Functionalism in the Social Sciences

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Functionalism in the Social Sciences

Functionalism is the logic that everything has a use, or quite bluntly, a function. Just because something seems foreign or primitive, one mustn't just disregard it as just "something that culture does". The idea is very simple if looked upon shallowly, such as a knife is used to cut, but the deeper one dives into it the more complex it becomes. Functionalism has two meanings, or rather two different ways of looking at it. You can decide to concentrate on that everything MUST have a purpose or that it has a function but not a direct purpose, in the form of social organization. For example the North-American Indian "rain dance". Scientifically it doesn't actually cause nature to change and thus rain, but rather it brings the group together when they are all suffering as one in the "drought". Whether or not the drought means the lack of rain or the lack of something else, it doesn't matter because the principle is still the same.

If this is the case that everything has a purpose, does that mean war and poverty has its purpose too? To clarify this two new phrases have been