Taking a Look at the Structuralism Movement

Culture builds up and shapes how people view the world and the people in it. It determines how we judge and view the way others act, look, and even how they think. In the texts “Where worlds collide”, “An Indian Father’s Plea”, and “Two Kinds”, it is shown that a person’s views of others and the world are solely determined by their culture.

“Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind,” by Ethan Watters, is a compelling article that challenges the reader’s perception on culture and cognition. Instead of cognition affecting culture, our culture affects our cognition. It’s interesting to conceptualize, and it makes one have to introspect their culture, beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Why do we do behave the way that we do? Are our thoughts our own? How much of us is influenced by our environment? This effect of culture can be rooted in our childhoods. We are taught societal norms and how to view, categorize, and perceive the world through the lens of the environment surrounding us. A prime example of this comes from the games we played growing up.

Structural functionalism is a theory that views society as a complete unit (Ballantine & Roberts, 2007). Emile Durkheim is the father of Structural Functionalism. They look at society the same way as someone looks at a formula for a math equation. They view the equation as a whole before using the formula to play a role in the equation itself. In order for structural functionalism to work there needs to be an agreement on the norms, values, and beliefs for the better of society. If these objectives are not meant then Structural Functionalism will crumple before it builds its foundation.

Structuralism, founded by Wilhelm Wundt, was the beginning of psychology branching away from philosophy featuring human behavior by dividing mental processes into basic components (Ettinger, 2014). Edward Titchener brought this practice to the United States in 1892 and even though structuralism was short-lived, it was a stepping stone making psychology a better science (Ettinger, 2014). During the same period as Titchener’s vision of structuralism, Sigmund Freud came up with a theory called psychoanalysis. (Ettinger, 2014) His idea included catharsis, also known as the talking cure, with his patient Anna O. helping with her symptoms of previous childhood trauma to go away. He believed that your unconscious mind had urges and even when you’re not thinking about them you are in that part of your mind (Ettinger, 2014). Lots of people did criticize Freuds for his work, but he did help those with issues using his “talking cure” and nowadays clinical psychologist still treats emotionally distressed people even though psychoanalysis is no longer used. In 1913 a psychologist by the name John Watson begin the ideology of behaviorism in psychology. Overall behaviorism is seeing how people learn (Ettinger, 2014). His approach to psychology was heavily shaped by Ivan Pavlov by trying new things to figure out behavior. B. F. Skinner is another behaviorist that contributed his work exploring the effects on behavior. He believed that behavior has no ideology of the mind or free will

No individual can arrive at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element that the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual. Where else could any trait come from except from the behaviour of a man or a woman or a child? (253)

Structuralism, our first major school of thought was developed by Edward Titchener and the primary focus of structuralism is the breaking down of mental processes into one basic component. In that regard, introspection was a primary element Titchener used to reveal elements of consciousness and to analyze inner processes of the mind. Shortly after this school of thought made an entrance into the psychological world, other schools of thoughts were formulated and functionalism was one of those schools.

Culture is a highly influential factor on humans. Humans are still subject to error, and therefore, can have their conclusions affected by the lens of their culture. For example, something foreign to the native culture of an individual may be reacted to as “taboo” or “immoral.” In contrast, something

In my opinion both of the theories structuralism and functionalism involved the study of the human mind and how it works and they were both concerned with the mind at the conscious level. Personally, my feel of the two is that functionalism is more important than structuralism. I believe that functionalism is far better school than structuralism as it is more flexible and scientific in nature which I can relate myself with. I happen to think that functionalism is an object that is designed to determine solely by its function. These are a few of the similarities between structuralism and functionalism. Throughout this paper I will further explore some of the differences between these

Cultural differences are celebrated as a way to welcome diversity in todays society. A culture defines the way individuals think by grouping likeminded individuals for the sake of society. Culture is defined as a shared belief, values, and behaviors amongst other individuals. With many individuals being a part of a certain culture, these individuals have different experiences. Essentially, having a different culture causes a different perception of the embodied experiences. Nature vs. Nurture is one of the oldest arguments concerning how an individual perceives the outside world as well as themselves. This argument tries to explain if whether a nurturing environment such as culture plays a role in development or if the science of nature is more influential. In Ethan Watters text titled “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” the Japanese culture influenced the society on how to process certain emotions. This clouds the true emotions felt by individuals. In Barbara Frederickson’s piece titled “Selections from Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become” culture clouds the true biological feelings of love. This starts a debate regarding the influence of science and culture on society. Culture shapes the scientific practices used in different societies by altering mindsets to explain society’s needs and wants.

Structural functionalism is a macro level approach to study sociology (Browning, 2015). Structural functionalists believe social consensus is what holds society together; social consensus being a condition in which most members of the society agree on what would be good for everyone. Structural functionalists view society as a web of social structures, each structure being functional to fulfill it’s own needs, but dependent on all other structures for survival (Vago, 2012).

The culture of a people is basically their way of life. Therefore, there is much logic in the deduction that culture shapes the mind of the society. Ethan Watters’ presents this idea in a rather great manner in his piece ‘Being Weird. Through the text, Watters largely blames the culture of the society for most of the major issues that have to be faced. In essence, what is greatly concurred with in the author’s postulation is that Westernization, as a result of the Western culture has blinded individuals in the society to knowledge that already exists. So often, explains the author, the society finds much comfort in its own way of doing things rather than in the right way of doing things. Societal culture has

neuroscience, that reflects a growing realisation that the brain is not a wholly individual, biological and chemical product, but also one that incorporates elements of cultural and social formation. This social shaping and enculturation is explored in the next section of this paper.The effect of culture and society on the mind has long been widely accepted and has been studied by anthropologists and social scientists. It is, however, a different prospect entirely to posit that culture and society inform the make-up of the brain as well as the mind. It may be that this notion has elided academic consideration due to the incompatibilities of disciplinary focus points, objectives, philosophical starting-points, language and concepts of formation

Final Exam Culture Description Cultures within society are composed of five different topics, these topics include language, which is a system of sounds, and when written, symbols allowing individuals to communicate to each other. Language is the most important aspect as we need communication to spread ideas and knowledge. Symbols is the second topic, symbols are anything carrying meaning within those who share a culture, like a cross in Christianity, for example.

Different with Descartes and Kuhn idea about ways of knowing, Bruner concentrates on how individuals construct “realities” based common cultural narratives and symbols, and how reality is “inter-subjective” rather than ”objective”. Bruner believes the mind is not a simple mechanism for information procession, it highly cultivated through social interaction. The meanings of all facts depend on the perspective which they are interpreted. As he argued, ”for the meaning making of culturalist, unlike the information processing of the computationalise, is in principle interpretive, fraught with ambiguity, sensitive to the occasion, and often after the fact” (p.6). Culture, as Bruner argued, is not added to mind but in mind. Knowledge and action are

Basically, Structuralism was firstly set up in Europe by Ferdinand de Saussure, a structural linguist. It is a kind of methodology which discusses hat elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. In fact, structuralism is aimed to find the inner structure logic behind millions of words. In literary, structuralism the narrative dimension of literary texts because Structuralism Criticism deals mainly with narrative.(Tyson, 219)