Functionalist explanation SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY Functionalist explanation

(Michaelmas 2011) • Functionalist: explain something in terms of its beneficial
consequences
Dr Michael Biggs • e.g. heart’s function is to circulate blood (William Harvey,
17th century)
Theoretical Perspectives
8. Functionalism and cultural evolution • Functionalism: ‘to provide a satisfactory explanation of social
life we need to show how the phenomena which are its
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/ substance come together to place society in harmony with itself
SociologicalTheory.shtml and with the outside world’ (Durkheim 1895)
• e.g. crime is normal: ‘it is a factor in public health, an
integrative element in any healthy society’ (incorrect)
• e.g. inequality is functional for society (Davis and Moore
(1945)—like biological explanation at the level of the
species
• quasi-Marxist version (Bourdieu 1980)

Problems Providing a feedback mechanism

Rejected on three grounds: ideological, empirical, and logical: Marxism: whatever happens is functional for capitalism; e.g.
1. Tautology: how can beneficial be defined? what functions are welfare state

really necessary for societies (or social systems)? • ‘The ruling class does not rule’ (Block 1977):
2. Mystery: how do consequences become causes? what is the • politicians depend on economic growth, for tax revenue
and for public support
feedback mechanism? • capitalists will decide not to invest if unfavourable policies
Functionalist explanation recurs … are implemented—or even if atmosphere is uncongenial
• Norms: ‘members of a close-knit group develop and maintain (Keynes 1936)

norms whose content serves to maximize the aggregate welfare • feedback mechanism does not require conspiracy:
that members obtain in their workaday affairs with one unintended consequences of individual decisions
another’ (Ellickson 1991)
• latent v manifest Functionalism can also be justified by evolution …
(Merton 1957)

Explaining long-term cultural change Evolution

Micro-level theories typically presuppose a second-order conflict
theory of long-term change / variation
image of
• explain institutions that provide incentives for rational social
actors (e.g. private property) [lecture 1] order epistemology naturalistic

• explain the values and meanings that motivate actors (e.g. interpretive
Christianity) [lecture 3] harmony

• explain the situations and roles that constitute interaction individual
[lecture 4] elxopcluasnaotfion

• Promise of evolutionary theory …

situation macro

1

Darwin’s natural selection 1. Culture is adaptive for individuals
vis à vis their environment
Three elements (Lewontin):
• heritability—genes • Intentional explanation is not sufficient because the results of
• variation—mutation, random with respect to fitness innovation cannot be foreseen, especially cumulative
• differential replication—genes making the fittest
organisms are most likely to be replicated • Differential replication because people with inferior culture

• Could social phenomena be explained by a similar process? (i) eliminated—extension of natural selection
• cultural evolution ≠ evolutionary psychology
• coevolution (Durham 1991) (ii) adopt superior culture

• Example: technology

• Norse in Greenland
(Diamond 2004)

2. Culture is adaptive for the collective 3. Culture is adaptive for itself
vis à vis individual vis à vis humans

• Individual self-interest can produce inferior outcome (Hobbes) • Shift to seeing humans as the environment for culture
• norms of cooperation may create a better outcome [next term,
lectures 3-4] • meme: unit of information in the brain, analogous to
gene (Dawkins 1982)
• Problem: every individual has an incentive to violate the norm!
• how could norms be maintained? • Memes compete with each other to replicate

• Functionalist account of religion (Wilson 2002) • the teddy bear: ‘survival of the cutest’ (Hinde &
• e.g. Stark (1996) on the rise of Christianity: Bardon 1985; Morris, Reddy, & Bunting 1995)
• Roman cities are chaotic and deadly
• Christians help each other during outbreaks of disease • replication may entail harming the host; e.g. lancet fluke
(i) they are more likely to survive—natural selection
(ii) pagans are impressed and thus convert

Religion as ‘virus of the mind’ (Dawkins 1993) Evolutionary account of science (Hull 1988)
• conflates harm with “irrationality”, e.g. belief that mystery is a
• Social institutions
virtue • harness self-interest of individual scientists: desire for
• what are the criteria for evaluating the rationality of credit, awarded through citation

beliefs? [cf. lecture 1] • balance continuity (need to cite predecessors) and novelty
Coherent criterion for harm: against (reward given for being first); ensure publication of results

genetic interests • Scientific memes
• contraception
• are replicated through teaching and citation
—but that is private • via scientists, interact with reality (their environment); the
• religious martyrdom?
best proliferate, the worst go extinct
—contrast value-rationality • no one tries to disprove their own ideas; falsification
[lecture 3]! happens because competing scientists have an interest in
defeating their rivals
Georges du Mesnil de La Tour
St Sebastien Attended by St Irene (1634-43) • Resulting selection process is effective though inefficient
• At a higher level, these institutions have themselves evolved

2

Problems Next Term

• Hard to measure fitness in a way that is not tautological Put theoretical perspectives to work: investigate enduring
problems in sociology
• religion enhances cooperation, but also provokes sectarian
violence • different perspectives explain—and conceive—these
problems differently (Prof Federico Varese)
• “Memes” difficult to identify (Aunger ed. 2000; Jablonka &
Lamb 2005) 1. Social construction of reality
2. Micro and macro
• behaviour or idea? 3. Collective action
4. Norms
• a religion like Christianity comprises innumerable 5. Gender
elements—“culture” emphasizes logical coherence 6. Stratification
[lecture 7] 7. Ethnicity and nationalism
8. Conflict, violence, and protection
Virtues:
• Revision in Trinity
• returns to big questions like religion, long-term cultural
change

• ‘population thinking’ is useful regardless (Richerson & Boyd
2005) VARIATION not just mean/‘ideal type’

References

Kingsley Davis & Wilbert Moore, ‘Some Principles of Stratification’, American Sociological Review 10 (1975)
Robert K. Merton, ‘Manifest and Latent Functions’, Social Theory and Social Structure (1957)
Fred L. Block, ‘The Ruling Class Does Not Rule: Notes on the Marxist Theory of the State’ (1977) reprinted in

Revising State Theory
Robert Ellickson, Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes (1991)
David L. Hull, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of

Science (1988)
David L. Hull, Science and Selection: Essays on Biological Evolution and the Philosophy of Science (2001)
Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004)
William H. Durham, Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity (1991)
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (1996)
David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral (2002)
Peter J. Richerson & Robert Boyd, Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (2005)
Robert Aunger (ed.), Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science (2000)
Eva Jablonka & Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions (2005)
Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (1982)
Richard Dawkins, ‘Viruses of the Mind’, Bo Dahlbohm (ed.), Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind

(1993)
Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten, & Kevin L. Laland, ‘Towards a Unified Science of Cultural Evolution’,

Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (2006)
Robert A Hinde & L. A. Barden, ‘The Evolution of the Teddy Bear’, Animal Behavior 33 (1985)

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