasizes the way in which the parts of a society are structured to maintain its stability” (Schaefer 2011:15). One of the primary contributors to this theory was Talcott Parsons, a Sociologist from Harvard, who basically saw society as a vast network of connected parts, 92 ISSUE 04 VAPOUROUND MAGAZINE each of which helps maintain the system as a whole. This is extremely relevant to consider when reflecting on the Sociology of Vaping and for countless reasons. Parsons’ Functionalist approach was that if an aspect of social life does not contribute to a society’s stability or survival if it does not serve some identifiably useful function or promote value consensus among members of society it will not and should not be passed on from one generation to the next (Schaefer 2011:15). Vaping has the potential to marginally disrupt economic stability, then again, what if vaping plays a much larger role than we anticipate? What if vaping could greatly affect the economic status of capitalist culture to the extent that it could possibly launch mass amounts of our ow n people into impoverished conditions, increasing the poverty level tenfold? Could it? Well, for starters, vaping could indefinitely replace a vast amount of smoking cessation pharmaceuticals and it has the potential to replace traditional tobacco cigarettes altogether. These products belong to two of the most powerful industries in the world: Big Tobacco and Big Pharma. If these two industrial powerhouses, each with nearly infinitely existing revenue streams which control a number of vital portions of society, literally were forced to drastically decrease their financial earnings, there could be some sort of an economic meltdown among the westernized world, causing a mass destabilization of our capitalist economic structure. It wouldn’t merely consist of Vaping has the potential to marginally disrupt economic stability, then again, what if vaping plays a much larger role than we anticipate? What if vaping could greatly affect the economic status of capitalist culture to the extent that it could possibly launch mass amounts of our own people into impoverished conditions, increasing the poverty level tenfold? Could it?