Mathjen Konyak
BA 6th Semester, Department of Sociology, St John College
Common sense tells us that people work to earn a living, regardless of their job. This was my stream of thought before I joined St. John College as a Sociology major. By the time I am prepared to graduate, I have come to understand how in the sociological cosmology every phenomenon is well interconnected. My earlier equation that people work to earn is further compounded by my introduction to different ideas and concepts by the likes of Marx, Durkheim, Parson, Merton etc.
Functionalism argues that different parts of society work together to maintain equilibrium. It sees society as a living organism/human body where each part performs a specific function to keep the whole system working. Institutions like family, education, government play important roles in maintaining social order. When each institution performs its role properly, society remains stable and continues to function smoothly. By this argument, we can understand that every institution, organisation, or even the job that we do has a functional role. This functional role can be further divided into manifest and latent function. In this context, the manifest functions of the state are education, healthcare, employment, infrastructure etc., while its latent function is to maintain social order, resource protection and distribution etc. However, it has been evident in Nagaland that the state often succeeds in its latent functions—such as privileging certain groups or creating a 'safety net' for capitalism— but fails its manifest ones. Often in our analysis of Naga society we tend to overlook at the latent function of the state which indirectly causes dysfunctional to the entire body of system.
Therefore, in order to dissect our society, the best possible lens I would like to employ is the conflict perspective. Where functionalists see cooperation and adherence, the conflict perspective see tension and rivals. Analysing Naga society from functionalist lens also prove inadequate because it ignores the unequal distribution of resources in other backward areas of the state, like Eastern Nagaland. Naga society is not in harmony but in perpetual state of conflict, reinforced by decades of resource extraction and the concentration of wealth within certain people and tribes. In Nagaland, few powerful and advanced tribes have captured most of the state’s resources for decades, which causes structural imbalance and as a result, regions like Eastern Nagaland and other backward areas continue to remain neglected. From a conflict perspective, this situation shows that development and resources may not always be equally distributed, and some regions can remain backward while others benefit more.
