The Functionalist Paradigm (Research Paper Sample)

Author
Tutor
Course
Date
The functionalist paradigm
Sociologists have been analyzing the social phenomena at different perspectives and different levels. This analysis ranges from different concrete interpretations of everything from the socialist study to social behavior and society general sweeping. In addition, the socialist are interested in the big picture of the society which is based on how the people influence the society and how the society influences the people. The socialist studies are also based on the outcome of different events within the society which is called the micro level of psychiatry or analysis of the small social patterns. In addition, the socialists also carry the macro level analysis of the big picture of the society or the large social patterns (Stolley & Kathy, 29).
Today, sociologists use three main theoretical perspectives. The three primary theoretical perspectives form the three main paradigms of sociology. These perspectives include the conflict perspective, functionalist perspective, and the symbolic interactions perspective. These different perspectives offer the societies sociologists the theoretical paradigms which enable them to explain the influences between the people and the society and the society with the people. However, each perspective exclusively conceptualizes the human behavior, social force, and the society (Stolley & Kathy, 29). This paper exclusively looks at the functionalism paradigm. The paper will introduce the paradigm by giving a brief history of how it came to be, the key sociologists who promoted its development, and how it influences the community livelihood.
The functionalist perspective or the functionalist paradigm achieved its popularity in America between the year 1940 and 1950. While in Europe the functionalists were originally focusing on explaining the inner operations of a social order, the American functionalist were critically focused on discovering and understanding the human behavior. There were several American sociologists who promoted the growth of functionalism perspective in America. These are the founding fathers of this paradigm. The functionalist socialist founding fathers includes Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (Ortwin, Taylor, & Francis, 295).
The two functionalist socialist promoted the development of the paradigm differently with each one of them promoting his different sector. In his effort to promote functionalism, Robert Merton who also played a key role in development of functionalism divided human functions into two: latent functions and manifest functions. According to Robert Merton, latent functions are not obvious because they are unintentional while manifest functions are obvious and intentional. In his effort to help people distinguish the two human functions, he gives an example of going to church or synagogue to worship as a religious community and describes it as a manifest functions but he goes ahead and says if one goes to worship in church or synagogue to worship and he or she also assist people to distinguish between institutional values and personal values he terms the activity as a latent function. In addition, Robert Merton says that manifest functions are easily apparent and discoverable compared to the latent functions which often requires a sociological approach for them to be revealed. Generally, in functionalism a sociological approach is usually the relationship sandwiched between the functions of the community as a whole and of the smaller parts (Stolley & Kathy, 23).