Functionalism Flashcards
Define Functionalism
Functionalism believes in a structural approach (top-down/macro) to understanding society.
What did Emile Durkheim believe?
Dates (born / died)
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) believed that the culture of society (structure) is more important than the individual. He believed this because society exists before the individual is born and continues after the individual’s death. Therefore, people ‘fit into a culture’ rather than creating it.
What did Durkhiem note?
Durkheim notes that all societies are characterised by ‘social order’ rather than a society of chaos or anarchy. This means that individual’s behaviour is generally ordered, predictable and patterned.
What did Durkheim argue?
Durkheim argued that society is united under value consensus (an agreement to the values of society which then means they have shared cultural values, goals and norms). Culture, therefore, is the framework acting like cement that bonds individuals together in the form of a society and allows people to successfully interact with each other.
What did Durkheim claim?
Durkheim claimed that the main function of society is to provide ‘the essential similarities which collective life demands’.
What is the function of the value consensus
The basic function of the value consensus is to make social order (predictable, ordered patterns of behaviour) possible by integrating individuals into the social system and directing them towards meeting the system’s needs. For example, the system needs to ensure that society’s material needs are met and therefore the consensus may include the value that people must work in order to achieve this need.
Structural Consensus: What at the two mechanisms of ensuring that individuals conform?
Socialisation
Social Control
Who argued that there are two mechanisms of ensuring that individuals conform?
Talcott Parsons
Define the mechanism of Socialisation
The system needs to ensure that it’s needs are met and therefore it needs individuals to want to do what it requires. The process of socialisation teaches individuals to internalise the system’s norms and values so that society becomes part of their own personality.
What are the different agents of Socialisation?
Family
Education
Religion
Define the mechanism of Social Control
To ensure social order and a commitment to the value consensus, social control is used positively to reward conformity (such as achievements in education) and negatively to punish deviance whereby the individual maybe stigmatised for their actions (such as dropping out of school without any qualifications).
What is the outcome of the processes of Socialisation and Social Control?
The outcome of the processes of socialisation and social control ensure that society contains individuals who are focussed on pursuing society’s shared goals and meeting it’s needs (functional pre-requisites)
What is the Interactionalists’ evaluation of the agents of socialisation?
Interactionists argue that society is not governed by a structure and argue that we individuals actively attach meanings to situations which can constantly change. They argue that individuals are most passively consuming values in society, but actively constructing them.
What is the Marxist evaluation of the agents of socialisation?
Marxists, whilst agreeing that society is based on a structure, they disagree that this structure is an agreement to the values of society. Marxists argue that society is based on a class conflict where the ruling class impose an ideology on the working class for their own benefit.
What is the Radical Feminists’ evaluation of the agents of socialisation?
Radical feminists disagree that there is an agreement to the values in society. They argue that society is based on patriarchal values where men systematically exploit and oppress women.
