Functionalism

How it is used

Linked with Durkheim, Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton, who added manifest functions, latent functions and dysfunctions. Society is often compared to a living organism. Critics say the approach pays too little attention to conflict, power and change. Also called structural functionalism.

Example sentences

1. Functionalism suggests that punishing crime reinforces the values a society shares.

2. Functionalism dominated American sociology in the 1950s.

Common collocations

• structural functionalism
• functionalist perspective
• functionalist theory
• critique of functionalism

Related terms

• conflict theoryA group of theories that see society as shaped by struggles between groups with unequal power and resources, such as classes, genders or ethnic groups.
• symbolic interactionismA theoretical approach that studies how people create and share meanings in everyday interaction, using symbols such as language and gestures.
• social structureThe relatively stable pattern of social relationships, institutions and positions in a society, which shapes and limits what individuals can do.
• social factIn Durkheim's sociology, a way of acting, thinking or feeling that exists outside individuals and puts pressure on them, such as laws, customs or suicide rates.
• division of labourThe way work in a society or organisation is split into separate, specialised tasks carried out by different people or groups.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• functionalism · Philosophy

More terms: Theories and Thinkers

• sociological imagination
• agency
• anomie
• alienation
• ideology
• habitus
• hegemony
• ideal type
• feminism
• social construction