The document discusses the evolution of sociology from a historical perspective, focusing on the contributions of founders like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, and the development of the structural functionalist school led by Talcott Parsons. It emphasizes the need to analyze social individuals and their roles within society, highlighting the functions of the family and the importance of norms and socialization in maintaining social order. It also critiques the normative approach to understanding social behavior, suggesting the emergence of the interactionist perspective as a response to the limitations of earlier theories.

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Sociology 1001
Introduction to sociology
Fall 2014
Reading Guide #2
The Structural functionalist school
RECAP OF RECENT LECTURE(S)
We introduced the course by suggesting to you that
we would study contemporary micro and macro
sociology
-however, before we start examining modern
sociology, we spent a little time examining the history
of the discipline of sociology.
-we saw that in the 19th century, 3 founding fathers of
sociology emerged, in response to the changes in
society which they saw.

2. Marx tried to give an explanation of the way society
had developed so as to produce the omnipresent
social phenomenon of ‘industrialization’
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Durkheim tried to give an explanation of the way
society had evolved so as to produce the widespread
phenomenon of ‘urbanization’
Weber tried to give an explanation of the way society
had developed so as to produce the omnipresent
social phenomenon of ‘bureaucratization’.
However, none of these sociologists (apart from
Weber to some extent) really paid much attention to
the phenomenon of the social individual.
So we will begin our analysis of modern sociology by
looking at how, in the 20th century, sociology started
realizing that it had to start investigating the (social)
individual, and how that individual acts socially.
But first we will look at how the ideas of Durkheim
primarily, got translated into a North American version
for the 20th century

3. Begins with Talcott Parsons (Harvard scholar) going
to Europe and learning from the European theorists
He brings back these ideas to north America
(especially those of Durkheim and Weber)
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And adapts Durkheim’s ‘evolutionary’ model (which
came from biology) to a more ‘medical model’ (still
rooted in biology)
This new model became the ‘structural functionalist
school’
Structural-Functionalism
Focusses on: structure and function of institutions in
society
Biological analogy
Medical doctor analogy
notion of system, everything working together smoothly
needs of the system
interdependence of parts
boundaries within the system
equilibrium
The AGIL schema
Adaptation

4. Goal attainment
Integration
Latent pattern maintenance
The Family as an example
THE FUNCTIONALIST ANALYSIS OF THE
FAMILY
Ahmed
Highlight
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As we have seen with the functionalist
perspective, they always want to understand
phenomena in terms of how these phenomena
contribute to the functioning of society, as well
they often examine families for how the
internal parts of the system function together.
So if we look at the family from a societal
perspective, we can understand it in terms of
the functions it performs for society.
Now we already know that it performs primarily
the function of latent pattern maintenance, to

5. ensure that cultural patterns are maintained,
but we can extend that analysis to understand
the other functions which the family provides for
society.
1.regulation of sexual behaviour and
expression
firstly according to functionalists the family is
the place within our society where sexual
expression is seen as proper and appropriate.
In the workplace, sex is inappropriate, between
bosses and employees; but between husband
and wife, this is appropriate.
This also ensures that the population is
maintained. Each society has to physically
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reproduce itself, not just culturally reproduce
itself, and in most societies, it is the family
which does the job of ensuring the physical
reproduction of the species.
2. socialisation.
but societies must also reproduce themselves
culturally, ie we all must know what is
appropriate behaviour at the dining table and at
the baseball stadium.

6. 3. protection all societies must ensure that
their offspring survive into adulthood, as the
young are very vulnerable and dependent.
Thus one more ‘function’ of the family is to
ensure that this gets done.
4 affection
In the general social system, there is not much
room for affection (eg in the areas of economics
or politics or even of law), but there is a
specialised institution in most societies which
fulfills the function of ensuring that people get
affection, the institution which does this is the
family
5.conferring status the final function which the
family fulfills is that of conferring status on
people, ie we give people names, and that
name places you within a system.
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The fact that you are the daughter of William
and Kate will have different consequences than
if you are the son or daughter of an ordinary
couple.

