Learning Objectives

• Identify key concepts and approaches in the social sciences.

• Interpret personal and social experiences using relevant approaches
in the social sciences.
• Determine manifest and latent functions and dysfunctions of
sociocultural phenomena.
• Identify key theorists in Structural Functionalism.
• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

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 FUNCTIONALISM
VS
STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM
???

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Functionalism
• This perspective is from Bronislaw
Malinowski.
• It took individual as unit and thought that
social institutions came into being and
persist because they fulfill the needs of
an individual.
• His approach is called as bottom-up
(individual > society).

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Structural Functionalism
• This perspective is by Radcliffe Brown.
• He believed that social institutions exist
because their primary function was to
maintain society and social solidarity.
• His approach is also known as top-down
(society > individual).

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 Structural
Functionalism
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 Structural Functionalism
• It revolves around the notion that a society is composed of a system
of interconnected parts that have their own particular functions.
• It views societal living as shaped and guided by social structures, or
the pattern of social relationships between groups or individuals.
• Macrostructures – formed by groups or individuals
• Microstructures – established by groups or individuals
• Social Functions are the effects of social structures or their purpose
in the society.

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Human body

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 Key Concepts in Structural – Functionalism
• Manifest Function is the predicted, intended, expected and knowable
effect of a social structure.
• Latent Function is the unintended outcome of social structure.

• Manifest Dysfunction is the predicted, intended, expected and

knowable disruptions of a social structure.
• Latent Dysfunction is the unpredicted and unexpected disruptions of
social structure.

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• Manifest and Latent Functions
• It is a way to promote the benefits of such functions and further develop
social structures.
• Manifest and Latent Dysfunctions
• Sociologists focused more on the dysfunctions to promote stability, and
solidarity, to assess risks and prepare accordingly, and can be useful in
different fields and professions.

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Important
Theorists
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Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857)

• Full Name: Isidore-Auguste-Marie-

François-Xavier Comte
• French philosopher, known as the Father
of Sociology and of Positivism.
• Born: January 19, 1798 – Montpellier,
France
• Died: September 5, 1857 – Paris

Nikki H. Barredo
 Auguste Comte
• Comte provided a theory of society and man’s cognitive progression
from religious and abstract concepts to a scientific perspective.
• Comte’s ideas are considered precursor to Structural – Functionalism,
as he identified tradition and other social structures as elements in
shaping the society.
• Law of Three Stages – is a critique of the social structures and of how
humans were shaped by progressive thinking.
• Progressive thinking – interested in change and progress.

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 Law of Three Stages or…
Theory of
Human
Progress

Theological or Metaphysical Positive or

Fictitious or Abstract Scientific
Stage Stage Stage

Fetishism Polytheism Monotheism

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Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917)
• French sociologist, known as the Founding
Founder of Sociology specifically the
French School of Sociology.
• Born: April 15, 1858 – Épinal, France
• Died: November 15, 1917– Paris
• The most important sociological
forerunner of modern functionalism

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 Emile Durkheim
• The Division of Labor in Society
• Rules of the Sociological Method
• Suicide
• Anomie

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 Emile Durkheim
• His primary concerns were beliefs & symbols shared by members of
society.
• He wanted to understand & explain nature of social
solidarity/cohesion
• Ex. What binds people together
• He sought out & used cross-cultural data
• Ex. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
• Social solidarity is a result of binding moral force that arises from
participation in common set of beliefs & values.
• He called it the collective conscience.
• Essentially what we mean by culture.
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 Division of Labor in Society
• He observed differences between "primitive" and industrial society.
• He distinguished between mechanical and organic
solidarity/cohesion
MECHANICAL SOLIDARITY ORGANIC SOLIDARITY
Solidarity through Likeness Solidarity through Difference
Low Division of Labor High Division of Labor
Strong Collective Conscience Weak Collective Conscience
Repressive Law Restitutive Law

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Division of Social Types of
Labor Solidarity Law

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 Overall View on Division of Labor
• Durkheim wanted to make a distinction between social division of
labor and the economic division of labor.
• He wanted to study the origin of social links that connects individuals
with society and the origin of social bonds that connects individuals
to each other.
• He wanted to see how the system change with a lot of changes
present, and when the structure of society becomes more complex
and gets subjected to changes in division of labor.

