Functionalism in Sociology

The history of sociology is essentially a series of various competing paradigms and views of society and about how society is constructed as well as its nature and function As Thomas Kuhn pointed out in his groundbreaking work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, all paradigms are to a certain extent influenced by subjective predilections and views and are therefore never truly objective. However functionalism, as one of the many sociological paradigms, built its view of society and the way in which society's function on the basis of scientific objectivity. As will be discussed in this paper, the functionalist view was also influenced by the social, cultural and historical milieu which formed its context.

The functionalist approach to the study of society is premised on the assertion that every society needs stability and order to function correctly and that this order is maintained by the interaction between the...
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