I think that your reply merits a much longer and considered reply than this one, but first of all I would like to ask a question or two.
>>Ask a wrong question, you only get a wrong answer, I say. Asking if X is
>>_functional_ to Y already implies a certain theoretical framework, which
>>isn't simply a matter of the empirical. Asking if the enforcement of
>>sex/gender norms is _functional/necessary_ to working-class solidarity
>>seems to imply an answer as to who is the working class and what
>>working-class solidarity is.
>
>The main problem of functionalism is not functions but teleologism and
>circular reasoning. The question about functions can be stated in the
>form of testable empirical hypotheses, instead of a priori assertian that
>everything that exist must be functional.
>
>My question was to what degree the behavior in question was functional and
>to what degree it was not -- and that implies the possibility of
>falsification - thus making it an empircal hypothesis. Functionalist
>'truths' are true by definition (everythging that exist in a society must
>serve some social function) without any possibility for falsification.
The first question is whether any 'empirical hypothesis' that involves human observation and interpretation has ever been satisfactorily 'falsified,' in the sense of putting an end to the debate, _in sociology_, when the hypothesis in question concerns measuring + interpreting something like degrees of 'solidarity.'
The second question is, why do you cast the term working-class in male
terms? Is there any reason for doing so? For instance you say:
>hunting, fishing and male bonding are virtually defining features of the
>white working class in America.
The above makes it sound like there are no women in white working class America, or women don't bond, or their bonding is not a matter of working-class culture, or whatever they do doesn't constitute a 'defining feature'. (I say this while leaving aside the question of whether hunting, fishing, & male bonding are 'defining features of the white working class in America.')
Yoshie