The Concept of Social Change (Routledge Revivals)

A Critique of the Functionalist Theory of Social Change

Anthony D. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415579209
• eBook ISBN: 9781136971075
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Anthony Smith's important work on the concept of social change, first published in 1973, puts forward the paradigm of historical change as an alternative to the functionalist theory of evolutionary change. He shows that, in attempting to provide a theory of social change, functionalism reveals itself as a species of 'frozen' evolutionism.

Functionalism, he argues, is unable to cope with the mechanisms of historical transitions or account for novelty and emergence; it confuses classification of variations with explanation of processes; and its endogenous view of change prevents it from coming to grips with the real events and transformations of the historical record. In his assessment of functionalism, Dr Smith traces its explanatory failures in its accounts of the developments of civilisation, modernisation and revolution. He concludes that the study of 'evolution' is largely irrelevant to the investigation of social change. He proposes instead an exogenous paradigm of social change, which places the study of contingent historical events at its centre.

chapter 1
Functionalism and social change

To succeed where historians have failed and provide a theory of social change, has long been an overriding ambition of sociologists. Ever since Comte divided the field into social statics and social dynamics, we find a long line of social theorists who advanced schemes purporting to account for the varied phenomena of social change and history. However much a particular theorist may have avoided or neglected social change, each and every one was conscious that no theory of society could claim to be adequate if it failed to explain movement, variation, transformation and change in social life. It is as if the theory of social change appears as the crown and ultimate justification of all social theory.

Along with this tacit importance assigned to the fact of change, went a deep conviction that it was possible to order the kaleidoscope of observable changes in history into a single, coherent framework; and more, to provide a unified theory of all social change. Of course, this belief was central to the various schemes of world-evolution proposed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In less obvious forms, however, this belief reappears also in Durkheim, among the diffusionists, among the later Marxists (as well as Marx), in the cyclical schemes of historians and elite theorists; and even Weber did not altogether escape its influence.

The latest and most influential of the theoretical schools to manifest this deep-seated conviction in the possibility and desirability of a single theory of change, is functionalism. In this respect, as in many others, functionalism is the heir of a long tradition of perspectives on social change. As the approach of functionalists has broadened and developed, it has revealed with growing clarity its real intent: to provide a unified theory of change and order, which will encompass in one framework the varied and changing structures of history.

THE ATTACK ON FUNCTIONALISM (1) STATICS AND DYNAMICS

To argue that functionalism is fundamentally a theory of change, is to challenge a very common opinion among sociologists: namely, that functionalism is a perspective on society which is unable to cope with social change. In certain quarters, indeed, this view is simply doctrinal; but we find it repeated even by writers who are in sympathy with the functionalist approach. Perhaps this opinion is less common among the noncommitted and the sympathisers today, but throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the idea that functionalism was a theory of social stability and not change, was accepted by the majority of sociologists.

Roughly, their argument ran as follows: functionalism cannot come to grips with ‘the problem of social change’, because it is a doctrine of normative consensus. But normative consensus is a state of affairs which rarely obtains in the world of concrete, historical phenomena; hence as a model of society, it is singularly inapposite for illuminating empirical processes of change. Furthermore, the history and inner structure of functionalism preclude it from any concern with, or utility for, the construction of a theory of change. A doctrine built on the assumption that the parts of a system are interdependent and mutually compatible, or at least in continual process of readjustment to each other, leaves little room for the incorporation of just those historical and structural forces to which a plausible theory of change must address itself. Of course, individual functionalists may well adduce explanations of particular changes; but these remain ad hoc explanations, unrelated to the functionalist conceptual framework, whose overall static bias and generality prevents it from making any lasting contribution to the study of social change, beyond a few very high-level platitudes.¹

More specifically, this argument was supported by a number of objections to the adequacy and objectivity of the whole functionalist framework. Since these critiques contributed to the subsequent reorientation of functionalist interests and methods, I think it useful to set out the major lines of attack, whether they originated within the functionalist camp or from critics outside its orbit.

