Sociology: Manifest and Latent Functions

The test has been completely changed and a new topic has been added to the standard test to get into the medical department - sociology is now about 30 questions for testing, so the basics of the course must be available Hmm. I also participated in this course for other reasons. One of the reasons is that the course is only 8 weeks, not the whole semester. As I anticipate that more time will be spent studying on my other course in the latter term, worrying about less courses will reduce weekly pressure in the May Final.

Agency function: There are two (from Robert Merton). It is obvious and potential. List functions are expected. Potential features are hidden and not intentional. For example, what is the obvious function of education? - Education is aimed at providing training to enable individuals to play a role in society. - It is aimed at teaching to young people. What is the potential function of education? It allows their mothers to sit down from the baby so that the kids leave the house and they can enter the labor market

So, there are two social functions. There is a list function and a potential function. Before you drill down on lists and potential features, it is helpful to give an overview of the structure function approach. There is a complete tutorial to introduce the structure function method in more detail, so I will briefly introduce it here. Well, the structural function approach considers society as a complicated interconnected system, a complex machine. We can imagine that the interlocking parts work together to promote the operation of the whole system and promote stability and harmony. Your body is one of these systems, all its organs work together to create functional harmony in your body.

Robert K. Merton (1957) proposed a difference between an explicit function and a potential function. The manifest function is the expected function of phenomena in social systems. Potential functions are unconscious functions of phenomena in social systems. An example of checklist and potential functions is education. The clear purpose of public education is to increase the knowledge and ability of citizens and prepare to contribute to the labor force. The potential function of the public education system is the development of the learning hierarchy. The most learned things are often the richest. Thus, although the obvious function of education is to allow all individuals to contribute to workforce and society, it also limits certain people by making boundaries entering professionals.