Societies are seen as coherent, bounded and fundamentally relational constructs that function like organisms, with their various (or social institutions) working together in an unconscious, quasi-automatic fashion toward achieving an overall social equilibrium. The central concern of structural functionalism may be regarded as a continuation of the Durkheimian task of explaining the apparent stability and internal cohesion needed by societies to endure over time.

'social bonds, based on specialization and interdependence, that are strong among members of industrial societies'. Based on the metaphor above of an organism in which many parts function together to sustain the whole, Durkheim argued that complex societies are held together by ' solidarity', i.e. In modern, complex societies, members perform very different tasks, resulting in a strong interdependence. Durkheim used the term ' mechanical solidarity' to refer to these types of 'social bonds, based on common sentiments and shared moral values, that are strong among members of pre-industrial societies'. He proposed that such societies tend to be segmented, with equivalent parts held together by shared values, common symbols or (as his nephew Marcel Mauss held), systems of exchanges. In this view, Comte was followed by Émile Durkheim.Ī central concern for Durkheim was the question of how certain societies maintain internal stability and survive over time. Explanations of social phenomena had therefore to be constructed within this level, individuals being merely transient occupants of comparatively stable social roles. While one may regard functionalism as a logical extension of the organic analogies for societies presented by political philosophers such as Rousseau, sociology draws firmer attention to those institutions unique to industrialized capitalist society (or modernity).Īuguste Comte believed that society constitutes a separate 'level' of reality, distinct from both biological and inorganic matter. Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration functionalism strongly emphasises the pre-eminence of the social world over its individual parts (i.e. Biology has been taken to provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure and function of social systems and analyzing evolution processes via mechanisms of adaptation. In sociology, classical theories are defined by a tendency towards biological analogy and notions of social evolutionism:įunctionalist thought, from Comte onwards, has looked particularly towards biology as the science providing the closest and most compatible model for social science. For Talcott Parsons, 'structural-functionalism' came to describe a particular stage in the methodological development of social science, rather than a specific school of thought. In the most basic terms, it simply emphasizes 'the effort to impute, as rigorously as possible, to each feature, custom, or practice, its effect on the functioning of a supposedly stable, cohesive system'. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements namely norms, customs, traditions, and institutions.Ī common analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer, presents these parts of society as 'organs' that work toward the proper functioning of the 'body' as a whole. This approach looks at both social structure and social functions. This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole, and believes that society has evolved like organisms. Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is 'a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability'.

Structural and functional theory