Functionalism and Systemism

De Baripedia

Functionalism

Image of the human body, each organ has its function. In functionalism, the organs of society are analysed by their function. So society or politics is interpreted as a living body. It is through the coordination of functions and bodies that development takes place. This vision implies an efficiency concept and regulatory processes. Function is defined here by its biological meaning: "it is the contribution that an element makes to the organization or action of the whole of which it is a part"[1].

The current appeared in the 1930s and its golden age was in the 1960s, mainly in Anglo-Saxon sociology.

Functionalist theory is based on the following founding principle: without considering its material resources and architecture (organization), every society must fulfil certain natural (universal) functions. Among them: produce goods and services (food, housing, care), reproduce (organization of unions, sexuality, family), ensure the protection of members (solidarity, defense). Thus, functional analysis postulates that every custom, every material object, every belief fulfils a vital function, is a vital part of an organic whole.

Societies are then distinguished from each other by the way in which they perform these functions through the establishment of their cultural institutions. Depending on functionalist approaches, different institutions may perform the same functions. For example, social rules can be learned through imitation, fusion or transmission. These three forms of socialization can be described as "functional equivalents".

The founders of functionalism are to be found in the field of anthropology, where Malinowski created the neologism. We see three main trends represented by the following authors.

Bronislaw Malinovski (1884 - 1942) : Anthropological functionalism or absolute functionalism

Bronislaw Malinovski is a Polish student of anthropology, especially the early societies, those far from us that have preserved traditional customs. He undertook studies in Krakow in philosophy, did a doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics and specialised on Melanesian peoples in the islands in order to work on protected human groups that retained their customs. He will produce a number of books on the Melanesians also known as the "Argonauts" in an anthropologist tradition.

Anthropology postulates that there is no immediate knowledge of politics or society. He remains in immersions for years in the Trobriand Islands and will study a particular phenomenon that exists in these tribes.

The tribes of the Trobriand Islands practice inter-tribal exchanges, which means that this exchange will take place between the different tribes. Two types of objects circulate, namely red shells in the form of necklaces and bracelets through a social exchange system. It highlights a principle which states that these two objects reappear continuously and enter into an economy of rapid exchange, families should not keep them. As soon as another party is declared, these objects are put back into circulation.

Phénomène de la kula.png

It describes the phenomenon of the Kula which is the place where individuals will exchange their gifts. Any man who enters this space receives one or more armbands and must quickly enough transmit it to another on the occasion of another gathering.

This is interesting, because it is an original phenomenon for Westerners, it is also a principle that perpetuates itself; it is an object that is not a one-off transaction, but a perpetual transition. In the Kula, he wonders about the nature of this transaction; basically, this transaction has no particular value, but it is accompanied by a ceremonial and an ability to think of possession as very limited.

In the Kula, he questions the fact that there is not a financial exchange, but a framed social exchange that has a precise function that is permanently fabricated the social link between individuals and communities. There is an operation which, seen from the outside makes no sense, but seen from the bottom describes a regulating function by the very nature of the exchange.

The Kula has a regulatory function. This exchange refers to a societal and political space, because these exchanges regulate symbolic exchanges that regulate the community. It is an important social activity precisely controlled and framed by magic.

What is interesting is that Bronislaw Malinovski pronounces a functionalist analysis, here the function is not economic, but societal and functional.

The analysis of the Kula makes it possible to constitute the discourse on the functional analysis of political systems; social regulation allows the collective cohesion of the various tribes. From the moment that it must take place continuously, it prevents war and then forces people to meet and exchange.

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown: 1881 - 1955

Radcliffe-Brown is a British anthropologist who will study Australian Aboriginal political systems and social organizations. In his book Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1968) we see the structuralist analysis that is to say that our societies are traversed by invisible structures that persist in their social, spatial and political organizations.

He will recognize the structuralist message and add to it the functionalism giving structural-functionalism: every society is elaborated and built from structures, but which have precise functions.

The structures of a society can be functionalist, they have the aim of making links and rationality, they have objectives of functionality, the structure is not simply something heavy, but that organizes, then they have a functionalist scope in order to regulate living together.

Thus every process of social life is an adaptive system, structures remain, but can evolve. Adaptability manifests itself at three levels:

  • ecological;
  • institutional;
  • cultural.

