- There are manifest and latent functions of all of societies. What are the manifest and latent functions of Facebook?
Facebook have become so large since its launch in the year 2004. It has changed the world and its perspective of social networking. It provides accessibility of information regarding people’s lives including their address, friends and even hobbies and personal preferences Facebook has altered our means of communication and interaction. Every day, more and more people use Facebook. Facebook serves different functions to every one of us.
Facebook can serve manifest and latent functions. Manifest and latent functions are one of the social scientific concepts. Robert K. Merton clarified these two ideas of function. These two concepts are important in analyzing functions. Manifest functions are mindful, purposeful and helpful while the latent functions are unconscious, unintentional and also advantageous.
Manifest functions are the consequences that we view or anticipate. We can understand and state it openly. The manifest function of Facebook is obviously and principally for social entertainment and interaction.
On the other hand, one of the latent functions of Facebook, which are functions that are not intended and recognized, include permitting police department to utilize facebook in catching criminals. When criminals update their status, whereabouts and profile pictures, they are also updating the police system.
Other latent function of Facebook is that it allows people to extend their help to others who need them. Aside from entertainment, Facebook can promote charity works and assistance to those in need, and it can encourage people to extend their help even across countries.
Truly, Facebook has grown to be not just a social network for entertainment and communication method. It developed to a more useful tool that can be functional in any way to different people.
- There are numerous cultural aspects within a society. What traditions does your family have that come from your culture and how do they improve your family's function?
There are several cultural traditions that our family practices. These cultural practices serve us manifest as well as latent functions. For instance, our family celebrates Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year.
These occasions allow us to give gifts to our loved ones as well as our neighbors. They serve as a venue to love and be grateful to everyone that is part of our lives. They are also chances for us to be generous and show our concern to other people. With these occasions we can conduct games with our neighbors. Everyone can participate, even babies; and every family can celebrate together. It improves our family’s function because we get to help other people during these times of the year.
Christmas has been considered to be a season of loving and giving. This cultural practice allows our family helps less fortunate people. It is also an opportunity to make other people happy inside our community.
Our family also does conventional funerals. Traditional funerals provide us an occasion to grieve for the death of a family member, a friend and other people. The traditional way of our practice in funeral allows us to externalize our grief. It improves our family function because it also serves as a venue for us and others to sympathize and extend help to the immediate family members of the dead. The tradition also gives us a feeling of peace and closure at the event of death so that acceptance would be easier. Funeral tradition makes grieving easier because you have the people you love near you during funerals. It gives the feeling of not being alone in such hard time.
- Have you ever belonged to an out-group, or do you know someone that has? Using the conflict theory, explain what purpose the outgroup played
Conflict theory states that group conflict arises from unconstructive prejudices, and stereotyping. Conflicts are results of competition among groups for wanted assets. The concept of outgroup negativity has been recognized by social psychologists as the performance of punishing or introducing trouble upon outgroup. The conflict theory states that rivalry among groups for properties or assets is the reason of in-group partiality and the equivalent downbeat behavior of constituents of the out-group. Conflict between beliefs, values and behaviors can also add to the negative orientations regarding other outside groups. Conflicts can increase continually and can be applied to racial bias. The perception of outgroup give rise to the concept of races.
The concept of outgroup also adds to the sense of competition among groups towards limited resources. Competition is important towards different groups because it gives individuals motivation to do better and to improve oneself for the group that he or she is in. The concept of outgroup also influence the members of the same group to show concern and camaraderie among their constituents. Outgroup and in-group ideas are the reasons behind conflicts of different factions but they are as well significant because they stimulate the ideas of competition, motivation, teamwork, camaraderie and loyalty.
- Using the symbolic interaction theory, explain what beauty is for men and women in the media in U.S. society.
Symbolic interaction theory emerges from the idea of social interaction. The society refers to the idea that individual within the group interact and create signal and interpretations of their own actions. The interactions give rise to the development of the society and individual’s perspective about his or her self. Symbolic interaction thereby, emphasizes the individual liability, and deals with cultural, structural and material circumstances as the community practice and replicate them in their daily lives.
The concept of beauty is highly influenced by social interaction. It exists because people believed it exists. The mass media creates the standard of beauty that gives pressure to both female and male individuals on their appearances. However, the media just reflects the society’s practices, values and beliefs. These concepts are built through social interaction which involves actions and words with representative implications.
