[For the full text of Cancian’s
paper on this subject, titled "Functional Analysis of Change", click on the link at the bottom of this post. The paper was first published in American Sociological Review, Vol. 25, No. 6 (December 1960), pp. 818-827. I
recommend it]
Francesca Cancian proposes a version of functionalism, Formal Functionalism, which, as Abraham
(1982: 90) observed, is made up of “rigorously formulated models which describe
how units of a system are inter-related so as to maintain each other as well as
the entity itself.” But that is not exactly why her rendition of functionalism
stands out. That is not why, almost single-handedly, she effectively neutralizes previous
or standard, conflict-inspired, critiques of functionalism.
The inspiration for her brand of functionalism is Nagel’s two key
variables: G and State Coordinates, whose definitions we will see in a moment.
Even when I first read her work in the early 1980s in a book edited by Etzioni
and Etzioni-Halevy, Cancian struck me as one of the boldest defenders of
functionalism as a tool for explicating not simply social “stability” or
continuity but, importantly, long-term flux in society. To her, functionalism
did not by definition reject the empirical factuality of social change, but
rather its opposite – the presumption that, somehow, social change was in the
functionalist worldview improbable.
And yet it is precisely that worldview
that its critics accused it of, as if by rote.
Cancian based most of her argument on Ernest Nagel’s
formal definition of
functional systems,
itself influenced by Robert Merton’s essay “Manifest and Latent Functions.”
Thus, paraphrasing Nagel, Cancian saw
a
functional system as:
“a deterministic system – with the added
restriction that certain properties of the system are maintained despite
potentially disruptive changes in the system or the environment or both.”
In turn, a deterministic system
was (in Cancian’s paraphrase of Nagel):
“A simple system – with the added restriction
that the properties of the system at one time are a function of its properties
at a previous time”
Finally, a simple system (in
Cancian’s view) could be formally expressed
as a mathematical function, for example:
x = f (y)
That is: one property is the function of another. However, Cancian
cautions that a simple system does “not necessarily lead to predictions of
either change or stability.”
Nagel’s definition portrays a functional system as one made up of two
types of variables, as we saw a moment or two ago:
G = “the property of the system that is
maintained or is stable”
Examples of G would be a social institution, democracy, civilian government,
a corporate entity, a University, a marriage relationship, poverty, happiness,
the structure of a nuclear family over time. G should thus be seen as the
“enduring dependent variable”.
State Coordinates are the variables which “determine the presence or
absence of G”
In other words, State Coordinates are independent variables which determine/shape
the status
or condition of G.
Cancian rounds off her formalized view of functionalism with a flourish
of propositions, as follows:
1. State
Coordinates have “the function of maintaining G” (Cancian, p. 89). Thus, though
one or some coordinates may threaten the continuation of G, G will survive
if/as other coordinates sufficiently compensate for the variation of the
threatening coordinates.
2. Some
coordinates may be located beyond the “system boundary” – in the supersystem,
of which the system in question is a part.
3. A
social system, a subsystem such as it may be of a larger social system, in effect
represents a set/network of Gs, some of which are bona fide State Coordinates for other Gs located within the social
system. Thus, change of a subsystem
can be seen as change within a more
inclusive subsystem. Importantly, “subsystems treated as state coordinates must
be regarded, by definition, to be changing” (Cancian)
4. The
values attached to – that is to say, the variations observed in – respective
State Coordinates may mix and match in a variety of ways to yield or maintain the
same unchanged G. This, incidentally and ironically, is a back-handed affirmation
of the Parsonian idea of “functional equivalents”.
5. Functional
analysis does not assume the stability of G; “on the contrary, it is assumed that the
environment or parts of the system or both are changing so much that it is impossible
for G to persist unless there are specific mechanisms within the system to
compensate for these changes” (Cancian). Functional
Analysis is therefore inapplicable
if this latter assumption cannot be
made – that is, if the system or subsystem and its environment are considered
constant, or G is not threatened. Thus, functional analysis adds value to our
understanding of a given social system ( a G) by explaining its structures and
functionings, in a static or dynamic context, in terms of how its complement of
State Coordinates “do or do not compensate for each other’s variation” (Cancian).
6. All
in all, “the maintenance of G” is assured whenever variations in the values of
the State Coordinates upon which the G is anchored rule each other out (or sufficiently
compensate for each other), so that the tipping
point – the dialectical transition from quantity to quality – is not reached.
7. Conversely,
the combined variations in the State Coordinates that break through the tipping
point do, by definition, spell a qualitative change in their specific G – though, contrary to Cancian’s assertion, such
a change does not necessarily mean that that “G such as we may have in mind,
then it can be argued that formal functionalism accommodates the idea of social
or societal change more systematically and perhaps more transparently than the conflict-theory-inspired
critiques of functionalism which have, as long as I remember, generally won the
continuity-change debate.
8. G
can thus stand for a variety of states or, a
la Durkheim, social facts. Examples of social facts, such as a marriage
relationship, the family or democracy, were given earlier. The variety of
states that Cancian had in mind included: a static or stable state of affairs, a
steady or accelerating or declining rate of change, a cycle of events, or
series of peaks and troughs.
p.s. 1: Here is an interesting additional reading on functional analysis from The International Encyclopedia of Social Science. it includes discussions on \Marion Levy, Merton, Cancian and Nagel.
Read>>
p.s. 2: For a contrasting conversation about another kind of functionalism -- functionalism as a 'materialist' theory of "the nature of mental states" -- read Janet Levine's article in
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy>>
