The functionalism, is one of the major theoretical perspectives in sociology. It has been rooted in the works of Emile Durkheim, and further developed by Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton.
Emile Durkheim argued in his work The division of Labor in Society (1893), that the broad structures (values, norms, and belief systems) and institutions (economy, politics, education, religion, and family) of society work together to maintain the stability of society and keep it functioning well (Carter, 2011). He believed that people are constrained and coercion by the social facts, which exist within and are generalizable in the same way in all society but external to the individual, such as norms, values and institutions (Carter, 2011; Turner, 2013). They impose limits and when deviations occur, sanctions are …show more content…
He also creates rules in his work The Rules of the Sociological Method (1895) for distinguish whether society is functioning normal or pathological under the constraint of social fact. He argued that normality is the most