7. PARSONS AND BALES
they went further and analysed the modern
family and argued that within such a family we
have a functional differentiation within the
family, and that the mother and father played
different but conplementary roles.
The father's role was instrumental he was
concerned with the functional prerequisites of
adapatation and goal attainment,
whereas the mother was expressive this
meant that she was concerned with latent
pattern maintenance and integration.
THE FUNCTIONAL EVOLUTION OF THE
FAMILY
The functionalist type of analysis is not content
with analysing society in terms of what
functions each phenomenon fulfills for the
larger society.
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In addition, the functionalist wants to explain
the evolution of institutions within society, and

8. argues that institutions evolve because they
help society to function better within the larger
environment, and that just as biological
organisms evolve from simple to more complex
organisms , so do societies.
And this happens through a process of
‘structural differentiation’
EVOLUTION AS “STRUCTURAL
DIFFERENTIATION
That is to say, in more advanced societies,
evolution takes the form of ‘structural
differentiation’.
Just like evolved species have complex
sophisticated ‘cell differentiation’ (the human
being is not like the single cell ‘amoeba’),
evolved societies have sophisticated
‘institutional differentiation’
- take education for example.
In ‘advanced societies, educational institutions
have become structurally differentiated.
There are lots of different types of educational
institutions,
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9. We no longer have the ‘one room schoolhouse’
We have universities, high schools, middle
schools, compucollege, community colleges,
etc., etc.
Thus for structural functionalists, they argue
that there really are more developed countries
and societies than other ones, and that less
developed countries will probably go through
the same types of development that the
industrial countries went through.
THE FUNCTIONAL EVOLUTION OF THE
‘FAMILY’
According to the functionalists, we can see this
type of evolution in the ‘family’.
Historically, families were places where
‘economic activity’ took place (the family
business’); and also where political activity took
place (royalty, aristocracy),
But with changes in society, the family has had
to evolve as well say the functionalists
This is especially true with the development of
the nuclear family.

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According to functionalist thought this type of
family is a result of the changing technology
which emerged at the time of the industrial
revolution.
With these societal changes, there also had to
be evolution in terms of the family form which
was most functional in a highly industrialised
and technicaly competent society.
Thus industrial economies needed a number of
elements for their families.
1. they needed a mobile not a static
workforce, ones who would and could
move to towns (ie without large families
and extended families)
2. they also needed a more efficient
division of labour within the home, as
now the economy was not centred around
the home but in factories.
3. Thus the socialization functions and the
work functions needed to be separated
and for people to specialise in either one

11. or the other.
According to functionalists it is just
efficient for women to carry out the tasks
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of socialisation, and for men to work
outside the home.
4. FInally, although the family no longer has
the societal functions of adaptation (ie the
household economy) or goal attainment,
(ie political decisions being made in the
family, eg The Borgia family of medieval
Europe)
they are now to ‘specialise’ and concentrate on
one function primarily, that of latent pattern
maintenance.
TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIOLOGY AND THE
ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND THE SOCIAL ‘SELF’.
Weber had first realized that sociology needed to go
beyond simply analyzing ‘societies’.

12. -Earlier in this course, we saw how Weber, one of the
founding pioneers of sociology had come up with the
concept of ‘rationalization’
But Weber was also the first sociologist to start paying
attention the social individual.
-Weber insisted that society is comprised of
‘individuals’, and these individuals are not robots,
sheep or automatons.
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-Weber insisted that sociology must start analyzing
not just the individual, but the ‘subjectivity’ of the
individual.
-In other words, Weber was the first sociologist to
insist that sociology pay attention to the MEANING
that social action has for individuals.
-Quite simply put, we as social individuals act based
on the meaning that action has for us.
-In other words, we don’t just respond to stimuli, in our
social environment.
-Instead we ‘interpret’ our surroundings and act,
based on the ‘meanings’ that we have found in these

13. social situations.
-From these foundational insights, other sociologists
tried to start analyzing the ‘social individual’.
Let us start examining some of them
1. Parsons’s voluntaristic theory of action – the
importance of norms
The social individual ‘learns’ to act appropriately
-Parsons was heavily influenced by both Weber
and Durkheim
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-so he tried to synthesise their ideas into a new
way of understanding the ‘self’
-Specifically, he tries to make these older
theories ‘converge’ into a new understanding of
the social actor, which he calls the ‘voluntaristic
theory of action’.
-it is probably easiest to understand Parsons if
we remember the basic question that he was
trying to answer.