From then on, institutions function from social structures made up of individuals, but are linked by social actions within a whole. It is a vision of organicism and interrelationships; political institutions function in social structures, society are individuals who are connected by social relations within a whole, that is, individuals are never isolated, they are part of a social whole. The notion of social system follows from this, the social is not only a sum of individual it is also an organization, when we speak of social system we speak of collective values that make society.

Behind the notion of social system appears the notion of the organization of society and the implicit rules that make us adhere to a society and accept its values.

Radcliffe-Brown continues to think about adaptability, the system and the link between structure and function.

Talcott Parsons: 1902 - 1979

Talcott Parsons.

Parsons is a biologist who supported a doctoral student at the University of Heidelberg in sociology and economics. It is interesting, because it will continue its work by seeking to make the link between action, structure, and then functionalism. In 1969 he published Politics and Social Structure'' which dealt with social and political structures, in 1977 on social systems, he published Social Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory and in 1978 a book dealing with action and the human condition Action Theory and the Human Condition.

He is an interesting author, because he posits action not as something individual, but as being incorporated into a system of action. If we are in a systemic interpretation of society and politics, action no longer depends on an individual, but on a system of action. As a result, important notions about the analysis of governmentality and the implementation of systems appear, because they are never only those of an individual, but also a set of data in a more global system referring to the question of the system.

An action system is an element, units or parts of units that must make relationships between them in order to arrive at choices of actions. An action system will engage a whole set of activities that link individual choices to collective choices.

Thus, Parsons highlights four functions or dimensions of the system of action:

  1. adaptation: consists in drawing from external systems the various resources that the system needs. It went looking for resources and adapting them to needs.
  2. Goals-focus: the ability to set goals and pursue them methodically. In an action system, you first have to adapt to the real situation, then define goals; you have to set them and then give yourself the means to achieve them. There is a logically instrumental dimension. Goals condition means and instruments.
  3. integration: protect the system from sudden changes and major disruptions. It means questioning the implementation of a system that will be able to withstand crises and continue in action. If we do not build, it will be tossed around by crises, the whole report we have today is the contradiction between being present in the immediacy of events and continuing action.
  4. latency: a channeling system that serves both to accumulate energy in the form of motivation and to diffuse it, it is of the order of motivation, of the order of the ability to contain motivation in the ability to act. In public policies, one often has a declaration of intent without the awareness of the means to achieve it, in other words one sets an objective, but one does not think of the very conditions of the resolution of the question highlighting institutional contradictions. It is not enough to keep the motivation, it is necessary to transpose it, but also to manufacture a device which makes it possible to solve them.

The reality often shows that these functions of the action system are not fulfilled or do not manage to be fulfilled almost naturally.

Parson moyen but.png

The functional paradigm of the system of action is to say that we are in a loop that means we have to adapt to return to the goals that promote the question of integration (coordination, fighting against disruptive agents), then we return to the question of latency and motivation and we return to the question of integration. We're in a totally circular device.

Robert King Merton (1910 - 2003) : medium-range structuralism

Robert King Merton.

Influenced by Durkheim, he became interested in social groups and strengthened this model with two important concepts:

  • the role of individuals

In a functionalist vision, he adds a human dimension by saying that there is functionalism, functions, but that individuals are actors at the level of functions.

  • the issue of anomie and social dysfunction

An anomie is a state of decomposition, failure, shutdown, rupture in a system. Anomie means that at some point a social and political system may experience forms of breakdown that will cause the system to fail.

Functional systems are not guaranteed forever, they can experience phenomena of mutation or internal disintegration that defeat the system. The whole system and function can no longer achieve their objective, there is deregulation. Thus anomie is characterized in social dysfunction.

When a social system can no longer regulate the role of each person in society and the place and function of politics in these exchanges, at that moment there can be a form of anomie, that is, social dysfunction jeopardizes the whole system. It also characterizes anomie as a passage from an old order to a future order whose rules are unknown; it is the feeling of leaving a model without knowing in which direction we are going.

Anomie is described not only as a social structure that no longer functions, but as individuals waiting for lost meaning and who, in waiting for that lost meaning, can redefine specific behaviours, particularly violent or deviant behaviours. Deviancy is behaviour that no longer responds to society's behaviour and aspirations. Deviance would occur when there is a disproportion between the cultural flows considered valid and the legitimate means to which individuals may have access to achieve these goals.

In other words, deviance occurs when there is a contradiction between the aims and objectives of society and then the fact that it no longer has the means to achieve them. From the moment society can no longer regulate the social field, the mafia replaces the vacancy of a state employer that provides work and organizes the social field that creates another power within that is a deviant power. So we must ask ourselves about these questions of deviance, because they are ruptures in a structural-functionalist system that shows a gap and a tension between the evolution of society and the reality of the model that no longer works.

