“Mid”-Twentieth
Century Functionalism
I.
Talcott Parsons
A. The healthy society as the stable society
1. requires
smooth operation and coordination by which a society can fulfill the needs of
its own survival
2. 4 basic needs of this
type (agil)
a. adaptation to external environment
b. integration of all systemic parts
c. goal attainment: the coordinated achievement of
collective goals
d. latency (pattern maintenance & tension
reduction)
i. socialization (pattern maintenance)
ii. socially approved mechanisms for blowing
off steam (tension reduction)
3. "Needs" of
the social system ß à primary social institutions (as stable patterns of
conduct and interaction)
a. For example,
family and education serve "pattern maintenance" and "integration" functions
b. if you blow off too much steam, there are other, more
forceful pattern maintenance and tension reduction mechanisms
1.
Therapy, eg
2.
Police and jail time, if necessary
B. Modern Functionalism (represented by Parsons, Merton)
1. Society as a
self-adjusting machine
a. Like a thermostat on a furnace or air-conditioner
2. Modern society = four
dominant mechanisms for accomplishing its social control, self-regulating
functions
a. socialization -- raising people to fit the dominant norms
and patterns
b. profit -- teaching them that conformity pays
c. persuasion -- again, therapy or religion
i. Stress the values of conformity
ii.
Dissemination of dominant values through the media
d. coercion
3. these
are said to provide, to reinforce, and to legitimize avenues for conformity
a. When socialization doesn't work; when profit doesn't happen, when
persuasion is weak or unconvincing
i. People become alienated
ii.
Reject the existing system
a. either actively -- hostile and aggressive forms of
deviance
b. or passively -- madness, alcoholism
b. deviance, then, results from the failure of profit,
persuasion, and socialization
4. Society, at this
point, must resort to the fourth mechanism – coercion
II.
Modifying/Critiquing Functionalism
(Herbert
Gans) & Robert Merton
A. Gans’
“The Positive Functions of Poverty”
1.
Response to & critique of Davis and Moore’s functionalist account of the
stratification system
2.
Gans: cannot derive and “ought” from an “is”
a.
Just because poverty exists does not mean that it serves a positive function
for society
B. Merton
1.
Trying to solves the fallacy Gans, among others,
identified (is and ought)
a.
Manifest and Latent Functions & Dysfunctions
1.
Some phenomena, e.g., that seem dysfunctional may, in fact, be functional
a)
(Goes back to Durkheim): Deviance & Crime seem
dysfunctional
b)
But their latent functions do make some positive contributions to
society
2.
Some phenomena that are manifestly functional have latent dysfunctions
a)
War on Drugs; Prohibition
2.
The manifest functions of our economic system
a.
Competition +
1.
But: Latent function = Merton’s version of anomie
2. Strain between culturally approved definitions of success and
legitimate institutional means of achieving that success
b.
The established system’s latent functions include: innovation, retreatism, ritualism, rebellion
