the conflict and the structural functional perspectives are classical sociological perspectives what does that mean it means that these are old um they have their roots in the 1800s and they are pretty much European in origin they existed for about 150 years and after 150 years around 1950 they both started to decline in a major way in popularity American soci iology sort of took over at that point and Americans started to develop their own sociological perspectives after the 1950s right now we're going to learn about the perspectives that developed from 1800 to 1950 both of these perspectives are macr Level the Europeans like to think in terms of big picture the Americans after the 1950s developed micr level perspectives in sociology so that sort of mirrors the American um emphasis on the individual and choice and agency the Europeans were big fans of macro level and ideas like determinism so let's turn to the first one the structural functional perspective we have two fathers of structural functionalism the guy on the left if you look at his picture imile durkheim he's a Frenchman the guy on the right is named um talut Parsons so let's start with the assumptions of the structural functional approach and they argue that there is a real essence of society this Essence is three things stability Harmony and evolution stability means that social patterns contribute to stability Society is maintained most sociologists would agree that there's lots of patterns in society some would not agree that they're all stable and Society is maintained this group of sociologists the structural functionalists say that it's all about stability it's and it's all about maintenance of society next one Harmony the parts of society work together in harmony for the good of the whole the good of the whole is important things might not seem harmonious but they need to be harmonious for the whole maybe your life is bad but is it good for the the the society as a whole that's one of the criteria um that functionalists use to evaluate society and it's one of their assumptions about Society everything works together and it works together for the for the good of the whole evolution social structure and culture adapt to new needs and demands if something is dysfunctional for society it will be eliminated these people take an extremely optimistic view of society Society wants stability people want stability Society needs to be harmonious people want to live in a harmonious balance with their life and if something's bad we get rid of it if something's good we adapt it very very optimistic view I've created this little picture here for you I like to represent the assumptions uh visually I'm very visual if you can't tell so I drew this picture it looks like it's a whole bunch of circles they're overlapping and they're going in an upward movement the upward movement of circle symbolizes progress and evolution bad things are left behind the good continues so things like having a job that's good it's good for society as a whole so we continue to have jobs in the past we had jobs in the future we're going to have jobs jobs are good if jobs become bad we'll stop having jobs the circles symbolize Society in this picture the circles um is a symbol of stability and harmony for me when I think of a circle I think life is stable life is harmonious the circle signifies integration the fact that Society has boundaries boundaries are good the circle is a symbol of community and togetherness Society is pulling together we're working together um we we um complement each other that's how they view the world new circles are created indicating ution they overlap because things aren't created new every minute the old Society is continuously being maintained Society stays the same it's very stable when it changes it changes a little bit and that's why we have overlap so one way of thinking about this is that the functional approach thinks of society as an organism a lot of sociologists teach this way of thinking about it if you want to understand the functional approach think about the society as a whole as a living organism M if someone loses their sight they develop a very good sense of feeling of smelling of hearing they heighten their awarenesses because there's a weakness elsewhere if your human body loses your vision if you um let's say you hurt your arm well your other arm will have to start doing more work so that other arm will become stronger the idea here is that our body is working for the good of the whole my liver works and it helps my heart my heart helps my brain my brain helps my fingers they're all working together for the good of the whole and let's say I get sick well my body will help repair itself and go back towards the stability of Health the equilibrium of feeling good so a great way of thinking about structural functionalism is think about it as an organism everything works together for the good of the good of the whole if your body does have a problem your body seeks to go back towards balance back towards Harmony and if something's good your body should want to maintain it your dopamine receptor should give you you know pleasure for doing something that's good for your body and when you're doing things that are negative your body should give you feedback that those things are negative and you should in theory stop doing them same thing about Society for a lot of these Scholars human nature is the problem they see humans as selfish and as motivated to take care of themsel and the structural functionalists say well what keeps people from destroying themselves is Society society makes us good when I think about this in terms of my life I have a three-year-old little boy when he was one he would occasionally try to smack me in the face and I had to explain to him that that was unacceptable children are like little barbarians I want it now give it to me and family teaches them to sort of realize that other people's feelings matter they can't always get what they want Society through family teaches them how to be acceptable human beings so for these folks our churches our families our schools our government they're all helping us from destroying ourselves again I'm trying to teach you to think of these perspectives as literary genres so you know what are the assumptions of Comedy what are the assumptions of drama what are the assumptions of romance well I just told you the assumptions of structural function ISM that's how they view the world right those assumptions lead them to ask certain types of questions that should flow logically what are the social structures involved what patterns exist well first thing they want to do is gather information if they're looking at domestic violence if they're looking at divorce if they're looking at drug abuse they want to know they want to gather information and say what are the social structures what are the patterns what are the cultural meanings involved then they ask the question what are the consequences of these social structures what are the consequences of these cultural meanings and then the final