hello there everybody in YouTube land and welcome to the mr. sin channel in this video we'll be looking at structural functionalism how it views society what's the difference between a manifest function and a latent function and what are these institutions and social facts I keep hearing so much about all good questions and the answers to all of them are coming up while watching this video use the guided notes the guided notes are notes that I've created to go along with all of my videos you can always find them in the description below the guided notes go along with the video and help you remember all the important information we're going to talk about a lot of different stuff on this channel and it's important for you to be able to reference back to your notes studies show the more notes you take the more you'll be able to remember and also the less you'll have to rewatch this video before your quizzes or tests or whatever you're preparing for also the nice thing is by the end of the videos you'll have a nice study guide that you can use whenever you would like so I'd encourage you take out the guided notes as we continue to learn about all these different theories in sociology now structural functionalism was created by email' Durkheim and it's a really interesting theory essentially what this theory does is it view society has a clock you could say or a car or a living cell now what I mean by this is every person in society at least according to this theory has a specific job and role and they need to do that for everything to work and all these individual people that live in the society work together whether they realize it or not that's how similar to a clock in a car and a cell we have a Gears we have belts we have all these different things in a clock in a car in a cell we have different parts of the cell that all have a unique function in order for the cell to survive if you take out some of the gears of a clock or if you take out the belts in the car or if we take out the membrane in a cell will start to see decay or the items no longer work and the same is for society structural functionalism believes there's an equilibrium to society that we have institutions and social facts we'll get into what those are in just a second but it's on a scale and they need to be balanced if we have rapid change well then society starts to crumble and crack and actually structural functionalism would say society can't have rapid change and it would do things to prevent that and when change does occur in society it's going to be minimum it's going to be whatever the bare necessity is so if we have a new disrupter come into society the rest of society will adapt to it only to what they need to to keep equilibrium will never see an overcorrection the reason why again is because everyone needs to do their part in order for society to function correctly now let's break down this kind of complicated meaning a little bit further and get into manifest functions latent functions because these are gonna be really important so structural functionalism is looking at society from a macro level meaning it's looking at society as a whole it's not focused on the individuals actually this theory says the individuals really have no power and say in society it's again these big institutions that will play a part now we're going to get into what institutions are in just a second but before we do we need to talk about a manifest function and a latent function manifest functions are what is the intended purpose of an institution it's the original goal for it so an example of an institution is a school now the manifest function of school is to teach students to be able to prepare them for the real world to make sure they understand the social norms of society and can operate when they are an adult or to prepare them for college so that way they can get a job or a trade school so that they could get a specialized job whatever may be its to prepare the students for the future and to be productive members of society that is the manifest function the manifest function of the media is to inform and entertain society that is the intended purpose now latent functions are unintended consequences that happen from a function now what I mean by this is we know school the point is to teach you to understand content and prepare you for society but a latent function of school is you also develop friend groups maybe you get into a great crowd of kids and you all of a sudden now in band and you're now Lenox and you become so busy and you actually become too busy that your great start to slip a little bit or you discover some new concerts and all of these new musicians that you really like and you spend more time doing social activities late at night instead of sleeping and preparing for your test the next day now those guys seen as some negative but also positive unintended consequences and that's important to understand too latent functions can be good and bad you getting involved in drugs because you met peers that you would have never met before in your life at school and then starting to slowly but surely fail out of school is a negative consequence to the educational system on the other hand though you developing a friend group that helps push you and also helps prepare you for the rest of your life and brings you happiness and joy is a positive latent function so there's positives and negatives too of course everything in life and latent functions are no exception so again manifest function these are the intended functions of an institution and what we're talking about a latent function is an unintended consequence which can be good or bad so make sure you understand that because they're going to come up in life all of the time and also throughout this theory so now that we've gone over manifest functions and latent functions it's time to explore institutions I've already given some examples of institutions and referenced it multiple times institutions are things that have been created to help make sure that society moves forward and also to make sure that society to that experienced radical change that things are always progressing that's key now each institution has different roles within society so some examples of an institution that have already given is a school and the media but we also have government agencies hospitals the post office the military corporations all of these serve different tasks within a society and they're all crucial to have operating at full capacity if we want to have a successful and productive society remember to these manifest functions within all these institutions will be different because they all serve different goals and they'll also be other unintended consequences which would be the latent functions now on the other side of our scale we have social facts now social facts are really unique things and we don't