Final answer:
The structural-functional approach views society as a system of interrelated parts working to fulfill individual needs, likened to organs in a body. It examines how social structures reinforce each other and has been applied to various cultural and economic aspects. Criticisms include its difficulty in explaining social change and handling societal dysfunctions.
Step-by-step explanation:
Understanding the Structural-Functional Approach
The structural-functional approach, or functionalism, views society as a system with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of individuals within that society. Originating from Herbert Spencer's analyses, which compared society to a human body where each part has a function, this theory asserts that social institutions such as government, education, family, and religion work collaboratively to maintain societal stability and functionality. Contributors to this theory, like Spencer and later Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, focused on how structures in society reinforce each other, conceptualizing culture as interlocked parts of a machine.
French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, known for French structuralism, emphasized the importance of symbols in culture and sought to analyze these symbols within various cultural realms. Moreover, structural functionalism can extend to the analysis of more specific systems, such as the agriculture industry's role in a nation's economy, from manual-labor farming to modern mechanized production and consumerism
However, structural-functionalism is not without its criticisms. It has been challenged for its inability to adequately explain social change and the persistence of dysfunctions that do not serve an apparent societal function, leading to debates about its utility at the macro-level, with some suggesting its relevance persists in mid-level analyses.