Structural functionalism

Disciplines and Ideas in the Social
Sciences
 STRUCTURAL –FUNCTIONALISM
Elenita Filomena Zenaida Ramos-Miranda
Tanay 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 -Functionalism
Corporations,
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.

Radcliffe-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 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.

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 -Functionalism
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.

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.

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

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

Structural functionalism

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