In Contemporary Social Problems: An Introduction to the Sociology of Deviant Behavior and Social Disorganization, written by Robert K. Merton and Robert A. Nisbet and published in 1961, a sociological theory of social problems appears, or taking up the question of the normal and the abnormal, the logical and the illogical, saying that the same social and cultural structure can create conforming behaviours, but can also create behaviours of social deviation and disorganization.

Thus, they question the origin of the disorganization in the system by distinguishing three elements :

  • institutional conflicts ;
  • social mobility: it is the fact that there is too much gap between individuals and that there is no longer a sense of belonging ;
  • anomie.

Functionalism explains social facts by their function, then questions social functions and facts in a social system always related to how they are related to each other. For example, the Kula is a system of exchange that has a very important social and functional scope, because beyond the exchange it is a game of construction of a community whose function is to avoid wars and conflicts.

In a system, individuals are part of a device for which they serve the purposes. However, in this system there may be strategies of integration and deviance.

Systemic theory

In systems theory, social or human action involves four main systems:

  • biological system: elementary motivations of the individual;
  • personality system: psychic organization of the individual;
  • social system: set of interaction relationships;
  • cultural system: set of values.

What is the difference between a traditional policy approach and a systems approach?

In the traditional approach to policy analysis, we study the actors as such and the decision-making process, whereas in systemic policy analysis, we think in terms of interactions between the actors, in terms of resource allocation processes, and then think in terms of the power of the actor or the social benefits of the actors, i.e. in terms of the weight of the actors in the system. In the systemic analysis, we will rather question the field of competitiveness, relations and conflict between the players in the systems.

In systemic analysis, systemic policy analysis is based on the assumption that each group of actors has norms, specific processes of action and processes of distribution of modes of action in order to categorize actors in a more complex process. In a systemic analysis, an analysis of the interactions in the very environment in which these interactions occur is implemented by giving more space in the interaction between action and environment that is contextualized in the notion of system.

In systemic analysis, the hypothesis of consistency is maintained; the process must be consistent. We will study the systems of actors, the systems of coherence as well as the coherence between the different sub-systems, i.e. we will analyse the decision-making process of political processes as a set of actors and agents from which sub-systems through which they act derive. We are in a retroactive analysis which means that a decision process and rarely a linear process. An action process poses a question of action and then it seeks to define the action processes, begins to act and finally revisits the conditions of its action. This is called non-linear causality.

David Easton (1917 - 2014) : la théorie systémique en sciences politiques

Easton s’intéresse à l’invention et à la constitution d’une théorie systémique en sciences politiques. Il va chercher à utiliser cette vision systémique des sciences sociales afin d’essayer d’analyser ce qu’est le politique.

Dans son ouvrage The Political System publié en 1953 il dit qu’au fond cette théorie se fait dans l’interprétation de la politique comme universalité, il y a de la politique partout, mais comme étant dans un système on peut comparer tous les systèmes par rapport aux autres. On l’éloigne beaucoup de la vision de l’anthropologie qui est relativiste. La pensée fondamentale de l’anthropologie est le relativisme culturel, il y a des gouvernements politiques différents et ce qui est intéressant est de comprendre la nature et leurs fonctions propres.

La vision systémique en sciences politiques va partir de l’autre côté en nous tirant du côté d’une théorie politique qui considère que l’on peut bâtir des connaissances universelles d’autant plus facilement qu’elle reconnait que la vision de système politique et mondial. En sciences-politiques quand on analyse des systèmes politiques on est dans une analyse comparative des systèmes, s’il y a des différences c’est que ce sont toujours des systèmes.

L’hypothèse d’Easton est de dire que l’on peut construire une théorie politique par l’avancement des sciences politiques sur la base de productions de modèles de compréhensions systémiques.

Ainsi, il voit la société contemporaine comme un chaos auquel l’homme pourra mettre fin s’il applique la méthode scientifique à l’analyse des phénomènes politiques afin de les caractériser tel qu’ils se sont conçus et développé.

Il est pour une théorie systémique globale,il faut décortiquer dans la société contemporaine quelles sont les différents systèmes à l’œuvre.

