Social Institutions

Functionalist View

One way to study social institutions is to examine how they fulfill essential functions using the functionalist (or structural-functionalist) perspective. To survive, any society or relatively permanent group must accomplish five major tasks, or functional prerequisites:

• 1.
  Replacing personnel. Any group or society must replace personnel when they die, leave, or become incapacitated. This function is accomplished through such means as immigration, annexation of neighboring groups, acquisition of slaves, or sexual reproduction.
• 3.
  Teaching new recruits. No group or society can survive if many of its members reject the established behavior and responsibilities. Thus, finding or producing new members is not sufficient. The group or society must encourage recruits to learn and accept its values and customs. Such learning can take place formally in schools (where learning is a manifest function) or informally, through interaction and negotiation in peer groups (where instruction is a latent function).
• 3.
  Producing and distributing goods and services. Any relatively permanent group or society must provide and distribute desired goods and services to its members. Each society establishes a set of rules for the allocation of financial and other resources. These rules must satisfy the needs of most members to some extent, or the society will risk the possibility of discontent and ultimately disorder.
• 4.
  Preserving order. Societies must defend themselves from threats from both without and within. [Page 874]Contemporary issues, as well as controversies, of immigration, surveillance, terrorism, military buildup, private security, prisons, gated communities, disarmament, and treaties concerning nuclear weapons are all manifestations of the need to maintain order.
• 5.
  Providing and maintaining a sense of purpose. People must feel motivated to continue as members of a group or society in order to fulfill the first four requirements. Many aspects of a society can assist people in developing and maintaining a sense of purpose. For some people, religious values or personal moral codes are paramount; for others, patriotism or tribal identities are especially meaningful.

This list of functional prerequisites does not specify how a society and its corresponding social institutions should perform each task. For example, one society may protect itself from external attack by amassing a frightening arsenal of weaponry, while another may make a determined effort to remain neutral in world politics and to promote cooperative relationships with its neighbors. No matter what the strategy, any society or relatively permanent group must attempt to satisfy all these functional prerequisites for survival. If a society fails on even one condition, it runs the risk of extinction.

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