Functional Prerequisites Of All Societies And Social Systems

Parsons:  (AGIP Model)

• Adaptation (use of resources, relation to external environment)
• Goal attainment (directed towards a collective goal)
• Integration (coordination of parts/subsystems)
• Pattern maintenance (which he also called latency) – society’s symbolic order

Foucault as a Poststructuralist

• For Foucault, societies are not logical or rational, they do not abide by rules or consistent phenomena

• Society can be unpredictable
• Lack of cause and effect

• can not assume that there are universal truths about societies or cultures.
• Cultures do not evolve like ecosystems.
• what should we study?

• Discourse, power, genealogies, taboo, oppression.