STRUCTURAL –

FUNCTIONALISM

Dicipline and Ideas in

Social Sciences (DISS)
Group 1
Structural-Functionalism
Background and History
Who are the Proponents of this Theory?

Claude Levi- Brinislaw Alfred Radcliffe-

Strauss Malinowski Brown
 Who are the Proponents of this
Theory?

They were seminal thinkers of the middle 1800s who

made direct observations of primitive cultures, theorizing
about the organization of these folk in relation to
Western society. Their theories were often quite simple
and required only a few assumptions. The point they
were making was this: Individual and group behavior,
more often than not, serves a FUNCTION for the larger
society.
Claude Levi-Strauss
- Widely known as “Father of Structural Anthropology”
- The one who came up with Structuralism

In the 1940s, he proposed that the proper focus of anthropological

investigations was on the underlying patterns of human thought.

His work was heavily influenced by Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss
as well as the Prague School of structural linguistics (organized in
1926) which include Roman Jakobson (1896 to 1982), and Nikolai
Troubetzkoy (1890 to 1938).  From the latter, he derived the concept of
binary contrasts, later referred to in his work as binary oppositions,
which became fundamental in his theory. 
Structuralism
-It is a method of interpreting and analysing
such things as Lauguage , Litrature, society
which focuses on contrasting ideas or
elements of structure and attempts to show
how they relate to the whole structure .

-Binary Oppositions
Bronislaw Malinowski and
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
This two people had the greatest influence on the development
of functionalism from their posts in Great Britain. Functionalism
was a reaction to the excesses of the evolutionary and
diffusionist theories of the nineteenth century and the
historicism of the early twentieth.

Two versions of functionalism developed between 1910 and

1930: Malinowski’s biocultural (or psychological) functionalism;
and structural-functionalism, the approach advanced by
Radcliffe-Brown.
Bronislaw Malinowski
Malinowski suggested that individuals
have physiological needs (reproduction, food, shelter)
and that social institutions exist to meet these needs.
There are also culturally derived needs and four basic
"instrumental needs" (economics, social control,
education, and political organization), that require
institutional devices. Each institution has personnel, a
charter, a set of norms or rules, activities, material
apparatus (technology), and a function.
Alfred Radcliffe- Brown
Radcliffe-Brown focused on social structure rather than
biological needs. He suggested that a society is a system
of relationships maintaining itself through cybernetic
feedback, while institutions are orderly sets of
relationships whose function is to maintain the society
as a system. Radcliffe-Brown, inspired by Augustus
Comte, stated that the social constituted a separate
"level" of reality distinct from those of biological forms
and inorganic matter.
Alfred Radcliffe- Brown

Radcliffe-Brown argued that explanations of social

phenomena had to be constructed within the social
level. Thus, individuals were replaceable, transient
occupants of social roles. Unlike Malinowski's emphasis
on individuals, Radcliffe-Brown considered individuals
irrelevant.
The Functionalists
Perspectives
The Functionalists Perspectives
A theory is a set of A perspective is
interrelated propositions or simply a way of
principles designed to looking at the
answer a question or world.
explain a particular
phenomenon; it provides
us with a perspective
The Functionalists Perspectives
Sociological theories - help us to explain and
predict the social world in which we live in.

The Functionalists Perspectives is based largely on the works of

Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Robert
Merton.
According to Functionalism, society is a system of
interconnected parts that work together in harmony to maintain a
state of balance and social equilibrium for the whole.
The Functionalists Perspectives
For example:
Each of the social institutions contributes important functions
for society: family provides a context for reproducing,
nurturing, and socializing children. Education offers a
way to transmit a society’s skills, knowledge, and culture
to its youth. Politics provides a means of governing
members of society. Economics provides for the
production, distribution, and consumption of goods and
services. And religion provides moral guidance and an
outlet for worship of a higher power.
 The Functionalists Perspectives

Functionalists use the terms functional and

dysfunctional to describe the effects of social elements on
society.
o Elements of society are functional if they contribute to social
stability.

o They are dysfunctional if they disrupt social stability.

Some aspects of society can be both functional and dysfunctional.

The Functionalists Perspectives
Sociologist Identify 2 Types of Functions
a. Manifest
b. Latent (Merton 1968)
 Manifest functions are consequences that are
intended and commonly recognized.

 Latent functions are consequences that are

unintended and often hidden.
Sociological Perspective
The Sociological Perspectives
For sociology, many of these functional anthropological
notions were drawn together by Talcott Parsons, a young
professor at Harvard University around 1950, with
considerable input from early social philosophers Max
Weber, Herbert Spencer, and Emile Durkheim. Parsons'
work was further extended by subsequent sociologists of
the time and after. Structural-functional theory became the
paradigm theory in sociology for about twenty years or so,
because it saliently defined society as a system with
checks and balances.
Structural Functionalism
Structural Functionalism
- A Sociological Theory
A set of core assumptions and core
concepts that examines how society
operates and how people in them relate to
one another respond in their environment.

- Views society as a structure with parts performing certain

function or working with one another to respond to the
Biological and Social needs of all members of the society.
• Neofunctionalism is the perspective that all 
integration is the result of past integration. The
term may also be used to literally describe a 
social theory that is "post" traditional 
structural functionalism. Whereas theorists
such as Jeffrey C. Alexander openly
appropriated the term,[1] others, such as the 
post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault,
have been categorized as contemporary
functionalists by their critics.
Parsonian thinking
In sociology, neofunctionalism represents a revival
of the thought of Talcott Parsons by 
Jeffrey C. Alexander, who sees neofunctionalism
as having five central tendencies:
• to create a form of structural functionalism that is
multidimensional and includes micro as well as
macro levels of analysis
• to push functionalism to the left and reject
Parsons's optimism about modernity
• to argue for an implicit democratic thrust in
functional analysis
• to incorporate a conflict orientation, and
• to emphasize uncertainty and interactional
creativity.
• While Parsons consistently viewed actors as analytical
concepts, Alexander defines action as the movement of
concrete, living, breathing persons as they make their
way through time and space.
• In addition he argues that every action contains a
dimension of free will, by which he is expanding
functionalism to include some of the concerns of 
symbolic interactionism.
• Neil J. Smelser sets out to establish the concept of
ambivalence as an essential element of understanding
individual behaviour and social institutions. His approach,
based on Sigmund Freud's theory, takes intrapsychic
processes rather than roles at the starting point.
• He sees ambivalence (to hold opposing affective
orientations toward the same person object or
symbol) as most applicable in situations where
persons are dependent on one another. The
common element of dependency is in his opinion
that freedom to leave is restricted because it is
costly either politically, ideologically or emotionally.
Thus dependence entails entrapment. Following
his views on ambivalence, Smelser argues that
attitude surveys should be seen as distorted
structures of reality that minimize and delegitimizes
ambiguity and ambivalence.
THANK YOU 0_0