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Structural functionalism is a sociological paradigm which addresses what social functions various elements of the social system perform in regard to the entire system. Social structures are stressed and placed at the center of analysis, and social functions are deduced from these structures. It was developed by Talcott Parsons. Structural-functionalism drew its inspiration primarily from the ideas of Emile Durkheim, Bronislaw Malinowski and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. Functionalism emphasizes the central role that agreement (consensus) between members of a society on morals plays in maintaining social order. This moral consensus creates an equilibrium, the normal state of society. Durkheim was concerned with the question of how societies maintain internal stability and survive over time. Durkheim proposed that such societies tend to be segmentary, being composed of equivalent parts that are held together by shared values, common symbols, or, as his nephew Mauss held, systems of exchanges. In modern, complex societies members perform very different tasks, meaning that a strong interdependence develops between them. Based on the metaphor of an organism in which many parts function together to sustain the whole, Durkheim argued that complex societies are held together by organic solidarity. He espoused a strong sociological perspective of society which was continued by Radcliffe-Brown, who, following Auguste Comte, believed that the social constituted a separate "level" of reality distinct from both the biological and from inorganic matter. Explanations of social phenomena therefore had to be constructed within this social level, with individuals merely being transient occupants of comparatively stable social roles. Consequently, he proposed that most stateless "primitive" societies that lack strong centralised institutions or government are based on an association of such corporate descent groups. Structural-functionalism also took on Malinowski's argument that the basic building block of society is the nuclear family, and that clans are therefore an outgrowth of families, not vice versa. The central concern of structural-functionalism was a continuation of the Durkheimian task of explaining the apparent stability and internal cohesion of societies which are necessary to ensure their continued existence over time. Societies are seen as coherent, bounded and fundamentally relational constructs, who function like organisms, with their various parts (social institutions) working together to maintain and reproduce them. The various parts of society are assumed to work in an unconscious, quasi-automatic fashion towards the maintenance of the overall social equilibrium. All social and cultural phenomena are therefore seen as being functional in the sense of working together to achieve this state and are effectively deemed to have a "life" of their own. They are then primarily analysed in terms of this function they play. Individuals are significant not in and of themselves but in terms of their status, their position in patterns of social relations, and their roles the behavior(s) associated with their status. The social structure is then the network of statuses connected by associated roles.
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