Some think it as promoting value consensus and some see otherwise. Functionalists believe that education transmits society's norms and values and therefore promotes value consensus, with the educational and economic system working hand in hand to develop the skills required for the world of work. Emile Durkheim provides the basic framework of the functionalists view on the education system, agreeing with its function of transmitting norms and values. He believed that for society to operate effectively they have to develop a sense of belonging to something, becoming 'social beings' with a loyalty and commitment to society as a whole. The education system creates this effectively by teaching subjects such as history, which enables children to see the link between themselves and wider society.
A bureaucracy that replicates the cultural and ethnic mixture of the population is also likely to be more receptive to the requirements and objectives of marginal groups in a diverse society Representative bureaucracy is mainly focused on the benefits of passive representation, the presence of a public labor force that reflects the demographic features of the society it work for. The viewpoint was first seen in the academic works of J. Donald Kingsley. However, Kingsley’s creation of representativeness in the British Civil Service move away from what is now observed as representative bureaucracy, as he concentrated on social class as one of the most important demographic variables. Following Kingsley’s work, David Levitan addressed the overlook of creating a representative labor force in the public division in the United States, arguing the public would better consent organization actions if the demographic composition of those agencies was similar to that of society. The theory
Culture is defined as the learned, shared behaviour of the members of a society including values, norms and meanings. It’s a focal point of our being and has the ability to unite or damage a society and furthermore a nation. There are many theories surrounding the importance and functionality of culture and in this essay, I will be assessing the Functionalists’ theories and contrasting it with alternative sociological points of view. Similar to their theory of socialization, Item A reveals the functionalist theory of everything in society performing a function in order to create a value consensus. Durkheim is a firm supporter of this theory and believes that social order is held together by attitudes of solidarity which play the role of ensuring the survival of a well integrated society in which everything and everybody is a piece of a jigsaw that fits together to create a bigger picture.
Culture as a concept is important to sociologists because it holds a society together. Rules, laws and morals guide our behaviours and creates stability and order throughout societies. Morals come from religion and our parents: different kinds of morals differ between social groups. Subculture is a culture within a culture. It shares definite features in relation with the dominant culture, but it also has particular values, norms, attitudes and behaviours that is specific to it.
However Marxists would argue that social problems such as underachievement are simply aspects of a wider structure of class inequality, and unlike functionalists, they do not see the state and its policies beneficial to all members of society. In Marxists view, the state represents the ruling class, and social policies serve the interests of capitalism as opposed to society as a whole. For example Marxists would state that social policies, such as the NHS, maintain the labour force for further exploitation. From a social democratic approach, sociologists, such as Townsend, believe that sociologist
The impact on the personality of the individual, it has the characteristics of participation in the life of the community. The variety of contacts, relationships and active participation in the life of the surrounding general give shape to the human personality. There are two types of social structure, macro and micro which allows the individual to notice, whatever man is constantly in contact, which affects the shape of humans’ personality. One of the most important perspectives of sociological theories is the distinction between structural and social action. Structural action, in other words structuralism, is a perspective which is concerned with the overall structure of society and sees individual behavior molded by social institutions like the family, the educations, the mass media and work.
Likewise, society would cease to exist if it didn’t have vital institutes such as the family and education even crime and deviance to a certain extent. However, Sharrock et al, criticise Durkheim’s concept of functionalism as it overemphasises the value consensus. Other sociologists argue that not everyone will buy into society’s norms and values not because they are ‘deviant’ but because it favours the capitalist ideology. From the organic analogy, Parson’s 1951 developed Durkheim’s theory and postulated functional prerequisites. According to Parsons’ there are four main prerequisites such as: adaption (economic), goal attainment (political), integration (cohesion) latency; pattern maintenance.
The results indicated that that the most important factors affecting identity ranked in their order of importance are cohesiveness, voice and consensus respectively Introduction Social identity refers to how human beings make sense of each other. As such, social identity is critical to the construction of culture and by extension society (Turner, 1985). Human beings need to know the affiliations, beliefs, intentions of others to interpret their actions and/or predict their future behavior (Turner et al. 2008). While the qualities aren’t observable directly, they can be externally manifested through signals revealing of internal self (Turner et al.
I will refer to sources from Durkheim, Parsons, Davis & Moore, Althusser and Bowles & Gintis. Functionalists believe that education transmits society's norms and values and therefore promotes value consensus, with the educational and economic system working hand in hand to develop the skills required for the world of work. Emile Durkheim provides the basic framework of the functionalists view on the education system, agreeing with its function of transmitting norms and values. He believed that for society to operate effectively they have to develop a sense of belonging to something, becoming 'social beings' with a loyalty and commitment to society as a whole. The education system creates this effectively by teaching subjects such as history, which enables children to see the link between themselves and wider society.
Marxists may argue that these norms and beliefs are all in interest of the Bourgeoisie and they can prevent or make change by ideological manipulation or force. Functionalism is that it says that there are purposes for everyone and everything within society. For example, under a functionalist point of view crime even contributes to the function of entire society, without serving these purposes, the social structure would not function properly because police etc would not have jobs. One of the weaknesses of this view is that, however, is that some could arguably say that this means that even poverty serves a function in society. But Durkheim may have argued that poverty was more a product of "anomie" than actually serving a function.