Structural Functionalist Theory – or simply functionalism was created by Emile Durkheim it views
society as a clock we could say. Or a car or a living cell – what I’m trying to mean is that every person
in the society has a specific job and role and they need to do that for everything to work and all this
individual people that live in the society must work together in order to have equilibrium in the
society. Structural functionalism believes there is an equilibrium to society, that we have institutions
and social facts that needs to work properly in order to get balance
Everyone needs to do their part in order for the society to do well balance.
Society is made up of a bunch of moving parts that moves together as one
Structural functionalism is looking at the society from a macro level meaning its looking in the
society as a whole meaning it is not focused on the individuals but the big institutions that will play
its parts.
INSTITUTIONS are structures that meet the needs of society, things that have been created to help
make sure that society moves forward. Example of that is the school, hospitals, corporations
Social Facts – these are the invisible things that influences us every single day. The objects that have
persuasive effects over individuals, yet they cant be influenced by individuals. They are around us all
the time but we really can’t see them and the reason why is because a lot of time we are just going
with what we’re supposed to do – Social facts are like the laws, the birth rates, religious beliefs and
customs , things that we as an individual really don’t have any influence over.
Manifest Functions – are the things that are put in place intentionally to keep society moving
forward. Those are the intended purpose of an institutions, it’s the original goal for it// example of a
institution is a school, now the manifest function of a school is to teach students to be able to
prepare them for the real world. For them to understand the social norms in a society and can
operate when their adult.
Latent Function – unintended consequences that happen from a function. What I mean by this is
that we know school is to teach you to understand content and prepare you for the future but a
latent function of school is that you also develop friend groups or maybe you get into a great crown
of kids.
Latent functions can be seen as good and bad for the society
DYSFUNCTION – if we have rapid changes well then society begans to crumble because Structural
Functionalism does not believe in major changes and it would do things to prevent that and when
change does occur in society its going to be minimum, its going to be whatever the bare necessity is.
So if new disrupter will come to the society, the rest of the society will adapt to it only to what they
need to to keep equilibrium.