Functionalism & the father of sociology -- Emile Durkheim

Main ideas in Functionalism

The starting point of all Functionalism is that all societies have certain basic needs - Functional requirements which must be met if a society is to survive.

Explaining Social Order

In explaining the basis of social order in societies the starting point for Functionalists is to look at whole societies and not the individual...

Emile Durkheim draws an analogy between the way a biological organism works and society. The various organs of a living thing work together in order to maintain a healthy whole in much the same way that various institutions in society work together to produce social order.

Central Value System

Functionalists believe that the basis of an orderly society is the existence of a central value system that imposes common values on all its members. Therefore, when Functionalists look at the ways in which the various parts of society contribute to bringing about social order they are mainly concerned with the ways in which these parts help to perpetuate and maintain this common value system.


He argued that traditional societies were 'mechanical' and were held together by the fact that everyone was more or less the same, and hence had things in common. In traditional societies, argues Durkheim, the collective consciousness entirely subsumes individual consciousness—social norms are strong and social behavior is well-regulated.

In modern societies, he argued, the highly complex division of labor resulted in 'organic' solidarity. Different specializations in employment and social roles created dependencies that tied people to one another, since people no longer could count on filling all of their needs by themselves. In 'mechanical' societies, for example, subsistence farmers live in communities which are self-sufficient and knit together by a common heritage and common job. In modern 'organic' societies, workers earn money, and must rely on other people who specialize in certain products (groceries, clothing, etc.) to meet their needs. The result of increasing division of labor, according to Durkheim, is that individual consciousness emerges distinct from collective consciousness—often finding itself in conflict with collective consciousness.

The rapid change in society [the industrial revolution for example] due to increasing division of labor thus produces a state of confusion with regard to norms and increasing impersonality in social life, leading eventually to relative normlessness, i.e. the breakdown of social norms regulating behavior; Durkheim labels this state anomie. From a state of anomie come all forms of deviant behavior, most notably suicide.

Émile Durkheim saw socialism as rooted in the desire simply to bring the state closer to the realm of individual activity as a response to the growing anomie of capitalist society.