Psychology student, Azima Zaman

Looks at the social mirror from a Functionalist Position (FP)

1.The organic analogy: The best known of functionalist analogies is the organic analogy associated with Emile Durkheim. Society is seen as an organic whole in which the various parts work to sustain the others. The comparison with a human body makes this clearer. The body has various organs, each organ has a particular task to perform to maintain the body in health. In a society there are various institutions, each of which performs a particular task that helps to sustain the society.

2.The watch analogy: Like a body a watch s made up of numerous parts. But also like in a body these parts have to be arranged in the ‘correct’ order. For example, if you take a watch apart you still have the parts but it will not do the one thing that it was designed for-tell the time. Thus the analogy points both to the inter-relatedness of the parts and the necessity that they work together.

Determinism: Functionalism has been accused of being unable to explain the existence of change and conflict. This is because the whole premise of functionalism seems to be the idea that if some institution exists then in must both be beneficial and required. The approach is thus essentially conservative, and serves to justify prevailing arrangements as functionally necessary.

This can, of course, be taken too far, but clearly we are strongly influenced by the society of which we are members. We do ‘internalise’ the values, beliefs and norms of our society to a greater or lesser extent and these constitute the boundaries of our everyday thinking. However, f unctionalism tends to simplify the relationship between individual agency and the structures of social action. We end up with what Dennis called the ‘oversocialised’ conception of humans. What he implies is that functionalism seems to deny the importance of human agency (free will) and that we are pictured as creatures of the system into which we are born.

Recently, feminist approaches have attacked functionalism, arguing that the structural functionalists provided a justification for male privilege and ignored the past and potential contributions of women.

2. In terms of Cooley’s Mirror functionalism is a situation in which the social mirror dominates and determines the individual. People who reinforce the functionalist way of looking at social life are those who are malleable, allowing themselves to be shaped and guided by social pressures in a mere functional product. They tend to resist change because their see themselves as a cog in a mechanism – so if they left that mechanism their whole life would fall apart, like a clock with a cog removed. Also they tend to attribute causes to their current circumstances (good or bad), which lie in the broader social context and therefore cannot be changed by them.

In the following BE-ME clip, we see a respondent who conforms to the functionalist model of the social mirror. Notice how she accepts her position, without resistance.

See clip sk02 id08