Nature and culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Nature and culture - Essay Example Considering the various sociological perspectives that can be taken with regard to nature and culture, two stand out from amongst the others. These are the structural functionalist perspective and the conflict perspective both of which consider nature and culture in very different lights. To better understand how they differ and the distinctions made by them with regard to nature and culture it would be useful to examine them individually. First, structural functionalism is founded on the idea that society is composed of structures that are supposed to perform a certain function. In essence, both nature and culture are social structures but culture is more of a social construct than nature (McClelland, 2000). For instance, if a culture is connected deeply to the principles of monogamy it is entirely possible that the cultural elements of the society would lead to the government outlawing polygamy. On the other hand, some cultures may permit polygamy or even polyandry and thus the socially constructed laws in that country may give individuals the permission to create families in that manner. However, the functionalist perspective would suggest that the role of the family unit in both cultures could be more or less the same and the role is not solely dependent on the way in which the family is formed. Therefore, the role of culture in the functionalist perspective would be understood by examining the function performed by culture for a given society. The role of nature becomes something which deals with the individual and the skin bound individual may not be included in the debate on the functions of culture for society. However, the nature of the individual may function quite importantly for a person who interacts with society and thus his/her own nature may cause her to seek out groups which form a sub-culture in the larger culture. On the other hand, the conflict