Functionalist And Conflict Approach

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People kill, cheat, and discriminate against each other, but cannot survive without one another. This is because of the functionalist and conflict approaches that humans learn as they grow up and use in their everyday lives. From work places to the school playground children and adults will not escape how these approaches shape their society around them. This paper will cover how functionalist and conflict approaches are used in religious aspects, the educational system, and the everyday life of a person.
Religion is an aspect that most people have in their lives or have seen used in other people’s lives. What most people do not realize is that religion using the functionalist approach is playing a major role in society’s ability to function
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With society on a global scale a group of Islamic extremists has realized that the majority does not follow their practices and would not be willing to convert. They formed Al Qaeda with the intend of dismantling the other societies and killing those who would not convert to their views, thus launching many attacks on other societies. Most notably would be the World Trade Center attack on September 9th, 2001. This single attack caused a lot of conflict within the American Society for example the American people are much more fearful of the outside world and now exercise caution around middle eastern people with little or no excuse (Haven).
Just as religion is an important aspect in many people’s lives so is education. Even if there is not a public education system established in society it still applies to children to learn through other means. With functionalism in education it really focuses on the society structure that children are being taught so they can use the society that their ancestors have built for them. The children learn how to interact with other, the roles that people play in society, the different cultures and background present in their society, and how their society is changing (“Social Problems: Continuity and
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These are not the only institutions in a person’s everyday life that would be affected though. Since these approaches are taught to a person when they are a child they will be incorporated in everything they do.
For functionalist a good example would be how the average office work place is like a functionalist society. With roles such as a manager, regular worker, and janitor each serve a purpose and cannot exist without the other. If they suddenly got rid of the janitor the office would eventually become too dirty and smelly to provide an environment to work efficiently in. While getting rid of a manager would cause chaos and the office would lose their infrastructure that provides them with a stable work environment.
Conflict approach is all around in society today and cannot be escaped. People learn from a young age about the social classes of people. The big social classes today would be lower, middle, and upper classes. While children do not really understand the disparity between the classes late adolescents and adults realize they want to be upper or at least middle class. This can cause issues since it provides an excuse for discrimination between people in society. While many know that it is wrong to judge someone based on their income many people still do and if the discrimination becomes extreme conflict

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