Question

Answer in 100 words :

Define function and dysfunction.

Answer 1

Manifest Functions of Religion

There are some obvious personal and social benefits of your apple purchase: you receive nutrition, sustenance, and pleasure. You also know that your purchase contributes to a local economy by sustaining local jobs and generating tax revenue for your city. These are intended and desirable results of your purchase, or manifest functions.

As with the apple, there are both personal and social benefits from religious practice: it may function to ease your anxiety about the unknown, give meaning to your life, and provide opportunities to interact with other people. At a social level, it may function to affirm a shared sense of ethics, maintain social order, and enforce cultural norms. These are some manifest functions of religion, in that they are intended and desirable results of religious practice.

Latent Functions of Religion

There may also be other desirable results that you didn't consider when you purchased the apple. For example, your choice may ensure that local apples continue to be sold in your city. These local apples are raised without the use of pesticides and hence contribute to the overall health of the community. This unintended and positive benefit is a latent function of your purchase.

Religion, like your apple purchase, may also have unintended but largely positive consequences for a society. For example, religion may encourage altruistic behavior, such as giving money and food to the poor or volunteering time and resources to activities that benefit the larger society. If, for instance, your priest, pastor, rabbi, imam, or other religious leader tells you that service to others is necessary to the practice your religion, you may provide these services to maintain your membership. Although your motives may be personal, your service nevertheless benefits others in your society who may or may not subscribe to your religious views.

Dysfunctions of Religion

You bought your apple from a local producer with good intentions, but what if the local producer demands long hours and pays less than minimum wage to its workers? Maltreatment of orchard workers is a negative and unintended result, or dysfunction, of your purchase that may not have been anticipated.

Religion also has negative and unintended consequences for an individual and a society. Religious beliefs may cause anxiety when they conflict with natural impulses or important personal relationships. On a social level, it may interfere with the expression and livelihood of those in that society who do not practice the dominant religion. There also may be a conflict between members of different religions in the same civil society.These unintended and negative impacts on society can be called dysfunctions.