Examine the usefulness of functionalism for an understanding society
Sociology Essay Examine the usefulness of functionalism for an understanding society. This question asks me to look at how functionalism affects everyday society in Britain. This also requires me to look into depth at several other ways of society: Marxism, Feminism and interactionism. Functionalism is a structural theory which highlights the inter-relation of inter-dependant parts that concentrate on the family, education, economy and government. A structural theory is often described as a machine controlling everyone, looks at society in a macro view and the rules in the concepts of structural theory are followed to keep culture stable between generations of people. Functionalism blindly sees society perfectly and examines a society of people rather than individuals. Sociologists often describe this theory as the human body that links the brain to religion, the family to the heart, the lungs represents the economy, the liver is the legal system, the intestines represents the education and the bladder represents the health system. The idea behind this concept is: if any of the institutions break down then the whole of society breaks down. Functionalism occurs through out everyone's life, at the beginning when norms and values are passed on to children using primary socialisation and even during secondary socialisation at school. Functionalism can mean positive. The
