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FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING
Sociology’s First Paradigm
© Francis Adu-Febiri, 2014
Contents of Presentation
• 1. Introduction: The Good Society
• 2. Definition of Functionalism
• 3. Main Theory of Functionalism, its assumption
and paradigm shift
• 4. Main Concepts
• 5. Central Question
• 6. Responses of Functionalist Theorists to this
Question
• 7. Critiques of Functionalism
THE GOOD SOCIETY
• THE GOOD SOCIETY: What is it?
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHfYe
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THE GOOD SOCIETY
• THE GOOD SOCIETY: What is it?
The good society is the one that achieves
and maintains HOMEOSTASIS,
according to Functionalism.
THE GOOD SOCIETY:
The Context of Functionalist Theorizing
• A contribution to post-enlightenment
thinkers’ focus on addressing social
disorder and disintegration in the aftermath
of the French Revolution and the Industrial
Revolution.
FUNCTIONALISM DEFINED
• “The analysis of social and cultural phenomena in
terms of the functions they perform in a
sociocultural system” (Theodorson and
Theodorson 1969: 167).
• Functionalism is often labeled “structuralfunctionalism” because it explicitly evaluates
structures of a social system by their functional
consequences for meeting the needs of the system
(Turner 2003, Wallace and Wolf 2006).
MAIN THEORY
• Society is a complex organismic or
integrated system of differentiated and
interrelated structural parts and social
processes that operate through cultural
consensus to meet its functional need which
in turn determines individual behaviour and
human condition. Parts and processes that
do not contribute to homeostasis are
dysfunctional and are eliminated.
PARADIGM SHIFT
• Unlike the pre-enlightenment and
enlightenment theorizing that focused on
social disorder, functionalism focuses on
SOCIAL ORDER.
• That is, social order as a consensual
agreement reflecting shared values and
norms that bind a community together
(James Farganis 2014, p. 141)
ASSUMPTION
• Conflict, imbalance, and rapid
changes are bad/dysfunctional for
social systems.
What Does Functionalism Explain?
• The existence and persistence of structural
parts and processes of a social system.
CONCEPTS USED TO EXPLAIN
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Organism
Function/Functional
Dysfunction/Dysfunctional
Differentiation
Integration
Consensus
Social order
CONCEPTS USED TO EXPLAIN
• 1. ORGANISM:
• The pioneer functionalist sociologists, particularly
Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim,
likened society to a biological organism highlighting the
following qualities:
• a) As society increases in size, its structure changes to
become diverse, complex and differentiated.
• b) The resultant differentiated structural parts or
subsystems perform distinctive functions for sustaining
the operation of the system as a whole
• c) The subsystems are integrated into a systemic whole
that makes each subsystem dependent on others to
thrive.
MAIN CONCEPTS IN
FUNCTIONAL THEORIZING
2. FUNCTION/FUNCTIONAL:
System parts and processes fulfilling system needs;
those processes that maintain the integration or
solidarity of differentiated parts of organism/society.
Function has MANIFEST and LATENT dimensions.
3. DYSFUNCTION/DYSFUNCTIONAL:
System parts and processes lessening or not contributing to
system needs and/or have negative consequences for some
members/groups of the social system.
4. DIFFERENTIATION:
Society evolving into multiple, diverse, complex
structural interrelated parts
MAIN CONCEPTS IN
FUNCTIONAL THEORIZING
5. INTEGRATION:
Solidarity, cohesion, unity or viable interrelationships among the
various units of organism/society that produces social order
6. SOCIAL ORDER:
Harmony, cohesion, balance, equilibrium, or
homeostasis in the social structure.
7. CONSENSUS:
Shared values or generally accepted cultural standards
of desirability that maintain unity and ensure/restore
equilibrium or homeostasis of a social system.
CENTRAL QUESTION
• What is THE FUNCTIONAL
NEED of society?
• What is the MAIN CAUSE of social
relationships that shapes human
behavior and human condition.
