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Transcript
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 U_eh3I 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 • • • • • • • 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 • • • • CLASSICAL FUNCTIONALISTS: Auguste Compte: Social Order Herbert Spencer: Adaptation Emile Durkheim: Social Solidarity and Integration • • • • • CONTEMPORARY FUNCTIONALISTS A.R. Radciffe-Brown: Intergration Bronislaw Malinowski: Economic Adaptation Talcott Parsons: Adaptation and Integration Kingsley Davis & Wilbert Moore: Stratification • • • • • 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.