This paper provides a working definition of functionalism as it relates to sociology. The author focuses on the works of sociologists Talcott parsons and Emile Durkheim to support the thesis. This three page paper has three sources listed in the bibliography.
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of all, functionalists believe in the application of the scientific method to the "objective social world; and, also, that in the application of analogy between the "individual organism and society"
(McClelland, 2000). The functionalist approach emphasizes that the scientific method stems from the perspective that one can study the social world in the same manner that one studies the
physical world. In other words, functionalists see the social world as "objectively real" and quantifiable by such techniques as surveys and interviews (McClelland, 2000). Their positivist approach assumes that the
study of social world can be value-free, that is, that the investigators values will not interfere with an objective search for social laws governing the behavior of social systems. To
put it simply, sociologists who take a functionalist approach to studying a topic look at the way people interact based on the structures of society and how these structures function
within society and for the individuals involved. The functionalist perspective goes back to Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), the great French sociologist whose writing provides the basis for functionalist theory (McClelland,
2000). Durkheim was one of the first sociologists to employ the scientific method and statistical techniques to the study of social systems. In his classic text, The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life, Durkheim relates one of the many ways that he applied his version of functionalism. This text relates the results of field studies in Australia. In the opening chapters,
he defines religion and totemism before demolishing two earlier theories-animism and naturism. The middle chapters systematically examine what Durkheim describes as shared mental constructs that affect the ways in which
individuals view themselves, each other and the natural world. Because Durkheim has selected totemism as a particularly challenging form of collective representation, he uses it in developing a theory of