Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is "a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability". [ 1 ] This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation , which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole, [ 1 ...
In sociological research, functional prerequisites are the basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, and money) that an individual requires to live above the poverty line. [1] Functional prerequisites may also refer to the factors that allow a society to maintain social order .
Manifest functions are the consequences that people see, observe or even expect. It is explicitly stated and understood by the participants in the relevant action. The manifest function of a rain dance, according to Merton in his 1957 Social Theory and Social Structure, is to produce rain, and this outcome is intended and desired by people participating in the ritual.
Human Scale Development is basically community development and is "focused and based on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, on the generation of growing levels of self-reliance, and on the construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology, of global processes with local activity, of the personal with the social, of planning with autonomy and of civil society ...
Functional attitude theory (FAT) suggests that beliefs and attitudes are influential to various psychological functions. Attitudes can be influential on many processes such as being utilitarian (useful), social, relating to values, or a reduction of cognitive dissonance .
Exemplifying Differentiation and System Theory, this photographic mosaic may be perceived as a whole/system (a gull) or as a less complex group of parts.. Talcott Parsons was the first major theorist to develop a theory of society consisting of functionally defined sub-systems, which emerges from an evolutionary point of view through a cybernetic process of differentiation.
In the philosophy of mind, functionalism is the thesis that each and every mental state (for example, the state of having a belief, of having a desire, or of being in pain) is constituted solely by its functional role, which means its causal relation to other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs. [1]
In moral philosophy, instrumental and intrinsic value are the distinction between what is a means to an end and what is as an end in itself. [1] Things are deemed to have instrumental value (or extrinsic value [2]) if they help one achieve a particular end; intrinsic values, by contrast, are understood to be desirable in and of themselves.