Functionalist and Marxist Views of Society

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Functionalist and Marxist views of society Functionalism and Marxism are two views that have completely different ideas on how society works. Functionalists have a positive view on society and the believe it works in a similar way to that of the human body this is called organic analogy and they believe that institutions e.g. schools and the media work together like the organs in the human body. Functionalism is a structuralist approach and they believe that society controls us like the proverbial puppets on a string this is otherwise known as a top down theory. Talcott Parsons is the key thinker of functionalism he believed that social institutions socialise people into key values of society he also believed that our behaviour is controlled by the rules of society and that we will know if we are doing something that is deemed as socially unacceptable. The fact that functionalism is a consensus theory and that it emphasises agreement in society has been a major criticism of functionalism as not everyone gets on and we do not live in a utopian society where everything is completely perfect, behaviour and expectations of people change over time and this is not illustrated in functionalism neither is freedom of choice as it completely ignores the fact that people should have the choice to do what they want. Furthermore it ignores the fact that power is not equally distributed between members of the society. Marxists however have a negative view on the society and they believe that its members are exploited and brainwashed by the institutions. Karl Marx was the main thinker behind Marxism and he believed that society was spilt up between two groups the bourgeoisie who are the rich and the powerful who control society and the polartariant who are the poor and working class. There is a conflict between them two groups thus causing Marxism to be a conflict theory.

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