SOCIOL 2S06 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Mechanical And Organic Solidarity, Social Inequality, Determinism
8 May 2016
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Evaluation of structural functionalism: some weaknesses, being ahistorical. Argued that structural functionalism did not deal adequately with history. Same cannot be said for marx and durkheim, they did look at the historical evolution of society. Marx talked about how society moved through different modes of production (ie. slavery to feudalism to capitalism) Durkheim talked about how societies shift from mechanical solidarity (in early societies) to organic solidarity (in modern societies) Don"t get any of this in structural functionalism. It"s too focused with grand theory or middle-range theory, they are only looking at the contemporary structure of society: having difficulty dealing with social conflict. Structural functionalism values social order and it sees social conflict as destructive. Because social conflict would interfere/disrupt the orderly working of society: having difficulty dealing with social change. All these different parts of society are viewed as inter-dependent and reinforcing one another.
