Abstract
Students of social policy may be inclined to see the functionalist view of welfare as identical with the perspective outlined in the previous chapter. But there is more to functionalism than the idea that institutions develop out of necessity. Its basic propositions therefore merit close attention. The principal tenets of a school of thought are not easy to specify, but two basic features seem common to a wide variety of ‘functionalisms’. First, the conception of society as a system — a set of inter-related patterns which constitute the ‘parts’ of an integrated ‘whole’ (society is seen as analogous to an organism). Secondly, the analysis of these patterns — social institutions — in terms of their ‘function’, i.e. the contribution they make towards the efficient working of the ‘whole’. Given this basic approach, much of functionalist analysis concerns itself with, for example, specifying the functions that must be performed if a society is to survive, studying the functional division of labour among the institutions of society, and examining the inter-relationship between various institutional patterns from the viewpoint of ‘good fit’ or harmony.
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Notes and References
Percy S. Cohen, Modern Social Theory (London: Heinemann, 1968) pp. 34–7.
Robert Pinker, Social Theory and Social Policy (London: Heinemann, 1971) ch. 1.
Donald Macrae (ed.), Spencer: The Man Versus the State (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) Introduction, pp. 14–17, 27, 35;
see also J. D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer (London: Heinemann, 1971).
Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1964) p. 221.
Talcott Parsons, The Social System (London: Routledge, 1951);
Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1968);
Neil J. Smelser, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (London: Routledge, 1959) are among the leading works of these writers.
See, for example, Talcott Parsons and Neil J. Smelser, Economy and Society (London: Routledge, 1956) pp. 18–19.
Neil J. Smelser, ‘Toward a Theory of Modernization’, in Social Change, ed. Amitai Etzioni and Eva Etzioni (New York: Basic Books, 1964).
Raymond Firth, Human Types (New York: Mentor, 1958) ch. 3;
Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (London: Tavistock, 1974) chs 1 and 5;
Gerhard E. Lenski, Power and Privilege (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966) chs 5 and 6.
Weber notes this role of religion, though not necessarily from a functionalist standpoint. See Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (London: Methuen, 1965) pp. 210–15. See also Lenski, Power and Privilege, pp. 263–6.
For the ‘anti-welfare’ attitudes of individualistic religions such as puritanism see R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) pp. 251–70.
Richard M. Titmuss, Commitment to Welfare (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968) p. 22.
Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (London: Routledge, 1957).
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968).
See, for example, Richard M. Titmuss, Essays on ‘the Welfare State’ (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963) pp. 24–7.
Peter Townsend, Sociology and Social Policy (London: Allen Lane, 1975) p. 2.
See Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Poor Law History: Part II, Vol. I (London: Frank Cass, 1963).
Kinsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore, ‘Some Principles of Stratification’ in Class, Status, and Power, ed. Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset (London: Routledge, 1967). For an attempt to apply a similar perspective to the analysis of poverty, albeit from a radical stance, see Herbert J. Gans, ‘The Positive Functions of Poverty’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 78(2), Sep 1972.
See Ritchie P. Powry, Social Problems (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974) ch. 6 for an assessment of the functionalist approach to social problems.
See also the Epilogue (‘Social Problems and Sociological Theory’) by Merton in Robert K. Merton and Robert Nisbet (eds), Contemporary Social Problems (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971).
Emile Durkheim, Suicide (London: Routledge, 1972) pp. 254–7.
John Horton, ‘The Dehumanization of Anomie and Alienation’, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 15(4), Dec 1964, p. 286.
See, for example, Neil J. Smelser, The Sociology of Economic Life (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963) pp. 88, 108.
Alvin W. Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (London: Heinemann, 1971) p. 342.
See, for example, W. E. Moore, ‘Functionalism’, in Tom Bottomore and Robert Nisbet (eds), A History of Sociological Analysis (London: Heinemann, 1979).
See Thomas S. Kuhn; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1970).
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© 1981 Ramesh Mishra
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Mishra, R. (1981). The Functionalist View. In: Society and Social Policy. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16596-4_4
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