functional importance

Examples of functional importance in the following topics:

• The Functionalist Perspective: Motivating Qualified People

  • Inequality ensures that the most functionally important jobs are filled by the best qualified people.
  • In other words, it makes sense for the CEO of a company, whose position is more important functionally, to make more money than a janitor working for the same company.
  • A job's functional importance is determined by the degree to which the job is unique and requires skill, meaning whether only a few, or many other people, can perform the same function adequately.
  • Are basketball players more functionally important than teachers?
  • Thus, functionalism can be critiqued on the basis that there is little connection between income and functional importance.

• Dominant Perspectives

  • Inequality ensures that the most functionally important jobs are filled by the best qualified people.
  • In other words, it makes sense for the CEO of a company whose position is more important functionally to make more money than a janitor working for the same company.
  • A job's functional importance is determined by the degree to which the job is unique, meaning whether few other people can perform the same function adequately.
  • Are basketball players more functionally important than teachers?
  • There is little connection between income and jobs that are functionally important in a society.

• Explaining Poverty: The Sociological Debate

  • Sociologists take two opposing approaches to explaining economic stratification: structural-functionalism and conflict theory.
  • Those at the top are given power and rewards because of high abilities, and the high rewards exist to provide incentive for qualified people to do the most important work in high status occupations.
  • According to this logic, inequality ensures that the most functionally important jobs are filled by the best qualified people.
  • The conflict-theory approach offers a critique of structural-functionalism.
  • First, the critique asserts that it is difficult to determine the functional importance of any job, as a system of interdependence makes every position necessary to the functioning of society.

• The Functionalist Perspective

  • Functionalists view the family unit as a construct that fulfills important functions and keeps society running smoothly.
  • Structural functionalism is a framework that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.
  • Functionalism addresses society in terms of the function of its constituent elements: norms, customs, traditions and institutions.
  • It provides important ascribed statuses such as social class and ethnicity to new members.
  • Explain the social functions of the family through the perspective of structural functionalism

• Preindustrial Cities

  • Preindustrial cities had important political and economic functions and evolved to become well-defined political units.

• Functions of Religion

  • The structural-functional approach to religion has its roots in Emile Durkheim's work on religion.
  • Given this approach, Durkheim proposed that religion has three major functions in society: it provides social cohesion to help maintain social solidarity through shared rituals and beliefs, social control to enforce religious-based morals and norms to help maintain conformity and control in society, and it offers meaning and purpose to answer any existential questions.
  • However, as the division of labor makes the individual seem more important, religious systems increasingly focus on individual salvation and conscience.
  • The primary criticism of the structural-functional approach to religion is that it overlooks religion's dysfunctions.
  • In one sense, this still fits the structural-functional approach as it provides social cohesion among the members of one party in a conflict.

• The Earliest Cities

  • Rome is a well-known example of an ancient city that served political and commercial functions, as well as acting as a cultural and social center.
  • Many early cities were surrounded by patrolled walls, demonstrating the importance of protection in urban centers of early civilizations.
  • Ancient cities were notable for their geographical diversity, as well as their diversity in form and function.
  • These conditions seem to be important prerequisites for city life.
  • Finally, cities likely performed the essential function of providing protection for people and the valuable things they were beginning to accumulate.

• Intelligence and Inequality

  • Although schools' manifest function is to educate and train intelligence, they also have latent functions like socializing students.
  • Like the academic skills learned there, the social skills learned in school turn out to be quite important to a student's future success in life .
  • Manifest functions involve things people expect or can observe.
  • Latent functions are not generally recognized or intended; rather, they are a secondary effect of manifest functions.
  • On an individual level, academic capital influences and informs several important aspects of life.

• The probability of a dyadic tie: Leinhardt's P1

  • The first equation says that the probability of a reciprocated tie between two actors is a function of the out-degree (or "expansiveness") of each actor: alphai and alphaj.
  • It is also a function of the overall density of the network (theta).
  • It is also a function of the global tendency in the whole network toward reciprocity (rho).
  • This probability is a function of the overall network density (theta), and the propensity of one actor of the pair to send ties (expansiveness, or alpha), and the propensity of the other actor to receive ties ("attractiveness" or beta).
  • The residuals important because they suggest places where other features of the graph or individuals may be relevant to understanding particular dyads, or where the ties between two actors is well accounted for by basic "demographics" of the network.

• Secondary Groups

  • He labeled groups as "primary" because people often experience such groups early in their life and such groups play an important role in the development of personal identity.
  • Since secondary groups are established to perform functions, people's roles are more interchangeable.