Structural functionalism

Disciplines and Ideas in the Social Sciences

STRUCTURAL –FUNCTIONALISM

Elenita Filomena Zenaida Ramos-MirandaTanay Senior High School

Objectives

At the end of the lesson, you are expected to: Understand the concept of Structural-

Functionalism Identify the early functionalists Determine the manifest and latent

functions and dysfunctions of sociocultural phenomena

Activity: “Build a World”

In groups, you are tasked to organize a community . On a piece of cartolina, draw a

community comprised of different institutions.

Be ready to explain your answer why you choose the institutions and how do they function in the community

Analysis How did you find the activity? How did you feel while doing the

activity? How did you structure your

community? What did you prioritize in your choice

of institution? How did the structures “function” in

the society? Have you heard of the Structural-

Functionalism Theory?

Structural- Functionalism

Focus: The organization of society and the relationships between broad social units, such as Institutions. The group is the unit of analysis.

A group could be a crowd of people in a movie theater, or the members of a family sitting around the dinner table, what some call “small groups”

Abstraction:

Structural -FunctionalismCorporations,

factories, university systems,and even communities are groups too.Structural Functional Theory (SFT) allows for major institutions, such as economy, religion, polity, education and family to be considered groups

Structural- Functionalism Background and History

The early functionalists were anthropologists (i.e., Levi-Strauss, Radcliff-Brown, Malinowski, and others).

Claude Levi-Strauss

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown

Bronislaw Malinowski

Structural-Functionalism

They were seminal thinkers of the middle 1800s who made direct observations of primitive cultures, theorizing about the organization of these folk in relation to Western society. Their theories were often quite simple and required only a few assumptions. The point they were making was this: Individual and group behavior, more often than not, serves a FUNCTION for the larger society.


Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 to 2009) is widely regarded as the father of structural anthropology. In the 1940s, he proposed that the proper focus of anthropological investigations was on the underlying patterns of human thought that produce the cultural categories that organize worldviews hitherto studied (McGee and Warms, 2004: 345). He believed these processes were not deterministic of culture, but instead, operated within culture.


. His work was heavily influenced by Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss as well as the Prague School of structural linguistics (organized in 1926) which include Roman Jakobson (1896 to 1982), and Nikolai Troubetzkoy (1890 to 1938). From the latter, he derived the concept of binary contrasts, later referred to in his work as binary oppositions, which became fundamental in his theory.

Claude Levi-Strauss


Claude Lévi-Strauss: (1908 to 2009)

“Father of Structuralism;” born in Brussels in 1908. Obtained a law degree from the University of Paris. He became a professor of sociology at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil in 1934. It was at this time that he began to think about human thought cross-culturally and alterity, when he was exposed to various cultures in Brazil. His first publication in anthropology appeared in 1936 and covered the social organization of the Bororo (Bohannan and Glazer 1988:423). After WWII, he taught at the New School for Social Research in New York. There he met Roman Jakobson, from whom he took the structural linguistics model and applied its framework to culture (Bohannan and Glazer 1988:423). Lévi-Strauss has been noted as singly associated for the elaboration of the structuralist paradigm in anthropology (Winthrop 1991).


Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown had the greatest influence on the development of functionalism from their posts in Great Britain. Functionalism was a reaction to the excesses of the evolutionary and diffusionist theories of the nineteenth century and the historicism of the early twentieth (Goldschmidt 1996:510). Two versions of functionalism developed between 1910 and 1930: Malinowski’s biocultural (or psychological) functionalism; and structural-functionalism, the approach advanced by Radcliffe-Brown.


Malinowski suggested that individuals have physiological needs (reproduction, food, shelter) and that social institutions exist to meet these needs. There are also culturally derived needs and four basic "instrumental needs" (economics, social control, education, and political organization), that require institutional devices. Each institution has personnel, a charter, a set of norms or rules, activities, material apparatus (technology), and a function.

Structural-FunctionalismRadcliffe-Brown focused on social structure rather than biological needs. He suggested that a society is a system of relationships maintaining itself through cybernetic feedback, while institutions are orderly sets of relationships whose function is to maintain the society as a system. Radcliffe-Brown, inspired

by Augustus Comte, stated that the social constituted a separate "level" of reality distinct from those of biological forms and inorganic matter.


Radcliffe-Brown argued that explanations of social phenomena had to be constructed within the social level. Thus, individuals were replaceable, transient occupants of social roles. Unlike Malinowski's emphasis on individuals, Radcliffe-Brown considered individuals irrelevant (Goldschmidt 1996:510).

Structural Functionalism The Functionalists Perspectives

A perspective is simply a way of looking at the world.

A theory is a set of interrelated propositions or principles designed to answer a question or explain a particular phenomenon; it provides us with a perspective


Sociological theories - help us to explain and predict the social world in which we live in.

The Functionalists Perspectives

The Functionalists Perspectives is based largely on the works of Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Robert Merton.

According to Functionalism, society is a system of interconnected parts that work together in harmony to maintain a state of balance and social equilibrium for the whole.

Structural FunctionalismThe Functionalists Perspectives

For example: Each of the social institutions contributes important functions for society: family provides a context for reproducing, nurturing, and socializing children. Education offers a way to transmit a society’s skills, knowledge, and culture to its youth. Politics provides a means of governing members of society. Economics provides for the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. And religion provides moral guidance and an outlet for worship of a higher power.

Structural -FunctionalismThe Functionalists Perspectives

The Functionalists perspectives emphasizes the interconnectedness of society by focusing on how each part influences and is influenced by other parts. For example: The increase in single parent and dual-earner families has contributed to the number of children who are failing in school because parents have become less available to supervise their children’s homework.

Structural-FunctionalismThe Functionalists Perspectives

For example:As a result of changes in technology,

colleges are offering more technical programs, and many adults are returning to school to learn new skills that are required in the workplace.

The increasing number of women in the workforce has contributed to the formulation of policies against sexual harassment and job discrimination.

Structural FunctionalismThe Functionalists Perspectives Functionalists use the terms functional

and dysfunctional to describe the effects of social elements on society.o Elements of society are functional if they contribute to social stability.

o They are dysfunctional if they disrupt social stability.


Some aspects of society can be both functional and dysfunctional. For example, crime is dysfunctional in that it is associated with physical violence, loss of property, and fear.

But according to Durkheim and other functionalists, crime is also functional for society because it leads to heightened awareness of shared moral bonds and increased social cohesion.

Sociologists have identified two types of functions: manifest and latent (Merton 1968).


Sociologists have identified two types of functions: a. manifest; and b. latent (Merton 1968)

Manifest functions are consequences that are intended and commonly recognized.

Latent functions are consequences that are unintended and often hidden.


For example: The manifest function of education is to transmit knowledge and skills to society’s youth. But public elementary schools also serve as babysitters for employed parents, and colleges offer a place for young adults to meet potential mates. The baby-sitting and mate-selection functions are not the intended or commonly recognized functions of education; hence they are latent functions

Structural Functionalism

For sociology, many of these functional anthropological notions were drawn together by Talcott Parsons, a young professor at Harvard University around 1950, with considerable input from early social philosophers Max Weber, Herbert Spencer, and Emile Durkheim. Parsons' work was further extended by subsequent sociologists of the time and after. Structural-functional theory became the paradigm theory in sociology for about twenty years or so, because it saliently defined society as a system with checks and balances.

Sociological Perspectives

Application

Discuss the concept of Structuralism

Discuss Merton’s concept of Manifest and Latent Functions and Dysfunctions of sociocultural phenomena

Thank you

Structural functionalism

Education

Transcript of Structural functionalism