Actors are seen as a collection of statuses and roles relatively devoid of thought. The basic unit of Parsons's social system is the status-role complex. These assumptions led him to focus primarily on order but to overlook, for the most part, the issue of change. Parsons was concerned primarily with the creation of social order, and he investigated it using his theory based on a number of assumptions, primarily that systems are interdependent they tend towards equilibrium they may be either static or involved in change that allocation and integration are particularly important to systems in any particular point of equilibrium and that systems are self-maintaining. He saw these levels hierarchically, with each of the lower levels providing the impetus for the higher levels, with the higher levels controlling the lower levels. Parsons saw these action systems acting at different levels of analysis, starting with the behavioral organism and building to the cultural system. Latency, or pattern maintenance function, i.e., how motivation and the dimensions of culture that create and sustain motivation are stimulated.Ĭomplementing this are four action systems, each of which serve a functional imperative: the behavioral organism performs the adaptive function the personality system performs goal attainment the social system performs the integrative function and the cultural system performs pattern maintenance. The integrative function, or the regulation of the components of the system.Ĥ. The goal-attainment function, i.e., how a system defines and achieves its goals.ģ. The adaptive function, whereby a system adapts to its environment.Ģ. The heart of Parsons's theory is built on the four functional imperatives, also known as the AGIL system:ġ. The single greatest contributor, and practitioner, of structural functionalism was Talcott Parsons (1902-1979). Much like other versions of structural functionalism, this theory is criticized as conservative and lacking in empirical support. Since some positions are more important, more pleasant, and require different skills, a system of stratification is necessary to make sure all roles are fulfilled. Stratification here refers to positions rather than individuals and to the way that individuals are placed in the appropriate position. This theory argued that stratification was universal and necessary for society, and that it was therefore functional. One of the earliest and better known applications of structural functionalism was the functional theory of stratification. Emerging as an offshoot of organicism, structural functionalists were mainly societal functionalists who were interested in large-scale social structures and institutions within society, how they interrelate, and their constraining effects on actors. Conflict theories, instead, see control and coercion between dominants and subordinates as animating forces in society.Īlthough popular, even dominant, after World War II, structural functionalism is today generally of only historical interest.

Functionalism and neofunctionalism can both be thought of as consensus theories, focusing on the relationships between such things as shared norms and values and the creation of social order. This chapter deals with the rise and fall of structural functionalism, neofunctionalism, and conflict theory. Structural Functionalism, Neofunctionalism, and Conflict Theory

Structural and functional theory