The beauty that the media has set as standard is far from the real body shape and size. Most body images that are portrayed by media are digitally altered. But many people are not aware that these images are not real which leads to body dissatisfaction and lower self esteem. The concept of beauty in America is dictated by the society. It is influenced by the idea of Barbie dolls, thin women and muscular men and is mostly related to socioeconomic status.
- Cohabitation (living together and sharing a bed) is happening at a greater rate in people over 65 years of age. What are the possible reasons (sociologically) for this increase and how do you feel about this new trend?
Cohabitation is also known as de facto marriage or consensual union. It refers to unmarried couples that live together within an intimate association. It becomes more and more common that it has grown to be a new type of family formation that is opposite to traditional marriage. This change is a result of the rising number of cohabitational relationships.
There are several possible reasons behind the increasing rate of cohabitation. One reason is because the meaning of family has changed over the years. Individual social values of people have been altered and nonmarital unions have become accepted by people because the meaning of marriage is not anymore sacred and everlasting.
Nowadays, we can see everyday cases of single parenthood, annulment, divorce, stepfamilies and remarriage. The meaning of family as an institution has been changed. These cases are all over the place especially if you are watching TV every day. The commonness of these instances in media has also contributed to the awareness of people in such cases. The changes and commonness of broken families and the likes has permitted people to accept non-marital setups such as cohabitation. On the other hand, cohabitational relationship is also accepted by the society because many believe that this kind of set-up will eventually lead to marriage.
The increasing trend of cohabitational relationship is deleterious to the concept of marriage and family, in my opinion. As the cases of cohabitation rises, our confidence and faith about marriage and family go down. I believe that more people settle for this set-up because they are no longer capable of believing that marriage is a necessary concept for building families. For them, there is not much difference if they are engage in a non-marital union.
- Rituals are in present in every religion. Think about the rituals that you are familiar with from your own or someone else's religion; explain the function for these rituals
A religious ritual provides a believer with an extensive expression of ceremonies for every occasion to makeup the year, and influential services to make us remember the key life transitions. Significant events of life that have religious rituals include nativity, maturity, matrimony and bereavement]
Rituals are any activity that we do that has emotional and figurative importance as well as useful significance. We carry out a ritual since its performance possesses meaning, and executing gives us happiness. The American culture has a range of rituals such as birthday celebration, graduations, sports rituals and many others. On the other hand, religious rituals include baptism, wedding and funeral ceremonies.
Religious rituals such as baptism serve many purposes. Its main purpose is to give the newborn blessings from the Lord and safety or protection against harm. But it also serves as a venue to introduce the newborn to the world. It let the parents announce that a new member of the family has been added. Wedding ceremony is a symbol that two people agreed to be together and be bind not just by physical means but also by higher echelon. A funeral ceremony allow relatives of the dead to grieve, be together through the tough time and pray together so that they can assure that the soul of their loved ones will be guided to a better place.
Rituals serve different functions. They are habitual actions that eventually identify a family. It allows the individual members to play specific roles that will contribute to the completion of the ritual.
- Medicalization of illness is becoming more common. Some conditions that have become medicalized are childbirth, depression, and fibromyalgia. Using one of the mentioned problems that have become medicalized, explain how they have become medicalized and what the manifest and latent functions are.
Medicalization of illness is common nowadays because it serves different manifest and latent functions. In the perspective of medical model, an illness is defined according to its cure and health care method. Medicalization involves the ratio of physicians to patients, classifications such as gender, class and race, dominance of hospital managerial personnel over nurses and other workers and the limitations of the disease.
One condition that has been medicalized is depression. Depression involves severe sadness, anxiety and unstable emotions and behaviors. There have been an increase number of cases of depression that the government and healthcare system decided to include it in medicalization of illness.
The medicalization process of depression has manifest function which involves keeping individuals in good health to allow them for normal interactions and support t heir social functions. It also promotes healthful actions and dejects unhealthful activities. Also, it increases the capability of scientific research and medical interventions. It mainly provides cure and comfort for the patient of depression.
The latent functions of medicalization include the additional employment of health care workers. It also provides chances for a further understanding of the illness may it be socially or economically. The promotion of healthy lifestyle also makes the health institutions to be the symbol values and good practices of a community.
