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Structural Functionalism In American Culture

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Living in America, they are many cultures blended together and trying to live in harmony has always had it setbacks and upbringings. Structural functionalist attempt to provide order and cohesiveness in society. Sometimes one culture’s norm is completely opposite of another cultures norm. This is when conflict theorist sees sub-cultures different and ethnocentrism is accessing one culture standards over another. As members of society, we did not just get our beliefs from one culture, it has taken years and exposure to create our norm. As a symbolic interactionist, we take bits and pieces of culture and share the culture we create. With technology advancing as much as it has, it has even made our world smaller and exposed us to more cultures. …show more content…

Emile Durkheim social facts Social in this culture, were sexuality out of heterosexuality has been frond upon, and how society has held itself together. Emilee Durkheim theory allowed to observe the normal and abnormal functioning and how to look at change and handle change. He was the founder of the structural functionalist paradigm and social facts, “- consisting of manners of acting, thinking, and feeling external to the individual which are invested with coercive power and virtue of which the exercise control over him.” This is important to understanding why individuals are influenced by social facts. Many American’s do things because they see everyone else doing it and think they must follow along. The issue with discrimination of intersex, is that they were not accepted by mainstream Christians for many generation and still struggle with discrimination and laws. Many Americans decided to get married to the opposite sex, only for fearing their unacceptance to society. This common consciousness may be the reason for many high divorce rates in American. When individual’s common consciousness is weakened, people feel less connected with their society. Durkheim claimed why there is increased amount of suicides during this period of …show more content…

This could cause the participates not to act in their natural way, knowing that they are in an experiment.
Participate participation could be a great way to get to fully experience how someone is treated daily, but there could be some ethical concerns with pretending to be intersexual.
Intersexual Ethnography in a setting like at a school could be an efficient way to note interactions with others. The only observations you would be getting is only in that environment.
A case study could be conducted on an individual who is experiencing discrimination in America for being intersexual.
Secondary Data Analysis of intersexual relationships vary from history and different cultures. This would give the researcher an idea how sexual relationship have changes over time and how society has made these social norms.
The best type of research, is field research, due to the fact, that people are in their natural environments and are in their normal environment. All the methods can gather useful information for social fundamentalist to solve issue, which ultimately create harmony among societies. Also, provde information of the conflicts of

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While Durkheim calls modern society a disconnective collectiveness conscience, because everyone depends on themselves. Durkheim called the progress from traditional to modern society a “natural evolutionary progression.” He

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In sociology, there are three theoretical perspectives; symbolic interactionism, functional analysis and conflict theory. The major point of symbolic interactionism is to use symbols to help understand how we as a society view the world, and how we communicate with one another. In functional analysis, the major point is to look at society as a whole, constructed of various parts, or groups, that all have their own function. Lastly, conflict theory is the opposite of functional analysis. In this perspective, society is viewed as different groups, each competing for power, or dominance.

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Looking at society as a whole with individual units that work together to make society function efficiently is the structural functionalism concept. Each unit has a part and is describe as institutions such as family, religion, education, politics, economy and inequality. Because structural functionalism looks at social structure and patterns of behavior it is able to create values for society. As well as, distinguish between visible and suppressed problems within the social structures that may need to be addressed. For instance, homelessness is indication of dysfunction in structural functionalism system.

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The Creation of Society Through the Lens of Durkheim and Rousseau There are various theories across the spectrum of the social sciences that address the birth of society. The focus of this essay will be on two French sociologists, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Émile Durkheim who share different ideas of how the creation of society came about. Durkheim was a functionalist who has very fundamental views on the formation of society. Durkheim theorizes that society is natural and happens through shared experiences. He believes that society makes the individual “whole” by providing them with knowledge.

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Most fields of science rely on theories to explain centrally important issues, such as social phenomena, that have a wide range of applications. Sociologists attempt to describe human society though their theories, such as the structural-functionalism theory, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionalism. While the three theories attempt to describe how society functions the way it does, all three differ in their views of how humans are related to society and each other. In the structural-functionalism, the dominant view is that if the structures that exist are functional, then those structures should be preserved and maintained. Structure-functionalists tend focus on the interrelatedness to the social structures that make up society.

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Emile Durkheim thought that society was multifaceted system of consistent and co-dependent parts that work together to maintain stability. One important thing that Durkheim believed held society together was social facts. He thought that social facts consisted of feeling, acting, and thinking externally from the person and coercive power over that person. These things could include social institutions, rules, values, and norms. They have control over an individual’s life.

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(Sociology.ie, 2014) Emile Durkheim (1798-1857) was a French sociologist, who was interested in the impact of the industrial revolution on how people behaved in society. Durkheim is known as one of the founding fathers of sociology, due to the large efforts he used to establish sociology as a science subject. This meaning, that you can analyse society using scientific analysis or “scientific fact”. Durkheim is well known for his theories relating to mechanical and organic solidarity. Mechanical Solidarity refers to the feeling of connectedness between different individuals due to similar religious beliefs, Work or education.

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Social fact can be defined as the norms, values, and structures of society. Durkheim believed that collective consciousness, values, and rules are essential for a functional society. His theories concentrate mainly

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Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) believed that the social connections

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Structural Functional Theory Structural functional theory is a macro sociological theory that is based on the characteristics of structures, social patterns, social systems and institutions such as education, religion, leisure, media, economy and politics. If all these social institutions are organized and co-operate with one another around a set of core values functionalist theorists assume that the entire social system will function properly and efficiently. Society in structural functional theory has a view that it is an organized system of interrelated parts that are held together by shared values and established social arrangements that help maintain the system to be in a state of balance and equilibrium. Structural functional theory is a broad perspective in sociology and anthropology which sets out to interpret society as a structure with interrelated parts. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms, customs, traditions and institutions (Vibha Desai, 2013).

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In other words, functionalists like Durkheim believed that for a society to survive, its various social processes must come together to meet the system’s needs. Functionalists implement Durkheim’s outlook of a unified social scheme with various elements having a function within

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 Emile Durkheim was well-known for his views on the structure of society. He was interested in what was happening with society as a whole rather than an individuals specific actions. His theories were founded on the concept of social facts, defined as the norms, values, and structures of society for example; institutions, culture, beliefs, etc. which are external in nature to the individual

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Durkheim, thus wishes to be more scientific in his approach and wants to observe moral facts that are constantly changing to formulate sociological theories as opposed to just accepting a set of “ideal type” morals that were formed at a specific

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