Structural Functionalism: The Things They Carried By Robbie O Brien

Robbie O’Brien

Structural functionalism is the idea that everything that operates in a society has a certain function and role that it plays in order to make a large society work. I think that it can be broken down like a Car. a car has many parts, that all work together in order to make the car go, for example a car has the engine part, but a car won't move without all the other parts that officially makes it a ‘car.’ Just like a society, if we were to just have the giant corporations, and the general public was gone, then we would have no one to buy the goods and society would break down because a major part of it is missing, Now if one part were to break down, and it wasn't as big, for example the car loses one wheel, it will still be able to move, turn, and function, just not nearly as good and it is unsafe. That is what structural functionalism is, the idea that every part has a role that makes society work. This creates deviance in a society because when someone such as a major business CEO becomes corrupt, he may start stealing money. So you have Bill Gates and his company. If his company, an operating piece instructional functions, starts to steal from america, that will create a deviance and start to hurt the society
instead of help it. Conflict theory is basically saying that a society is fighting itself, because of a limited amount of resources that cannot be found or provided.
So for example we have America, that is reliant on oil and gas for their many many cars, and then suddenly we start losing oil, and we have used up earth's resources and there is no more to be found. This is where the conflict theory would kick in, america would start to fight itself and citizens will turn on each other in order to find more oil and gas to support their way of life. This can create deviance in a society, because of what it is. If we start losing oil and gas, people will start to fight with each other, creating a deviance, and also make companies collapse and end up hurting
america. Symbolic interactionism is when people, and children, learn certain patterns and ways to interact with others around them, through hearing/seeing it happen around them. For example we use speech mainly, certain words have certain meanings, and those meanings mean the same things in other cultures. For america a strong example of Symbolic interaction is sign language, people have way to interact with each other without even speaking, for example when someone waves their hand, it means hello, and everyone knows that. That is symbolic interaction, learning an “interaction” by seeing it a lot and hearing the word ‘hello’ associated with it, when used a lot a baby will start to pick up its meaning and what it does. This can create deviance though, because when it comes to language, there are always deviances where people should not say certain things. So when we talk in sign language, I may wave to someone, and if they do not like me, they may be deviant and give me the middle finger. There is also deviance in symbolic interaction, because people will express their feelings, and that will be looked down upon by society.