Functionalism Conflict Theory and Symbolic Interaction

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Functionalism Conflict Theory and Symbolic Interaction The functionalist thoery can be traced to a movement in the late nineteenth-century under the influences of Darwinism on the biological and social sciences. It is an attempt to understand the world, and it tests the cause and effect of sociological behavior. Some of the more famous functionalists are Charles Darwin, Emile Durkheim, and Horace Kallen. Horace Kallen's article in the article in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, states that functionalism has influenced every discipline. In psychology, it led to the substitution of the stream of consciousness for states of mind. In philosophy, it led to the rise of pragmatism and instrumentalism, and in logic it replaced the laws of thought with the theory of scientific method. Functionalism basically came to be seen as a "means to an end." There are two major sub-schools of modern functionalism; macro-functionalism and micro-functionalism. Macro-functionalism focuses primarily on breaking down large scale systems such as societies or civilizations and making t...

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