What happens when a cog in a machine decides to rotate in a different direction? If an organ in the body decides to shut down? The respective system would need to adjust to this deviance in order to compensate for its shortcomings; this happens in society as well. The sociological perspective of structural functionalism deals primarily with this way of thinking – each part of society functions together to contribute towards the whole. The United States currently accounts for five percent of the world’s population, yet twenty-five percent of the world’s prison population; according to the sociological perspective of structural functionalism, this is due to interrelated parts of society failing to fulfill their duties, social facts not being …show more content…
Spencer was an English philosopher and biologist born in 1820; because of his dual training in both the arts and sciences, Spencer was able to make a connection between the body and society (Openstax, p. 15). He discovered that the way society functions mirrors that of the body – parts working towards a whole. Spencer referred to these parts as social institutions, “or patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs, such as government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy” (Openstax, p. 15). Each of these institutions greatly impacts the individuals it encounters in different, yet necessary ways, and it is extremely rare that an individual deals with only one in their lifetime. In fact, the institutions one belongs to can change quite frequently. “The functionalist perspective emphasizes the interconnectedness of society by focusing on how each part influences and is influenced by other parts” (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2007). Spencer’s writings and development of theories influenced Emile Durkheim, who began to apply these same theories to his own works. While trying to determine how societies can change and survive over time, Durkheim …show more content…
“With only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. has more than 20% of the world’s prison population… [and] one in 110 adults are incarcerated in a prison or local jail.”(ACLU). According to the theory of structural functionalism, it is the duty of the social institutions to focus on fulfilling social needs. With such high prison populations, it is simple to conclude that these deviances occur as a result of inadequate teaching of social norms within schools, homes, or other institutions an individual may be associated with. Many times in these social institutions dysfunctions are prevalent. Dysfunctions can best be defined as “Social processes that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society” (Openstax, p. 15). Essentially, a dysfunction is a bad grade on an exam or truancy in school – a minor punishment for not achieving society’s standards. For many individuals, these dysfunctions deter any effort to continue to strive to reach society’s standards due to their negative connotations. Therefore, if an individual encounters an excessive number of dysfunctions, he or she will be more likely to resort to deviant behavior, in attempt
In the article by Jeffrey Reiman, structural functionalism is being used because he speaks about different classes in the social structure upholding a status quo. During structural functionalism. Structural functionalism explains the relationships that social institutions have between society. In response to the article, Reinman compares the elite classes, lower classes interaction and law enforcement.
As Johan Galtung describes in his article, Violence, Peace, and Peace Research, structural violence is where social structure can inflict harm on individuals by preventing them from meeting basic needs. In regards to the February 2016 New Yorker Article, The Meaning of Life Without Parole, the social structure created by the prison system has caused a separation between people. Instead of being viewed as a human-being, offenders are labeled as criminals and become marginalized from the rest of society. Along with the stigma of conviction that has been created, offenders, especially those that are juvenile, are also subjected to structural violence through the sentences they are given.
Social control theory focuses on how the lack of close relationships with others can free individuals from social constraints, which in turn allows them to engage in delinquency. Unlike most criminology theories that claim to explain why people offend, control theories offer the justification for why people obey the rules (Cartwright, 2013). Social control theories focus primarily on external factors and the processes by which rules become effective. Followers of this theory believe that deviance and crime occur because of inadequate constraints. This theory also examines the lack of control a person has in relation to society and explains how deviant behavior occurs in proportion to the strength of one’s social bonding. For the most part, social control theory assumes a shared value or belief in social norms. Therefore, even those who break laws or violate social norms, share the general belief that those rules should be followed (Cartwright, 2013). Thus, the essence of social control theory is ...
The youth control complex is a form of social control in which the justice system (the prison system) and the socializing and social control institutions (school system) work together to stigmatize, criminalize, and punish inner city youth. Accordingly, these adolescents’ are regarded as deviant and incompetent to participate within U.S. society. On that note, deviance is created based on socially constructed labels of deviances; otherwise, deviance wouldn’t happen without these labels. Once an individual engages in a deviant behavior, it results in a response, often times, some type of punishment from the justice system. The youth control complex creates social incapacitation (social death) among juveniles. This ubiquitous system of social
Functionalism views society as the stability and assimilation of a range of forces that function within it. While society is a separate entity with a life of its own, there are individual elements contributing to that stability. Functionalism as a sociological theory emphasizes assimilation rather than the dissociation of society. Therefore, the society is seen as a whole that is compromised of parts which give one another their identity and their function. The part, whether that is education, such as a school, or sports, such as a football team, operates in relation to the other parts, and cannot be entirely understood in isolation from the other parts. All the parts are interrelated, and when there is a disturbance in any one of the parts, is when you can see the interdependence. But what is important about this theory is that “there will always be some reorganization and tendency to restore equilibrium” (Wallace and Wolf 17). Functionalist do not believe it’s crucial that the people involved in the society to be aware of this interconnectedness anymore than the brain and heart consciously realize that they work together as an organism.