Static bias

First, it was claimed that functionalism was necessarily static. Its origins and development precluded it from offering a ‘dynamic analysis’. Because of its original polemic against the classical evolutionists, functionalism had to emphasise integration and stability. After all, the early functionalism of the anthropologists like Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown had been developed because of opposition to the sweeping claims of the nineteenth-century evolutionists, with their laws of the various stages of civilisation through which, it was thought, every society must pass. There was also a second functionalist polemic against the rival diffusionists, who sought to explain the various similarities in the cultural make-up of primitive societies as a product of cultural borrowings from neighbouring societies. Both polemics turned the analysis of the functionalist inward, to the institutional workings and relations of single societies—especially primitive ones.²

Against the evolutionists, the functionalists held that we must first discover the network of relations which sustain the institutions of a given social system, before we can be in a position to ascertain the laws by which one state of the social system succeeds another. In addition, we need to know much more about the institutional functioning of single cultures than the evolutionists allow; and this knowledge will prevent us from abusing the comparative method, through disregard of the cultural context of a given trait. As against the diffusionists, Malinowski and his followers rejected their explanation of the coexistence of similar cultural elements in different primitive societies, and stressed instead the contribution or function performed by each item for the maintenance of the cultural ensemble. The upshot of both polemics, therefore, was to underline the equal interdependence and mutual reinforcement of all the parts, however curious at first sight, of a system.³

Anthropological functionalism of the 1920s and 1930s was succeeded by what we may term ‘normative functionalism’. This was largely an American phenomenon, and its underlying aim was to harmonise the structural-functional approach of the anthropologists with (a) Durkheim’s notion of normative integration of societies, and (b) an action frame of reference which was derived from Weber. Normative functionalism accomplished this difficult feat of synthesis, by putting the main emphasis on the stabilising effect of norms (and institutions) which in an action frame of reference are held to govern role-expectations between interacting individuals. A society in which norms produced this stability and equilibrium, was one able to fulfil its major functional imperatives—socialisation, reproduction, education, integration and so on. But norms in turn ‘specify’ more basic symbols, attitudes and beliefs; and this central system of ‘values’ (as these attitudes, etc., were termed) is a prerequisite of any ongoing social system. A central ‘value system’ underlies the norms of each institutional sphere into which all societies are divided, and it unites each of these spheres or sectors, enabling each of them to reinforce the others.

Critics were not slow to point out that a model of normative integration of societies, which this type of functionalism was propounding, was inevitably static. A theorist whose self-appointed task is to reveal the way in which each institutional sector reinforces all the others, and contributes to the maintenance of the whole system, is likely to neglect those factors or forces which prevent a sector or part from performing its allotted role. Likewise, a theory which builds up a model of the social system from that of the stable interaction of individuals in their role-relationships, by emphasising the binding and stabilising effect of the norms governing roles, is prevented from grasping the way in which time alters role-relationships and erodes norms, so changing the nature of all social systems.

But even more important than this was the methodological criticism. This was quite simply that to stress functions or consequences was to deflect analysis from causes and initiating factors; and since the burden of functionalist analysis was, by its very history and development, bound to the study of the contribution or function of parts to the relevant whole, it was inevitable that a diachronic investigation demanding a study of processes and causes over time would be passed over. What really interested functionalists was how societies survive and cohere in the face of external pressure and internal strain, not how they change.

This is perhaps the most forceful and convincing of the many criticisms of functionalism in the form which it assumed in mid-century America, because it argued the case for functionalism’s static bias from the very structure of its assumptions as these developed out of its original polemics. This ‘historical’ argument, in other words, claimed that functionalism by its origins and development was condemned to neglect change and confine itself to the explanation of stability.⁴

THE ATTACK ON FUNCTIONALISM (2) SYSTEM AND CONFLICT

Interdependence

A second group of criticisms emanated from those who were not completely unsympathetic to the functionalist cause. These attacks concentrated on such central functionalist assumptions as the normative integration of the system and the interdependence of parts. Gouldner, for example, attacked the validity and utility of the idea of an equal interdependence of parts, developing further Merton’s notion of the dysfunction of certain items or institutions for a given system. A scheme of perfect functional harmony cannot be found anywhere, even in approximation. On the contrary, social systems are normally characterised by a high degree of institutional autonomy; and the parts of a system do not necessarily have a reciprocal effect upon each other. Furthermore, one does not have to assume that institutions react upon one another with equal effect, nor that they are mutually reinforcing or even interrelated, in order to explain the system’s survival.⁵