think about them a lot because they don't affect us until we actually go against them now what I mean by this is these are things that influence us every single day there are around us all the time but you really don't see them and the reason why is because a lot of times we are just going with what we're supposed to do you really start to see these things when all of a sudden you want to do something that differs from what you're supposed to be doing social facts are these things like laws the birth rate religious beliefs and customs things that we as an individual really don't have any influence over you probably don't wake up every day saying oh shoot I'm worried that the police are to come get me because I'm probably gonna start speeding by 30 miles an hour at 3 p.m. or I really don't like that my religious organization doesn't let this this and this happen because I wanted to do that today or you're probably not thinking about oh wow the birth rate for all the developed countries around the world is currently declining I wonder how that's going to impact the future job growth and how that will also impact my retirement because there'll be less people now working those are things you just don't think about all the time the only time we really think about laws is when we're studying them or if we're worried that we're breaking one for religion you're not really worried about all of the different doctrine and the different scriptures until you're studying it or maybe you want to do something that differs from what you're supposed to and birth rates I mean if you say that you're thinking about it you're probably lying unless you're studying it but you don't think about these things even though they have big influences over us as individuals and as a society as a whole so social facts are these invisible forces that impact us and can influence our lives without us necessarily knowing and that's the difference between social facts and institutions institutions are overt they're in your face you'll see them they have blatant purposes and the social facts have purposes too and I'm not trying to diminish them but you don't see them impacting you all the time and both of these together help make sure that society is always moving forward it's a balancing act hopefully you're starting kind of see that structural functionalism really focuses on having kind of order now one of the things that structural functionalism has a problem with is actually change it has a really hard time explaining big changes because according to structural functionalism that wouldn't be able to happen now one of the things when we look at society through a structural functionalist lens we would see farmers for example farmers need to farm and they need to provide food for society farmers look don't have the time to be able to also teach their kids and to make all their clothes and to also produce goods that can be turned into computers and they don't have time to also then manage the country and society and also inform everyone with a TV show now if they don't have time for that they need to focus on food production but the teacher has time to teach their son or daughter the education that they need and the corporation has the time to be able to produce the goods the computer that the farmer needs and the government has time to be able to do their tasks everyone's operating and doing their own tasks to benefit society and they all have become connected everyone relies on someone else for a different task that they need and they don't have time to do it themselves and this is why structural functionalism struggles with change if all the farmers decided they didn't want to be farmers anymore society would start to collapse we need them to be farmers just like they need us to teach their kids and they need us to produce their clothes everyone has a certain task so this is the challenge of structural functionalism it has a hard time adapting and being able to see massive social changes so all of this is connected through transportation and these institutions that keep the whole model working and moving forward another example would actually be the United States government now think about it this way currently in the world America has been said to be very divided now that might be a little bit of an understatement but we have Republicans who have been screaming that the Democrats and the Socialists are coming and the country is going to go down the toilet and it's all over and on the other side we have the Democrats saying that the Republicans are destroying everything and we're losing our morals and we're losing everything that we once had now the reality is is a lot actually changing the American Constitution and also just how everything functions is to actually slow things down we have a filibuster for a reason we don't see radical changes in government because it's a slow process the system couldn't handle it a structural functionalist would say this is a perfect example everyone's doing their own tasks everyone's doing their own things and while people might be worried that we're going to see this drastic change if president a or B gets elected and they're gonna throw everything out the reality is the system stops at one last example of structural functionalist would be looking actually at the old family style the man being the breadwinner the woman taking care of the kids the kids being quiet focusing on school and helping out around the house everyone has a certain task and everyone does what they need to for the family to be successful this is also another controversy with structural functionalism it actually validates some inequality it says that yeah certain people are suited to do certain tasks over others and that inequality needs to happen not everyone's going to be equal people will do certain tasks in order to make sure that they can benefit their family unit their society whatever it may be and that's just life you can't have it where everyone's the same because not everyone is good at doing everything else hopefully this video gave you a really good understanding of what structural functionalism is what's the difference between manifests functions and latent functions how structural functions and view society what's the difference between institutions and social facts and just some examples of this theory in practice I'm mister s'en I hope this video helped you better understand this theory make sure to check out my other videos on conflict theory symbolic interactionism and social constructionism they'll all give another hopefully good explanation of the theories until next time I'll see you online make sure by the way to to subscribe why not support the channel you watch the video and if you made it this long it must not have been too bad so subscribe and help me out as well thanks again for your time and have a great day