Functionalism

Abstract

Functionalism as a distinct methodology and theory of society originated first in the work of Comte, Spencer and Durkheim, and secondly, in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century anthropology especially the writings of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) and Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942). Durkheim is often cited as the dominant influence on the development of sociological functionalism for his argument that social institutions exist solely to fulfil specific social needs. ‘All moral systems’, he argued, constitute ‘a function of the social organisation’, and apart from ‘abnormal cases’ every society develops a morality necessary for its adequate functioning (Durkheim, 1953, p. 56). In The Rules of Sociological Method he explicitly argued that the function of a social fact is social in that it necessarily produces socially useful effects. Thus:

… to explain a social phenomenon the efficient cause which produces it and the function it fulfills must be investigated separately (Durkheim, 1982, p. 123).

For Durkheim, cause and function related to specific ends, especially those concerned with social solidarity and the maintenance of society as an organic whole.