Les principales fonctions de la théorie politique selon Easton :

  1. proposer des critères pour identifier les variables à analyser
  2. établir des relations entre ces variables
  3. expliquer ces relations
  4. élaborer un réseau de généralisation
  5. découvrir de nouveaux phénomènes

Au fond, on est dans une vision très globale de l’analyse du champ du système dans lequel rentrent ces critères entre les différents éléments des sous-systèmes. C’est une science politique qui va décortiquer les grands systèmes sociopolitiques et qui peut avoir des interrelations avec la qualification des types de régimes concernés.

Jean-William Lapierre (1921 - 2007)

Lapierre part de l’hypothèse de l’analyse des systèmes politiques dans son ouvrage L’analyse des systèmes politiques publié en 1973.

Pour analyser les systèmes politiques, il faut partir sur l’idée d’une universalité des systèmes politiques, nous sommes dans une société globale qui est constituée par des systèmes sociaux que l’on peut analyser

Pour Lapierre, un système politique est un système, une organisions dans lequel les éléments sont mis en interrelations. Tout système politique est inscrit dans une vision naturaliste ; les systèmes politiques sont des inputs et des outputs.

  • input : un système politique ne peut fonctionner qu’en intégrant l’information et les données au sein de la société afin de les transformer.
  • output : reconstruit les données en processus d’action de normes, de techniques, de lois, de règles, de jugements.

Le processus politique c’est la captation de ressources. Une des explications de la Révolution française est la marginalisation du roi de la société française. Au début du XVIIIème siècle, Louis XIV et Louis XV ont peur d’émeutes parisiennes. Louis XIV va construire Versailles en tant qu’extraterritorialité pour empêcher les nobles de se rebeller en province, mais sort du territoire et ne dispose plus d’inputs pour comprendre ce qui se passe à Paris. Quand les grandes épidémies liées aux grandes crises agricoles sont arrivées le peuple s’est réveillait et a fait la révolution. Nous pouvons noter ce bref échange entre Louis XVI et La Rochefoucauld : « -monsieur le roi, il s’est passé quelque chose. –c’est une révolte ?, -non sire, c’est une révolution ! »[2]. Le rapport entre input et output est intéressant dans le sens ou un système politique doit traiter les informations en s’en saisissant, au contraire il ne peut y avoir de gestion adaptée du territoire.

Ce sont des images qui posent le champ du politique dans la confrontation entre les inputs et les outputs dans la gestion des risques calculés, c’est-à-dire qu’on a des ressources à prendre, mais elles viennent avec des contraintes qu’il faut restituer dans un espace de projet en tenant compte des contraintes héritées, si nous n’avons plus d’inputs on peut se demander qu’elle est la nature des outputs, c’est-à-dire que les réponses seront hors de la réalité.

Lapierre désigne le système politique comme un système décisionnel c’est un système qui a une ; même s’il est programmé manière idéologique il doit tenir compte de la réalité.

Cette théorie est intéressante, car tout système politique doit être décisionnel, mais il n’est pas programmé parce qu’il doit évoluer, s’adapter, traiter l’information dont il dispose, aussi incomplète soit-elle, car elles lui permettent de définir les outputs.

Dès lors, un système politique selon Lapierre c’est un système d’action conditionné par des ressources et des contraintes dans une situation d’informations incomplètes et d’incertitude sur les objectifs. Ainsi, on peut définir les moyens à mobiliser et anticiper les répercussions de l’action.

Au fond, un système politique cherche à gérer au mieux les intérêts de l’organisme et l’ensemble des contraintes dont il hérite. En d’autres termes, il faut parfois chercher à gérer le « moins mal ».

Les limites de ces deux approches

Limites de l’approche fonctionnaliste

C’est de tout considérer à partir de fonctions,c’est une réduction trop fonctionnaliste qui peut amener à interpréter le système d’action comme étant totalement fonctionnaliste alors qu’en réalité cela en est loin.

Limites de l’approche systémique

Tout n’est pas systèmes politiques pour faire des comparaisons. La logique est de nous mener vers des jugements de valeur, c’est-à-dire nous faire réinterpréter la valeur d’un système politique en tant que tel en fonction de catégories au détriment d’autres. Le danger serait de nous engager trop rapidement sur des analyses comparatives de systèmes politiques ou de critères de définitions des systèmes politiques. Elle globalise trop et de nous laisse imaginer que tout est comparable.

Annexes

References

  1. G. Rocher, Introduction générale à la sociologie, p.165.
  2. Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret, La Bastille est prise, Paris, Éditions Complexe, 1988, p. 102.

<vote type=1 />