Structural Functionalism Research Paper

Athraa Hannawa

Sociology 4050

April 6 2014

Structural Functionalism and its Classical Roots

You find yourself in a big crowd surrounded by screaming fans and you are one of them. You sway with the music as everyone else is and the next minute you are jumping up and down with your hand raised over your head. You are not fully aware of your actions when you take part in this social event. It was Emile Durkheim, the founding father of Sociology, who sought to explain what held societies and social groups together. Although some of Durkheim’s work on social acts, social Solidarity, and anomie maybe outdated, his work set the precedence that most contemporary structural functionalists such as Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton expanded upon.

Emile Durkheim may have been the father of Sociology but he was a functionalist who was interested on how social order is possible. He was especially interested on how modern industrial societies stay together when people do not know one another and have such diverse backgrounds. (Edles 77). A strong emphasis on unity and order within society produces social stability and productivity. Durkheim believed that society shapes the person that one becomes in every way possible. He viewed actions as a product of the society without much contribution from the individual. He believed that the rules and values of society, culture, and institutions are the only major factors in shaping who one is, and defining our one’s identity. In his eyes, societies are therefore extremely static and evolve in giant leaps.

In Durkheim’s second major theme, social solidarity, he outlined the difference between organic and mechanical solidarity. These key terms stem from his first major work, The Division of Labor in ...

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...a society without crime for the same reasons that you cannot have games without rules, when one break the rules there are consequences so you will refrain from against the norm society has set into place (Edles 86). Although Merton agreed with Durkheim that individual behavior is a product of society, he developed more of his ideas through the middle-range theory. This theory “lies between the minor but necessary working hypothesis that evolve in abundance during day-to-day research and all the inclusive systematic efforts to develop a unified theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behavior, social organization and social change” (Edles 356). Merton attempted to explain the social world as did Parsons through the point of view of the social actor, they were also interested in how society enforces certain patterns of behavior on indivuals.