Structural Functionalism
Structural Functionalism
Structural Functionalism
Robert Merton identified two types of functions, the manifest function, and latent
function.
Manifest functions are consequences that are intended and commonly
recognized.
In contrast, latent functions are consequences that are unintended and often
hidden. For example, the manifest function of education is to transmit knowledge
and skills to society’s youth. But public elementary schools also serve as
babysitters for employed parents, and colleges offer a place for young adults to
meet potential mates. The babysitting and mate-selection functions are not the
intended or commonly recognized functions of education; hence they are latent
functions.
According to him, 5 situations are facing an actor:
a) Conformity occurs when an individual has the means and desire to
achieve the cultural goals socialized into them.
b) Innovation occurs when an individual strives to attain the accepted
cultural goals but chooses to do so in a novel or unaccepted method.
c) Ritualism occurs when an individual continues to do things as prescribed
by society but forfeits the achievement of the goals.
d) Retreatism is the rejection of both the means and the goals of society.
e) Rebellion is a combination of the rejection of societal goals and means
and a substitution of other goals and means.
MARXISM
Karl Marx (1818-1883) wrote the Communist Manifesto (1848) that shows the basic
struggle between classes and recommends action against the 'specter' of capitalism (1867).
It shows how the capitalist system is exploitative in that it "transfers the fruit of the work of
the majority...to a minority”. The book contains theories about the nature of society and
politics, that in their own words, "The history of all as yet existing society is the history of
class struggles".
Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895) was a German social scientist, author, political theorist,
philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, together with Karl Marx. He wrote Das Kapital. He
organized Marx's notes on the "Theories of Surplus Value," which he later published as the
"fourth volume" of Capital. He wrote the Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State
(1884), presents the evolution of humankind from primitive communism, to slavery,
feudalism, capitalism, and finally, industrial communism.
Marx and Engels examined the conflict generated by the increasing wealth of the
capitalists (Bourgeoisie) at the expense of the working class (Proletariat) who only
sunk deeper into poverty. Violence and repression could reinforce legal power if the
peasantry resisted handing over the surplus.
They viewed social change as an evolutionary process marked by a revolution in
which new levels of social, political, and economic development were achieved
through class struggle.
A class is defined in terms of the relationship of people's labor to the means of
production. Each mode of production produced characteristic class relationships
involving a dominating and a subordinate class.
Historical materialism is a methodology used that focuses on human societies and their
development through history, arguing that history is the result of material conditions rather
than ideals. It is principally a theory of history that asserts that the material conditions of a
society's mode of production, the union of a society's productive forces and relations of
production, fundamentally determine society's organization and development. It is
materialist as it does not believe that history has been driven by an individual's
consciousness or ideas but rather subscribes to the philosophical monism that matter is the
fundamental substance of nature and henceforth the driving force in all of world history.