Eufunction
In sociology, a social institution has eufunctions (or helpful functions; the Greek word eu means well) when some of its aspects contribute to the maintenance or survival of another social activity. In the complexity of a society, any particular activity can have good and/or bad consequences and it can be associated to eufunctions or dysfunctions. In the last decades the term eufunction is becoming obsolete, because the notion of function refers to any kind of activity helping or disturbing the maintenance of social stability.
Further reading
- Nicholas Abercrombie – Stephen Hill – Bryan S. Turner, eds., Dictionary of Sociology, New York, Penguin, 1984.
- G. Marshall, "Eufunction", A Dictionary of Sociology, 1998, Encyclopedia.com. (January 8, 2012).
gollark: So can you explain this "locally confluent" thing?
gollark: I was going to check Wikipedia, but it seems to be broken and I don't have a copy saved any more.
gollark: Basically just descending the tree of ingredients for a recipe until it finds stuff it has, or something.
gollark: I had *an* approximation which was pretty computationally simple. It just wasn't very good.
gollark: Does it? I thought it could at least fall back to something you had materials for. Huh.
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