Functionalism

Theoretical Perspectives: Functionalism

Key Ideas:

• Purpose and Needs
• Organismic Analogy
• Consensus Theory (value consensus)
• Social Structure (Macro approach)
  
• Social Solidarity
  
• Collective Conscience
  
• Institutions (Functional interdependence)
  
• Social system
  
• Functional sub-systems: Economic. Political. Family/Kinship. Cultural.
  

Functional Imperatives (GAIL):

• Goal Attainment
  
• Adaptation
  
• Integration
  
• Latency (Pattern maintenance)
  
• Latent and Manifest functions (Merton)
  
• Dysfunctions
  
  Key Names: Durkheim, Parsons, Merton, Malinowski

Key Criticisms:

• Supports political and economic status quo (everything has a function)
• Over-emphasis upon the "beneficial" aspects of institutions, structures.
  
• Difficult to explain rapid social change
  
• Tautology (a statement that contains its own proof): "If something exists it has a function. It has a function because it exists…").
  
• Error of reification (Belief that non-human things like "society" can have human qualities such as" needs and purposes").
  

Key Critics: Any Marxist sociologist, Radical Feminists, Marxist Feminists.