CONSENSUAL ANSWER
•HOMEOSTASIS (X)
X
Social Processes and system parts
Social Relationships: Human behavior and Human condition
Y
SPECIFIC RESPONSES FROM PROMINENT
FUNCTIONALIST THEORISTS
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CLASSICAL FUNCTIONALISTS:
Auguste Compte: Social Order
Herbert Spencer: Adaptation
Emile Durkheim: Social Solidarity and Integration
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CONTEMPORARY FUNCTIONALISTS
A.R. Radciffe-Brown: Intergration
Bronislaw Malinowski: Economic Adaptation
Talcott Parsons: Adaptation and Integration
Kingsley Davis & Wilbert Moore: Stratification
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NEOFUNCTIONALISTS
Robert Merton: Functional Alternatives
Niklas Luhmann: Boundary Maintenance
Jeffrey Alexander: Equilibrium
Neil Smelser: Social Integration
CRITICAL FUNCTIONAL NEED OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEM:
Auguste Comte’s View
• SOCIAL ORDER:
• It is natural and normal for the elements of the
social system, institutions of society, to be
interdependent and interrelated. All the parts
of the system make up a harmonious whole,
which, by definition, is divested of all
conflictive, contradictory, and antagonistic
elements, and therefore every element and
institution functions to contribute to stability,
solidarity and order.
CRITICAL FUNCTIONAL NEED OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
:
Herbert Spencer’s View
• ADAPTATION:
• Society must develop multiple parts and processes
to meet three functional prerequisites for
homeostasis that enables society to successfully
adapt to its environment.
• These prerequisites are (a) operation—the necessity
for production and reproduction, (b) regulation—
necessity for coordinating and controlling
members through the use of power and symbols,
and (c) distribution—the necessity for movement
of people, information and resources.
FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING:
Emile Durkheim’s View
• SOCIAL SOLIDARITY:
• Social systems have equilibrium points around
which normal functioning occurs. “Consequently, to
explain a social fact, it is not enough to show the cause
on which it depends, we must also, at least in most
cases, show its function in the establishment of social
solidarity or order” (Durkheim 1895: 96).
• Mechanical Solidarity and Organic Solidarity
FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING:
Radcliffe-Brown’s Meta-Theory
• SOLIDARITY & INTEGRATION.
• In each society, structural features can be shown
to contribute to the maintenance of necessary
solidarity. For this reason, social structure and
conditions necessary for its survival are
irreducible. Cultural items, such as kinship rules
and religious rituals are explicable by needs for
solidarity and integration.
FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING:
Bronislaw Malinowski’s View
• ADAPTATION
• Society has three system levels, each with universal
functional needs for adaptation. At the social-structural
level there are four universal functional needs—
economic adaptation, political authority, educational
socialization, and social control.
Society has three system levels of needs: the biological, social
structural, and the symbolic. At each level we can discern basic
needs or survival requisites that must be met if biological health,
social-structural integrity, and cultural unity are to exist.
Moreover, these system levels constitute a hierarchy, with
biological systems at the bottom. Social-structural arrangements
next, and symbolic systems at the highest level.
FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING:
Talcott Parson’s View
• ADAPTATION/INTEGRATION
• Society is a unit with four interrelated subsystems—
culture, social structure, personality and organism.
Each element of the unit is a full-fledged action system,
each confronting four functional problems to resolve:
adaptation, goal attainment, integration and latency.
• Culture fulfills the latency (socialization and social
control) functional needs, social system meets the
integration (solidarity and social order) functional
needs, personality system fulfills the goal attainment
functional need, and organism the adaptation (problem
of securing facilities) functional needs.
FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING:
Talcott Parson’s View
• THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE :
• The interrelationships among the subsystems
constitutes a hierarchy in which culture circumscribes
the social system of the social structure, the social
structure regulates the personality system, and
personality regulating the organismic system.