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 Rules of Sociological Method
• The Rules of Sociological Method was written in 1895, and represent
Durkheim’s hope to develop a systematic sociology.
• In Durkheim's scheme, individuals played little role…
• "When the individual has been eliminated, society alone remains. We must,
then, seek the explanation of social life in the nature of society itself...since it
infinitely surpasses the individual in time as well as space...“
• He claimed social facts are basic unit of social analysis.
• Norms, common expectations, understandings, and behavioral rules that
exist prior to individual and will outlive individual.

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 Suicide
• Durkheim’s well-known study, Suicide, focused on suicide rates, a
social fact, rather than on individual suicides.
• He saw suicide as a social problem and was concerned about the
increasing rates of suicide in industrialized countries.
• He had also been touched personally by this phenomenon, for it was the
suicide of his closest friend, Victor Hommay, which prompted him to embark
on an empirical study of suicide.
• Durkheim’s study does not simply describe the suicide rates in Europe
in the 19th century, but he begins with the basic assumption that too
much or too little integration or regulation (cohesion) is unhealthy
for a society, and from this he derives hypothesis about suicide.

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• To demonstrate Durkheim’s approach and clarify what middle-range
theory is about, Merton restated Durkheim this way:
1. Social cohesion provides psychic support to group members
subjected to acute stresses and anxieties.
2. Suicide rates are functions of unrelieved anxieties and stresses to
which persons are subjected.

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• Durkheim bases his theory on social cohesion or solidarity, and on
two specific societal needs – integration and regulation.
• Types of Suicide:
• Altruism – too much integration
• Egoism – too little integration
• Fatalism – too much regulation
• Anomie – too little regulation
• Anomie, he says, is a pathological state for society.
• A situation is clearly anomic when a crisis or a sudden social change
causes discontinuity between people’s actual experiences and their
normative expectations.
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• Using deductive approach, Durkheim tested some of his hypothesis
with data collected by the government officials.
• He found, for example, that widows and widowers did indeed have
higher suicide rates than married people and that suicide rates were
higher during a depression than there were during periods of
economic stability.

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 Anomie
• Anomie means normlessness, a situation where rules or norms are
absent. There are 2 types of Anomies:
• Acute Anomie which result of an abrupt change
• Chronic Anomie which is a state of constant change

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Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903)

• English sociologist and philosopher

• First sociological functionalist
• Early advocate of the Theory of Evolution
• Best remembered in his doctrine of Social
Darwinism
• Born: April 27, 1820 – Derby, Derbyshire,
England
• Died: December 8, 1903 – brighton,
Sussex
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 Herbert Spencer
• His comparison of society to the human body is the overarching idea
of structural functionalism.
• He also compared the way organisms evolved to how society develops.
• Spencer’s Evolutionary Model explained that the progress or decline
of a society will be determined by how it handles constant problems.

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Spencer’s Evolutionary Model
Higher
Civilization
Civilization
Lower Civilization
Higher Barbarism
Barbarism
Lower Barbarism
Savagery
Lower Savagery
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Talcott Parsons (1902 – 1979)

• American sociologist
• Born: December 13, 1902 – Colorado
Springs, Colorado, USA
• Died: May 8, 1979 – Munich, West
Germany

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 Talcott Parsons
• American sociologist as one of the primary contributors to the
development of structural functionalism.
• General Theory of Action – gives and overall picture of how societies
are structured and fit together, includes four systems levels:
• Cultural System
• Social System
• Personality System
• Biological System

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 Parson’s Social System Theory
• Cultural System – basic unit of analysis is meaning or symbolic system;
focuses on shared values; key concept is socialization.
• Social System – basic unit of analysis is role interaction; consists of
plurality* of individual actors* interacting with each other in a situation
which has at least a physical or environmental aspect.
• Actor's motive is self-gratification – gaining satisfaction or fulfillment because of the
nature of their personality system in the physical or biological system.
• Personality System – basic unit of analysis is individual actor/human
person; focused on individual’s needs, motives and attitudes, such as the
motivation for gratification, which corresponds to both conflict theory’s
and exchange theory’s assumptions that people are self-interested or
profit maximizers.

