Asses the Contribution of Functionalism to an Understanding of Society

Functionalism is a structural approach, so it tries to analyse society by looking at it initially as a whole and then seeing how this can affect individual parts and people. Talcott Parsons, a well know functionalist sociologist, came up with the organic analogy to describe our society. It said that in the same way that all of the different parts of the body provide different functions that keep the body healthy and stable, different institutions provide key functions to maintain a steady for the society. This analogy sufficiently explains the basic functionalist understanding of society.

Parsons suggests there are four functional prerequisites that all societies have to meet: Adaption (the social system meets its member’s material/economic needs through the economic sub-system), goal attainment (society needs to set goals and allocate resources to achieve them), integration (the different parts of the system must be integrated together in order to pursue shared goals) and Latency (the process that maintains society over time). He also noted that within society there are ‘patterned variables’ which he defines as the fundamental dilemmas that face ‘actors’ (people) in any situation e.g. quality or performance- this is whether people are treated either according to their abilities or by their social position at birth. Parson also gave his view on social change. He saw it as a gradual, evolutionary process of growing complexity and structural diversity. His organic analogy could be seen as relevant here as organisms have evolved from simple structures (amoeba) to complex organisms (humans).

There have been a variety of criticisms of a functionalist view of society. Robert Merton was a functionalist himself but he provided some fair criticism of Parson’s argument. He argued that what Parson’s saw as the functional aspects of an institution e.g. religion, could also be dysfunctional as it can not only bring people together but also divide society. He also said...