Functionalism Flashcards
How are individuals socialised into this common culture of shared norms and values? And how does crime contradict this theory?
Individuals are socialised into the common culture of shared norms and values through socialisation and social control. Crime contradicts this theory as crime is seen as dysfunctional.
What did Emile Durkhiem claim?
That crime was not only inevitable but in fact functional. He claimed there were 4 positive functions of crime
What were Durkhiems 4 positive functions of crime?
By enabling social change, strengthening collective values, acting as a safety valve, and by acting as a warning device
How does crime enable social change?
Durkhiem believed that some deviance is necessary to allow new ideas to develop, and enable society to change and progress
How does crime strengthen society’s values?
Values can atrophy unless people are reminded of the boundaries between right and wrong behaviour. For example, outraged incidents of child abuse had the effect of reinforcing social control against child abusers and improving the protection of vulnerable children
How does crime act as a safety valve?
Durkheim believed it releases stress into society. For example, mass violent demonstrations might be seen as an expression and discontent avoiding wider and more serious challenges to social order.
How does crime acting as a warning device?
To alert that society isn’t working properly. For example high rates of suicide, truancy from school, divorce and crime point to underlying social problems that’s needs solving before serious threats to social order develop
Who developed Durkheim’s ideas that deviance can be functional?
Kingsley Davis (1950) and Ned Polsky (1967)
What did Kingsley Davis argue?
He argues that prostitution can act as a safety valve. He claimed that there is conflict between mans institutional need for sexual satisfaction and society’s need to control such behaviour.
What does Ned Polsky argue?
He argues that pornography safely channels a variety of sexual desires away from alternatives such as adultery, which would pose a greater threat to the stability of the nuclear family.
What did Robert K Merton do in the 1930s?
He observed American society under strain from unemployment and poverty. (who wanted to achieve the dominant goal of the American Dream/ individual and material achievement but wasn’t achieve able for all Americans because of the Great Depression)
What does Mertons strain theory and anomie argue?
That in an unequal society not all individuals have the same opportunities of realising social goals (American Dream) by approved means, therefor they face a sense of strain and anomie. He argues that there are 4 modes of adaption to this situation ranging from conformity and to one of 4 forms of deviance
What are Merton’s 5 modes of adaption?
conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion
Conformity
Accepting both means and goals. The non deviant non criminal conformist citizen
How do functionalist see society?
Functionalist see society based on value consensus with a common culture of shared norms and values.
