Emile Durkheim, considered as one of the founding fathers of Sociology, is a French sociologist who created the 1st Sociology department ever in the University of Bordeaux. Durkheim held the belief in an “absolute objective social science” where society and human relations can be studied purely based on facts without human opinions of value. Another of his assertions is that there are aspects of society, such as social interaction, that cannot be broken down; society is sui generis, greater than the sum of its parts.

The structural-functional approach is a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability (Macionis 2017). He believed that, like a living organism, each part of the structure of society has a role to play in keeping society functioning (hence Structural-Functionalism), and when banded together create qualities that are absent in the individual parts. In an organism's case, this is life. In the case of society these are social facts.

Social facts are the basis of all sociological studies. This is an aspect of society that exists externally from individuals yet is coercive of the individual. The exist in the interactions of individuals and groups and affect the choices they make in those interactions.

Think of them like a room surrounding an individual. The person is free to do whatever they want in the room, but their choices are limited by the structure of the room. It’s hard to look at a landscape when the room has no windows. Examples of social facts are values, cultural norms, and social structure.

Social structures, on the other hand, are the regularly occurring/established patterns of social behavior in society. This can be as simple as the norm of saying “hello” as a greeting, or as intricate as the complex ritual of high-school graduation, with its tassel turning, diploma giving, handshakes and all.

A social function is the consequences of a social structure on the operation of society. There are two types of functions: the manifest function, which are the recognized and intended consequences of social structure; and the latent function, which are the unrecognized and unintended consequences of social structure.

Take, for example, the structure of majority voting. The manifest function of this would be that we get a good idea of what most of the masses are thinking and act accordingly. On the other hand, the latent function would be that, should a minority group have a differing opinion on the matter, their views would essentially be silenced since their numbers would never trump the majority.

A social dysfunction, on the other hand, is a social structure that disrupts the operation of society. In this case, the latent function of majority voting could be seen as social dysfunction: social structure that disrupts the operation of society.

Punishing Criminal Behavior

• Both criminal behavior and the punishment of criminal behavior are social structures since they are regularly occurring phenomena in society.

• Criminal behavior, itself, can be seen as dysfunctional since this behavior hinders the development and overall functioning of society. As such, the punishment of criminal behavior would be considered functional because it serves to lessen the adverse effects of criminal behavior in society.

• However, there could also be a latent function to branding certain behaviors as criminal. Instead of stopping certain criminal behaviors, people tend to avoid punishment by hiding their behavior from regulatory institutions such as the police and the government. This makes it extremely hard to regulate certain practices, like abortion, and substances, like marajuana--medical or otherwise, since people don’t declare them to the government for fear of punishment.

• Criminal behavior could also be seen as functional in that it can be used to distinguish between socially acceptable and socially deviant behavior.

Rallies and Revolutions

• It is a cultural norm (and therefore a social fact) that Filipinos look down upon rallying and revolutions.

• However, looking at history, rallies and revolutions as social structures are functional. They serve to show the higher-ups the opinions of a certain group when faced with a particular situation. In some cases, they also have been successful in directly changing the political climate of a country for the better (e.g. the EDSA revolution)