As a structural theory, Functionalism sees social structure or the organisation of club as more important than the individual. Functionalism is a top down theory. Individuals are born into society and go the product of all the social influences around them as they are socialised by diverse institutions such as the family, education, media and religion.

DurkheimFunctionalism sees gild as a system; a set of interconnected parts which together form a whole. There is a relationship between all these parts and agents of socialisation and together they all contribute to the maintenance of gild as a whole.

Social consensus, order and integration are central beliefs of functionalism as this allows social club to continue and progress considering there are shared norms and values that mean all individuals have a mutual goal and have a vested interest in conforming and thus disharmonize is minimal.

Talcott Parsons viewed society as a organization. He argued that whatsoever social system has four basic functional prerequisites: adaptation, goal attainment, integration and design maintenance. These tin be seen as problems that society must solve if information technology is to survive. The function of whatever part of the social system is understood every bit its contribution to meeting the functional prerequisites.

Adaptation refers to the relationship between the organisation and its environment. In order to survive, social systems must take some caste of command over their environment. Nutrient and shelter must be provided to encounter the concrete needs of members. The economy is the institution primarily concerned with this function.

Goal attainment refers to the need for all societies to set goals towards which social activeness is directed. Procedures for establishing goals and deciding on priorities between goals are institutionalized in the class of political systems. Governments not just set goals only also allocate resource to achieve them. Even in a so-called free enterprise system, the economic system is regulated and directed past laws passed by governments.

Integration refers primarily to the 'adjustment of conflict'. Information technology is concerned with the coordination and mutual adjustment of the parts of the social system. Legal norms ascertain and standardize relations between individuals and betwixt institutions, and so reduce the potential for conflict. When conflict does arise, information technology is settled by the judicial system and does not therefore pb to the disintegration of the social system.

Pattern maintenance refers to the 'maintenance of the basic pattern of values, institutionalized in the society'. Institutions that perform this function include the family unit, the educational system and religion. In Parsons view 'the values of lodge are rooted in organized religion'.

Talcott Parsons maintained that any social system can exist analysed in terms of the functional prerequisites he identified. Thus, all parts of club can be understood with reference to the functions they perform.

A main supporter of Functionalism is Emile Durkheim who believes that sociology is a science. He is a structuralist and positivist and thus disagrees with empathy, meanings and the social action theory.

Functionalists believe that society is based around a value consensus and social solidarity, which is accomplished by socialisation and social control.

These are two types of social solidarity Durkheim believed in:

Mechanical Solidarity – These societies have people involved in similar roles and so labour division is simple. Therefore, a similar lifestyle is lived with mutual shared norms and values and behavior. They take a consensus of stance on moral bug giving society a social solidarity to guide behaviour. As in that location is a societal agreement, there is pressure level to follow the value consensus, so therefore most do.

Organic Solidarity – Industrialisation meant population grew rapidly with urbanisation occurring. Every bit guild develops, a division of labour occurs. This is when work becomes split up from the home and the land organises the educational activity, wellness care and criminal justice systems.  A parent back then would be the teacher, doctor, guess and jury equally well equally a parent.

Today people have such various and specialist roles that moral codes have weakened and anomie has occurred (a lack of norms and values and cocky-control). Social order is no-longer based on having a common set of values but rather is enshrined in the police force and highlighted by deviance.

Some other in support of Functionalism is Talcott Parsons. Parsons claims that society is the manner it is as social structures are interconnected and dependant on each other. Functionalists therefore run into change equally evolutionary – modify in i role of society will somewhen occur in another. Social ills e.g. crime and deviance, have disabling furnishings on lodge and gradually outcome other parts. They recognise interconnections between various parts of society occur due to a value consensus. Parsons believes that equally social club changes, it develops and the design variables within it will become more complex. Change, therefore, trickles throughout lodge. Parsons summed this up as the 'Organic Illustration'.

Functionalists believe that sociological matters should exist explained with scientific facts. This is otherwise known as Positivism. The founder of Positivism, Angste Comte, describes information technology as a method of report based primary facts, objectively measured, from which makes information technology possible to place issues in guild that effect individuals and leaves room for innovation in police and establishing new legislation. An case of this would be statistics. Positivists believe that folklore should adopt the methodology of the natural sciences and focus only on directly observable social facts and correlate them with other observable social facts.

Courtesy of Lee Bryant, Manager of Sixth Grade, Anglo-European School, Ingatestone, Essex