PALAWAN POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE, INC

Manalo Extension, Bry. Milagrosa

Puerto Princesa City

Week 4- TVL 11
2nd Semester
S.Y 2020-2021

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND POLITICS

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this module, the students are expected to:

1. Explain the functions of the family;
2. Discuss and appraise why the definition of the family is crucial to society;
3. Summarize recent changes in the family as an institution;
4. Describe the various alternative family arrangements in contemporary societies.

INTRODUCTION
Hi dear students! How your day today? In this module, we are going to learn about The Family
Today: Declining or Changing.

PRE-TEST

Name: ________________________ Date:________________________

Grade Level: ___________________ Strands & Section______________

I. Directions: Browse your respective account in the social media (Facebook,

Instagram 0r Twitter). Observe how your lives have been changing as a result of this
mode of social communication.

1. What types of social relations have been changing due to your use of social media?

Answer:

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 2. How this social media influence on your behaviour and personal life?

Answer:

Building Vocabularies

Adaptation- is the capacity of society to take resources from society and distribute them
accordingly. This function is carried out by the economy which includes gathering resources
and producing commodities to social redistribution.
Goal Attainment- is the capacity to set goals and mobilize the resources and energies
necessary to achieve the goals set forth by society. This set by the political subsystem.
Political resolutions and societal objectives are part of this necessity.
Integration, or the harmonization of the entire society to achieve consensus. By integration,
Parsons meant the coordination, adjustment, and regulation of the rest of the subsystem so
that society will continue to function smoothly. It is a demand that the values and norms of
society are solid and sufficiently convergent.
Latency, or latent pattern maintenance, requires that society is able to constantly produce and
socialize actors who will follow the norms and roles given to them by society.
Ideological state apparatuses- are institutions that are created and used by society to mold
its members to share the same values and beliefs that a typical member of that society
possesses.

Repressive Ideological State apparatuses, refer to those coercive institutions that use
physical force to make the members conform to the laws and norms of society like courts,
police, and prisons.
Methodological Individualism- is the principle that subjective individual motivation
explains social phenomena, rather than class or group dynamics which are (according to
proponents of individualistic principles) illusory or artificial and therefore cannot truly
explain market or social phenomena.

Sociological Realism- states that society is reality sui generis and cannot be reduced to
individual aggregates or parts.

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Social Reproduction- the problem of explaining how societies manage to exist over a long
period of time.

Structuralism- is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements
of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader system.[

Social system- for Parsons, any entity that was relatively self-subsistent with respect to an
environment qualified as a social system.
Anomie- (from the Greek word nomos) the situation in which society lacks social regulation
through social norms.

People to Remember

Louis Althusser – (1918-1990) was a French philosopher and sociologist.

Emile Durkheim- (1858-1917) was considered the founding father of French sociology.
Talcott Parsons- (1902-1979) one the most influential American sociologists, who is
associated with the theory of structural functionalism.

LESSON 1

The Concept of Society as an Objective Reality

The term “society” came from the Latin word societas, which in turn was derived from the
noun socius (“comrade, friend, ally”) used to describe a bond or interaction between parties
that are friendly, or at least civil. According to the Greek Philosopher Aristotle, human being
is zoon politikon or political animals. That is, human beings are creatures whose nature is for
them to live in a society or group. According to John Holmwood (2006).
The term “society” is used to describe a level of organization of groups that is relatively self-
contained. However, the boundedness of groups is always relative and so sociologists may
refer to human society, where the reference is to the interdependencies among all social
groups or to subgroups such as family society, where the reference is to the typical
interactions among the individuals making up a grouping of close kin.
In this definition, society may also refer to the persistent interactions among members of a
particular group and other institutions. Ordinarily, when sociologists talk about society, they
often refer to a bounded territory also called “nation-states” like Philippine society, albeit
these two concepts are not completely synonymous.

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A common opinion among ordinary people is the belief that society does noy exist except for
the individuals who compose it. In the early 19 th century, when sociology as a science was
still in its infancy, many social scientists subscribe to methodological individualism.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)-, the founding father of French sociology, argued strongly
against this position. His theory, called sociological realism.

LESSON 2

SOCIAL REPRODUCTION OR SOCIETIES PERSIST

If one defines society as “organization of groups that is relatively self-contained,” then the
next question is how societies manage to exist and persist across time and space. The problem
of explaining how societies manage to exist over a long period of time is called
reproduction, by the French Philosopher and sociologist, Louis Althusser.

There are two types of institutions that reproduce the condition of social life, namely:
1. The Ideological State Apparatuses
2. The Repressive State Apparatuses

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From a structural functionalist perspective, social reproduction is carried out through four
functional prerequisites as elaborated by the American sociologist. Talcott Parsons:

A- DAPTATION G-OAL ATTAINMENT

Organism Personality

I-NTEGRATION L-ATENCY

Society Culture

The four general functional prerequisites that all societies must attend to in order to survive.
These are encapsulated in his famous A-G-I-L scheme. Parsons elaborated on the; economic
system (A), the political system (G), the societal community (I), and the fiduciary system (L).
 Adaptation
 Goal Attainment
 Integration
 Latency
The main goal of social system is how to make these four functional prerequisites work so
that the social system will maintain a state of equilibrium. For Parsons, any entity that was
relatively self-subsistent with respect to an environment qualified as a social system. The
most important of these functions is system integration.

SUMMARY
Society is an objective reality, which means that it is relatively independent of how people
conceive it, However, unlike physical objects, such as chairs and tables, society is dependent
also on people’s social interactions. Society has to be reproduced across time and space if it is
to persist. Two general theories explain the process of social reproduction, namely, the
functionalist approach of Talcott Parsons and the conflict theory represented by French
Sociologist Louis Althusser.

ACTIVITY- RESEARCH
Name: ________________________ Date: ____________________

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Grade Level: __________________

Directions: Identify the cultural elements of the Philippines and the USA then
write on the space below.
CULTURE PHILIPPINES USA

RELIGION

FOOD

LANGUAGE

MUSICAL
INSTRUMENT

DANCE

SONG

TRADITION

SPORTS

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