question is do the social structures and cultures contribute to social stability and Harmony so if they're looking at something like drug abuse they're going to say well what are the social structures involved well we're talking about friendship networks they're talking about maybe somebody who's addicted to drugs might have friends those are social structures that use drugs okay well what are the cultural meanings involved how do they interpret drug use what does drugs mean to them where do the friendships mean to them what do non-drug users mean to them how do they view the government how do they view laws those things are all cultural meanings okay so then they're going to ask what are the consequences of having many friends who use drugs what are the consequences of viewing laws this way what are the consequences of viewing the drug the particular way they do last asked the question well when all of your friends use drugs and you perceive drugs a certain way and you P perceive the government a certain way and you perceive your family a certain way is that contributing to social stability or instability that's how you use the sociological tools you ask the questions you try to find out the answers even if you're just thinking through the answers and you come to a conclusion there are a few more tools that the functionalist used the first one is called a manifest function these are the recognized and intended consequences so let me give you a bunch of examples the Manifest function of the school system is to educate you the Manifest function of the police force is to keep us safe and enforce the laws what I'm basically saying here is the Manifest function is what everyone thinks these things are supposed to do a latent function is much more difficult it's the unrecognized and unintended consequences well what does that mean what this what this tool is saying is we have institutions we have all sorts of things that have unrecognized and unintended consequences so let me give you an example well we said the the Manifest function of Education was to educate our children a latent function of education is that schools provide daycare for children which allows mothers and fathers to work it's a function of the education system if your kids go to public schools you can drop them off at 7 8:00 in the morning pick them up at 2 3:00 in the afternoon and during those hours a parent can work it's an unrecognized and unintended consequence when the government dictated that we will have mandatory public education the government didn't say oh this will allow women to start working that wasn't their intention but there was an unintended consequence of creating mandatory public education and sociologists love these things and they always want to bring people's attention to the fact that when you do something when you create something when you create a group when you create a law when you create uh a new cultural meaning there might be unrecognized and unintended consequences or functions of that thing and this is really good stuff if you can Master it I find it difficult to be honest two other tools that we're going to see functions and dysfunction rather simple tool um the functionalist approach will look at something and say well is that functional or is that dysfunctional um I'm not going to go into too much depth here my next uh little tool here is called an institution we're talking about things like schools government family religion according to the functional approach institutions meet basic human need we need to educate our kids so we create an institution school we need um an ability to make decisions as a as a government as a as a group of people as a large group of people we create government we need somebody to help our children learn right from wrong and take care of children we create the institution of family humans need understandings about the Divine and why we're here and all sorts of things like that there's a Human Institution met it's called religion so for functionalists institutions are great things they give us what we need they also say the institutions provide routine patterns for dealing with predictable problems what does all that mean so there's lots of Institutions out there and the school system sort of you know we need to create a school well how do you create a school okay you need an administrator you need teachers you need students you need support staff um if you were going to create a school you wouldn't create it from nothing you'd find another school and say how did they solve this problem if you're an intelligent student you're probably saying well yeah but there's no innovation that true every time you try to create something let's say you're trying to create a new family create a new school create a new religion when you look at other institutions other churches other families other schools you tend to do what's already been done and some people find a lot of um ease in that they find it easy you know I'm going to create a new school well how do you create a school well let's look at other schools and it makes the job easier other people say Well it stifles creativity but the functionalists they generally say this is good institutions give us what we need and institutions provide routine patterns for dealing with problems the last concept of this lecture that we're going to talk about right now is one of my favorite Concepts it's called institutional interdependence and it's the idea that the norms and values of one institution are compatible with those in other institutions so what's going on here if our schools value hard work our families value hard work and our jobs value hard work all those different institutions are valuing hard work our Society will value hard work that's important if I let people come to my class late and other teachers let their students come to class late and then your family lets you show up to family events late then you go to work and you think oh I can show up to work late I show up everywhere else late and your job fires you that doesn't work it's good when all institutions are holding similar values and similar norms and for the most part they do your job wants you to be there on time your teacher wants you to be there on time your family and friends want you to be there on time and if you get arrested the judge wants you to be there on time that's creating stability and Harmony in our society there's also another caveat here that we can think about what if some of our institutions started to change what if one institution started saying well you know what we value competitiveness and we're really not going to comp value cooperation that can have a ripple effect in our Society if all of our institutions are working together to create stability and Harmony as instit one institution starts changing it might have a ripple effect on the other for the most part Society tries to keep the same values and Norms things like hard work punctuality honesty all those values are shared across institutions and we have a great deal of stability according to the functionalists