14. -Yes, we can see that social life is orderly, but
why is it orderly?
-In some countries, for example, social order
has to be maintained at gunpoint or through the
threat of force
-this question of ‘how is social order possible’ is
typically understand as the Hobbesian question
of social order, as Thomas Hobbes in 1651 was
the first person to pose it (mainly because he
had just seen social order completely break
down in England, due to the civil war)
-so Hobbes was the first social scientist to pose
this problem
-but Parsons pointed out that social order today
does not seem to necessitate a strong dictator,
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or police with guns, or soldiers with rifles
standing outside our doors.
-instead, Parsons says we solve the problem of
social order quite differently in 20th century
North America

15. Parsons said that the solution can be found in
the following:
norms and socialization
-That is, nobody forces us to be orderly, yet we
CHOOSE voluntarily to act in a way that
constantly maintains the wider social order.
-How does this actually work?
-Parsons takes the idea from Durkheim that
society does seem to have a ‘common value
system’,
-In other words, he agrees with Durkheim that
society is fundamentally consensual (Durkheim
understood it as society having a ‘collective
consciousness, eg contemporary organic
solidarity manifests itself in a ‘collective
consciousness’)
-But Durkheim said nothing about individuals.
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-So, Parsons takes the idea from Weber that
each of us as actors ‘chooses’ to act, based on
how we ‘interpret’ our surroundings

16. -But Weber said nothing about society being
basically consensual
-So Parsons tries to synthesise the macro work
of Durkheim with the micro work of Weber
-The result is that Parsons says that “norms”
are crucial mechanisms for ensuring ‘social
order.
-they are crucial because they ‘guides to action’
but they are not co-ercive, for the individual
-yet they direct the individual to act in socially
appropriate ways (ie in ways which will maintain
the consensus of social order – lining up for a
teller at the bank for example), but the
individual still VOLUNTARILY chooses to act in
this way.
-In the words of a famous sociologist, Alvin
Gouldner, these norms are ‘potent energisers’
–they give the person energy and direction to
enable him or her to voluntarily choose to act in
an orderly fashion.
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-Equally importantly, they need to be installed

17. in the individual early on, so that the individual
can then act appropriately within social
situations
-In other words, the individual needs to be
socialized, so that s/he can learn the norms and
then activate them.
-Consequently, the social individual produces him or
herself as a social actor choosing to act in line with
the general tenets of society.
-It might be noticed in passing how similar this
process is to the process by which many members
are inculcated in religions.
-For many religions, it is crucial to get people to
WILLINGLY and VOLUNTARILY want to act in accord
with the general tenets of the larger religion.
-For example in Christianity, if individuals have been
(religiously) socialized well, they will probably always
want to give up sitting at home on a Sunday, and
instead choose voluntarily to go to church.
-they might also choose voluntarily to want to give
something up for Lent.
-So in both cases, the individual internalizes the
norms of the larger collectivity so that s/he acts
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voluntarily, but in ways which are consistent with the
general social beliefs held by the larger community.
-In this way, social order is maintained, not by soldiers
on corners with guns, but by a socialization process
which has given us norms to guide our future
behaviour.
A few problems with the ‘normative’ approach to
understanding social life
Although Parsons’s explanation of the ‘social invidual’
may be commended for at least attempting to account
for the ways in which individuals act socially, a
number of criticisms were quickly raised about the
efficacy of this approach.
Dennis Wrong argued that such an account gives an
oversocialised conception of human behaviour.
-That is to say, within this theorization, there is little
room for people acting creatively, or differently than
what the norms allow.
-this approach leaves little room for people having
disagreements or conflicts
-It also doesn’t suggest any means by which new
generations can introduce new ways of acting which
are quite different than that of the larger community.

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-Perhaps an easier way of making this point is by
remembering that within any society, we always find
groups who are not only different, but who play a
much more active part in creating for themselves a
sense of ‘solidarity’ with each other,
-and this may not necessarily come from the common
value system current in society.
-In other words, some sociologists looked instead for
a theory of the social ‘self’ which stressed, even more
heavily than Weber, that individuals choose to act
within society, and in that process, often create new,
or at least different forms of society.
This approach differs from the ‘normative approach
considerably.
-It is called the ‘interactionist approach’
-This is because it is heavily influenced by a group of
sociologists (and social psychologists and
philosophers) called the ‘symbolic interactionists.
Revised September 9th 2014 2.26pm

20. Fall 2014A few problems with the ‘normative’ approach to
understanding social life