• For example, cultural value orientations would be seen
as limiting the range of variation in the norms of the
social system; in turn, these norms, as translated into
expectations for actors playing roles, would be viewed
as limiting the kinds of motives and decision-making
processes in personality systems; these features of the
personality system would then be seen as
circumscribing biochemical processes in the organism.
NEO-FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING:
Niklas Luhmann’s View
• BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE:
• The social system must develop mechanisms for
reducing environmental complexity lest the system
simply merges with its environment (time, physical
space, symbolic media) and ceases to exist. This is
essential because without a clear boundary between the
system and its environment the social system be it
interaction system, organizational system, or societal
system cannot sustain patterns of interrelated actions
that ensures its survival.
NEO-FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING:
Robert Merton’s View
• MANIFEST & LATENT FUNCTIONS
• FUNCTIONAL ALTERNATIVES
• Social units/processes are simultaneously functional for some people
and dysfunctional for others.
• Not all institutions or units and processes of social systems are
inherently necessary and good or functional for society. An
institution need not be generally functional or dysfunctional but
may instead be functional for some people and groups and
dysfunctional for others.
• Given institutions are not the only ones able to fulfill functional
requisites or prerequisites; therefore, a given social structure is in
no way sacrosanct. On the contrary, a wide range of ‘functional
alternatives’ or substitutes may be able to perform the same
function.
NEO-FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING:
Jeffrey Alexander’s View
• EQUILIBRIUM:
• The social system will collapse if it fails to attain
equilibrium in the contexts of: “The divisive classes
generated by economic life, the oligarchies generated
by political and organizational power, the gender and
age hierarchies of families, the demonology frequently
legitimated by religious institutions, and the ethnic,
regional, and racial dominations so often generated by
the very construction of national civil states—such
intrusions fragment and split civil society even while
their very existence promises participation and
restoration of the social whole” (Alexander 1998: 119).
NEO-FUNCTIONALIST THEORIZING:
Neil Smelser’s View
• SOCIAL INTEGRATION:
• Ambivalence holds opposing affective orientations
to create and maintain social integration.
• E.g: Cultural trauma such as the 9/11 attack “was a
fully ambivalent event—simultaneously shocking and
fascinating, depressing and exhilarating, grotesque and
beautiful, sullying and and cleansing—and leaving the
country feeling both bad and good about itself”…a
serious cultural trauma but also included ”a bust of
national unity, a reaffirmation of Americanism, a
substantial national mobilization, a righteous mission,
and a case for celebration” (Smelser 1998: 127).
FUNCTIONAL THEORIZING:
CRITIQUES
• 1. Circular Reasoning:
• The fact of a system’s existence requires
that its existing parts be viewed as
contributing to the system’s existence.
• 2. Illegitimate Teleology: Causes and
functions are conflated.
• The causes of a particular structure reside in
the system’s functional needs;
FUNCTIONAL THEORIZING:
CRITIQUES
• 3. Everything in the social system has a function:
• It excludes the analysis of those aspects of a
system part that are not involved in meeting the
needs of the system.
• It’s quite possible that some structures and
processes in the social system may have negative,
both positive and negative, or no consequences for
functional needs of the system.
FUNCTIONAL THEORIZING:
CRITIQUES
• 4. Grand Theorizing: Functional analytical scheme
that could explain all reality.
• The tendency to artificially push and shove
empirical events into such a scheme even if they
don’t fit. This produces invalid and unreliable
explanations of events.
• Such a “total system of sociological theory, in which
observations about every aspect of social behavior,
organization, and change promptly find their preordained
place, has the same exhilarating challenge and the same
small promise as those many all-encompassing
philosophical systems which have fallen into deserved
disuse” (Merton 1948: 164-168).
FUNCTIONAL THEORIZING:
CRITIQUES
• 5. Inadequate in its formulations because it
leaves little room for human agency or the
role of individual initiative/action (James
Farganis 2014, p. 142).
CONCLUSION
• Functionalism is a meta-theoretical scheme
which held a dominant position among
sociological theories for a long time, and
has been the watershed of subsequent
sociological theorizing.