As the current prison structures and sentencing process continues to neglect the issues that current offenders have no change will accrue to prevent recidivism. The issue with the current structure of the prison sentencing process is it does not deal with the “why” the individual is an social deviant but only looks at the punishment process to remove the deviant from society. This method does not allow an offender to return back to society without continuing where they left off. As an offender is punished they are sentenced (removal from society) they continue in an isolated environment (prison) after their punishment time is completed and are released back to society they are now an outsider to the rapidly changing social environment. These individuals are returned to society without any coping skills, job training, or transitional training which will prevent them from continuing down th...
The functionalist perspective views society as a living organism or a mechanical entity. Primitive societies where everyone performs similar tasks, demonstrates mechanical cohesion. In modern societies, many different tasks are performed by the members, sim...
Almost 100 years ago, Chicago saw its population double in a short span of time - the majority of the newcomers being foreign-born. There were also many Americans that were migrating into the city at this time. With large amounts of foreigners bringing with them their own set of beliefs and norms, ideological clashes and a lack of conformity was inevitable. Merton’s Modes of Adaptation comes into play here with foreigners coming to a new land and having to re-adapt. This can lead to increased rates of ritualism, retreatism, rebellion and innovation and this means an increase in crime rates.
...lay in societal change. However it was only until the works of Durkheim and Simmel that the role of individual interaction and society is brought to the forefront. Durkheim largely viewed the individual as needing society as a mechanism of constraint to the aspirations of an eternal goal. Finally, Simmel was able to expand on Durkheim’s dualism by noting that society could be viewed as more than a mechanism of constraint rather as an accumulation of individual interaction. Either through a combination or as individuals each theorist distinct view of the relationship between the individual and society demonstrates a new understanding towards the nature of social reality.
The structural theory of Functionalism is a vast perspective in social science which directs to the attention of the social structure of the function and its components. Those components are called norms, values, status and role. Structural theory is also called Macro theory. That theory or perspective enables us to analyze the way our whole society works and fits together. The sociologist TALCOTT PARSONS used a different system of approach. What he done was to view all the different societies as distinguished and able to supply to their own needs without external assistance. T...
The basic of structural functionalism is a theory that supports society as an intricate system that works as a whole to promotes a stabile society. The term race refers to groups of people who have differences and similarities based off of biological traits considered by society to be socially significant. The concept of race create stability and harmony because society demands group alignment, they are inherently ethnocentric. I do not believe that structural functionalism is the proper way to view race in the United Sates but I do know it is being done. I personally believe that using structural functionalism is a dysfunction because in today’s society others are judgmental when it comes to people
Structural Functionalism or what I call just functionalism, is just another theory that has society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at society through the macro-level of orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole, and believes that society has evolved like organisms. This approach looks at both social structure and the social functions. Functionalism has society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms and customs, traditions, and institutions. There is a common analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer that presents these parts of society as "organs" that works towards the proper functioning of the "body" as a whole. In the most basic terms, it simply emphasizes "the effort to impute and the rigorously as possible, to each feature, custom, or even practice the effect on the functioning of a supposedly stable and cohesive system.
Talcott Parson (Parsons 1951) sees society as a collection of systems within systems Parson determined that each individual has expectations of the other's action and reaction to his own behaviour, and that these expectations would be derived from the accepted norms and values of th...
There are many criticisms of functionalism and their theories: Ø Functionalist ideas almost portray humans as being autonomous and that only socialisation determines our lives. They do not really see humans as the unpredictable creatures they are, not possible to stray away from the predictable ideas that functionalists have of people. Too much stress is placed on harmony and the potential for conflict and its affects are generally ignored. Ø There is no recognition of difference by class, region or ethnic group. The functionalist picture is simply reflective of happy middle-class American families.
Talcott Parson and Robert Merton are the central tenets of structural-functionalist. According to Calhoun “Functionalism (sometime called “structural –functionalism’) refers to the body of theory first developed in the 1930s and 1940s that treats society as a set of interdependent system. Theory rest on an organic analogy that likens a social system to a physical body, in which each subsystem is necessary to maintain the proper functioning of the entire organism. From a functionalist point of view, the key to understanding a social subsystem is thus to trace its function in the working of the whole.”(calhoun489) Structural functional theory describes society to be a complex system with various interdependent parts that work together to maintain stability. Each part of society has each of which have their own functions and work hand in hand to maintain social stability in the world.