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 Parson’s Social System Theory
• Physical or Biological System – basic unit of analysis is the physical
aspect of the human person, including the organic and physical
environment the human being lives; they learn role expectations and
become full participants in the society.

• Values from Cultural System

• Corresponding Normative or Role Expectations from Social System
• Individual Identity from Personality System
• Biological Equipment from Behavioral Organism.

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 Parson’s Social System Theory
• Parsons does not consider four system levels to be mutually exclusive;
rather, they exhibit the interdependence that structural functionalism
consistently stresses.

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 Parson’s Four-Function Paradigm
• Equilibrium, which basically means a state of balance of a system,
was developed as a theoretical concept.
• Social Equilibrium is the concept that social life has a tendency to be
and to remain a functionally integrated phenomenon, so that any
chance in one part of the social system will bring about adjustive
changes in other parts.
• Action System has four major problems/needs to achieve equilibrium
– adaptation, goal attainment, integration and latent pattern
maintenance tension management/latency.

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 Parson’s Four-Function Paradigm
1. Adaptation – a system must adapt to its environment,
2. Goal Attainment – a system must define and achieve its primary
goals,
3. Integration – (the heart of the four-function paradigm) a system
must coordinate, adjust and regulate relationships among various
actors or units within the system and,
4. Latency – a system must maintain and renew both the motivation
of individual, and cultural patterns that create and sustain that
motivation.

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 Parson’s Four-Function Paradigm
• The four functions are not necessarily clearly separable. Institutions do not
necessarily fit neatly into one “box”, and the scheme in itself cannot be
used to predict what institutions a society will develop or what functions a
given institution will fulfill.. Rather, the paradigm serves as a way of
classifying institutions after the event.
• Parsons considers them to be the prerequisites for social equilibrium –
ensures two mechanisms: socialization and social control.
• Socialization = complementarity of expectations – means that both
parties involved in an interaction situation share and accept the cultural
values and normative expectations, so that each actor knows what the
other expects, and their responses complement each other.
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 Parson’s Four-Function Paradigm

Actors are
motivated to
meet the Do interact Social
demands of appropriately Equilibrium
societal
expectations

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 Parson’s Four-Function Paradigm
• Disequilibrium – in which the balance of society is disturbed and in
which, he argues, forces come into play that restore equilibrium.
• Parsons’ terms, it is then that social control comes into play, and
negative sanctions are used to make recalcitrant actors conform.
Every society has general social control mechanisms that operate to
deal with deviance, bring behavior back into line with expectations,
and restore equilibrium again.
• Example: A police officer will probably give a ticket to the deviant motorist.

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Kingsley Davis and Wilbert
Moore
• Kingsley Davis
• American sociologist and demographer who
coined the terms population explosion and zero
population growth
• Born: August 20, 1908 – Tuxedo, Texas, USA
• Died: February 27, 1997 – Stanford, California
• Wilbert Moore
• American sociologist and educator; justification
for social stratification
• Born: October 26, 1914 – Elma, Washington,
District of Columbia, USA
• Died:
Nikki H. BarredoDecember 29, 1987
 Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore
• American sociologists known for the functionalist theory of
stratification or Davis-Moore hypothesis.
• Their hypothesis suggests that social inequalities are necessary so
that society would function – from the poor, the middle class, and
the rich.
• They reflect the structural organization to a pyramid.

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• Individuals who understand stratification would invest their time to
further their education and hone their skills while getting experience.
• In such case, inequality functions to motivate individuals in society
to better themselves to acquire a higher position in an organization.

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Robert Merton (1910 – 2003)

• American sociologist; student of Parsons

in Harvard University
• Born: July 4, 1910 – Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, USA
• Died: February 23, 2003

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 Robert Merton
• He was the one who developed the concepts of manifest and latent
functions and dysfunctions.
• Middle range theory is a theory with limited scope, that explains a
specific set of phenomena, as opposed to a grand theory like that
proposed by Talcott Parsons that seeks to explain phenomena at a
societal level.

