1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Manifest and latent functions are social scientific concepts created by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in 1922 while studying the Trobriand Islanders in the Western Pacific.
[1] Merton appeared interested in sharpening the conceptual tools to be employed in a functional analysis.
[2] Merton wrote: the distinction between manifest and latent functions was devised to preclude ... confusion ... between conscious motivations for social behaviour and its objective consequencesMerton noted that he has "... adapted the terms "manifest" and "latent" from their use in another context by Freud...".
Or the control of the Communist Party over all sectors of social life in Russia “manifestly” was to assure the continued dominance of the revolutionary ethos, “latently” created a new class of comfortable bureaucrats uncannily bourgeois in its aspirations and increasingly disinclined toward the self-denial of Bolshevik dedication (nomenklatura).
Or the “manifest” function of many voluntary associations in America is sociability and public service, the “latent” function to attach status indices to those permitted to belong to such associations.” "[2]While Talcott Parsons tends to emphasize the manifest functions of social behavior, Merton sees attention to latent functions as increasing the understanding of society: the distinction between manifest and latent forces the sociologist to go beyond the reasons individuals give for their actions or for the existence of customs and institutions; it makes them look for other social consequences that allow these practices’ survival and illuminate the way society works.
For example, a manifest dysfunction of a festival might include disruptions of transportation and excessive production of garbage.