Emile Durkhiem is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of Sociology. Strictly speaking he never called himself a functionalist, it was a label applied to his work.
Durkhiem was interested in how society is shaped and in turns is a powerful force on the individual. His work on suicide went as a far as to suggest that something as personal as ending your own life could be influenced by the society around you and your level of integration in that society. |
Free will vs determinism
Organic Analogy
Functionalists
see society working in a similar way to the human body. Society is seen as a
system where all its parts work together to form a whole. This comparison is
referred to as the Organic Analogy.
Functionalists believe that society exists in a state of equilibrium with institutions functioning to maintain social order. If one institution was the change too quickly or fail to work with the other parts, society would be in chaos and could break down. This is compared to the human body where the failure of one part often affects the other parts and may result in death. |