Nikki H. Barredo
 Merton’s Theory of Deviance*
ADAPTATION CULTURAL GOALS INSTITIONALIZED
MEANS
CONFORMITY ACCEPTED (+) ACCEPTED (+)
INNOVATION ACCEPTED (+) NOT ACCEPTED (-)
RITUALISM NOT ACCEPTED (-) ACCEPTED (+)
RETREATISM NOT ACCEPTED (-) NOT ACCEPTED (-)
REBELLION REJECT AND REJECT AND
REPLACE
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 Merton’s Role-Set
• Status – a position in a social structure with its corresponding rights
and duties
• Role – the behavior that is oriented to others’ patterned expectations
• Merton elaborates that each status involves not one but an array of
roles – role-set is that complement of role relationships in which
persons are involved by virtue of occupying a particular social status.
• Each person, in turn, occupies various statuses, each of which has its
own role-set, and Merton calls this as status-set.

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 Merton’s Role-Set
• Functional Elements – which mechanisms counteract the potential
instability of role-sets, and
• Dysfunctional Elements – which circumstances do the mechanisms of
social control fail to operate.
• Role Conflict – occurs when there are incompatible demands placed
upon a person such that compliance with both would be difficult.

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 Merton’s Four Important Mitigating Factors
1. Some are more and some are less involved in their relationship with
the student, and Merton believes that such differential degree of
involvement mitigates the effects of diverse role expectations.
2. Those in the role-set may be competing with each other for power.
3. The insulation/preserving of role activities from observance by role-
set members.
4. Conflicting demands by members of a role-set can be observed.

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• Mutual Social Support – which helps to resolve conflicts of
expectations among members of the role-set.
• Withdrawal as a control mechanism – in this case, a member of the
role-set breaks off role relations with other members, but this is an
infrequent and limited option.

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• Merton emphasizes on the analysis of dysfunctional elements and
functional alternatives. He immediately looks at the social structural
demands that are incompatible or conflicting and asks what the
functional alternatives are.
• Merton looks on the role-set as a system of interrelated parts and
asks how order among these parts is made possible.
• Role-set analysis can also uncover certain inequities existing in our
society.

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Gabriel Almond and
Bingham Powell
• Gabriel Almond
• American political scientist
• Born: January 12, 1911 – Rock Island, Illinois,
USA
• Died: December 25, 2002 – Pacific Grove,
California
• Bingham Powell
• American political scientist
• Born: February 7, 1916 – Lafayette, Yamhill,
Oregon, USA
• Died: February 13, 1997
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 Gabriel Almond and Bingham Powell
• Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (1966)
• A contribution to the theoretical work on political development
• Almond and Powell argued that the study of political systems of
different states must be done contextually (relating to circumstances
surrounding an event, statement or data).
• They also recognized the function of the political system itself on
society.
• Functions of Political System:
• Political Socialization
• Recruitment
• Communication
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 Functions of Political System
• Political Socialization is the means by which proper civic conduct,
duties and good citizenship are promoted and societal values and
beliefs are passed on to the younger generation.
• Recruitment is the way by which political systems attract the interest
of the public through participation in debates and other
engagements.
• Communication is the means by which society learns about the issues
and affairs of the state.

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Criticisms and
Limitations
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 Criticisms and Limitations
1. Structural-functionalism compares the purposes of an institution to that
of an individual. Such comparison allows the error of reification* to take
place.
2. Structural-functionalism falls for the fallacy of circular reasoning.
Functions are seen as existing because they are functional in society.
• Merton’s theory of dysfunctions
3. Structural-functionalism finds it difficult to explain social changes.
• Evolution does not account for rapid social changes such as revolutions and wars.
4. Structural-functionalism is also criticized by how it sees the individual as
a mere actor who follows roles and is shaped by society.

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 Criticisms and Limitations
5. The idea of functional unity does not take into account that
conflicts can and will arise in the society.
6. Social stratification can be considered as a defense and argument
for social injustices.

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 To conclude…
• The main idea of structural-functionalism is that the society is made
up of different components such as institutions, services and people
that work together and allow the society to function. As body parts
have specific functions, functionalism implies that all structures in
society have their own purpose and specific functions.

Nikki H. Barredo