A parallel argument can be found in an article by Cancian. We need not accept the functionalist claim that concrete societies should be tested against a model of perfect system integration around a common set of values. Few societies have in fact exhibited anything like this degree of integration. An integration model may explain some changes or deviations from a postulated normal state of integration, but it cannot account for the much more common (and interesting) cases of change in the majority of systems which lack anything resembling this integrative norm. Besides, the difficulties of ascertaining this norm in concrete instances make it often irrelevant.⁶

Sophisticated criticisms like these in fact concede the uses of a systemic analysis, but wish to strip it of some of its more unrealistic and untenable assumptions—in the manner of Merton’s well-known critique.⁷

Conflict

By far the most popular objection to functionalism in the 1950s and early 1960s was its neglect of conflict and coercion.

There were two lines of attack here. The ‘moderates’ like Coser and Gluckman were worried by the lack of reference in functionalist analyses of the period to any type of competitive and conflict processes. They argued that conflict was a necessary element in the maintenance of social cohesion, and that many kinds of ‘conflict’ were in fact eufunctional for the effectiveness and growth of a social system. Without conflict, no creativity; without innovation, no movement Stagnation spelt dissolution, A pure integration model turned out to be an empirical contradiction.⁸

Of course, there was also the ‘disruptive’ kind of conflict. This was the type stressed by the radicals. Lockwood, for example, felt that functionalists placed too much emphasis on the role of norms and values in ensuring stability, at the expense of group interests and the material substratum. But the neglected factors were just those which could furnish explanations of change and conflict in society, and no theory which omitted the impact of the struggle for scarce resources could stake out a claim to provide a comprehensive account of social processes.⁹

From these suggestions, Rex and Dahrendorf (and later Lenski) evolved a ‘conflict model of society. Rex concentrated upon the structuring of economic interests as the bases of class formation to explain social conflict as well as social regulation; while Dahrendorf sought to explain both conflict and material interests in terms of overriding authority relations within the several organisations which compose a society. Not culture, therefore, but politics and economics were the key sectors which determined what men valued and why they behaved according to certain standards. Integration and consensus were functions of conflict and coercion.¹⁰

Ideology

Finally, and arising out of the last group of arguments, came the charge of ideological bias: that, despite Merton’s demonstration that functionalism did not necessarily entail an ideology of political quietism and conservatism, in practice functionalists were firm supporters of the status quo. Such was the array of concepts utilised by functionalism, that the conservative values of persistence, stability and orderly growth were inevitably stressed at the expense of more radical and egalitarian values. Translated into the terms of American social and political life, this bias led its practitioners, whatever their personal reservations, towards some version of the ‘conservative-liberal’ consensus which Mills so berated. Which in turn implied their support for the dominant values of the capitalist order and its ruling elites; and ample evidence of the ease with which functionalist postulates could be translated into this political position, was to be found in the work of its leading exponents.¹¹

THE FUNCTIONALIST REJOINDER: TWO STRATEGIES

These then, were the routes by which the critics of functionalism reached their unanimous verdict: its underlying assumptions debarred the approach from handling social change. Functionalism suffered from a self-inflicted handicap; having nothing to say about social dynamics, its claim to present a total theory of social life collapsed.

Faced with this indictment, a functionalist had two options. He could accept the burden of the attack and drop functionalism’s claim to provide an overall theory of social life. Or he could develop the positions of functionalism so as to envelop and neutralise the charges against his perspective. The first is a strategy of consolidation, the second one of expansion.

A strategy of consolidation implies the acceptance of a sharp division between ‘structure’ and ‘change’. No theory can hope to account for these two aspects of social affairs; hence functionalism should renounce all aspiration to deal with that aspect for which it was patently unsuited. A theory of social persistence cannot, by the very terms of its reference, act simultaneously as a theory of social change. Functionalism has shown itself capable of refined analysis of the continuities of role-expectations and normative patterns which together compose social structure; let it therefore develop further this crucial area of social life, and exercise self-denial as far as an overall theory of society is concerned. By consolidating its ‘territory’, functional analysis can set an example to other would-be ‘imperialist’ theories of the totality of social experience.¹²

Actually, this strategy was not quite as modest as it appeared. After all, the argument ran, societies require stability for self-maintenance. History, as we know it, is the history of ‘societies’. It follows that the functionalist would receive the lion’s share of social analysis, leaving mere interstices of intersocietal anarchy to theorists of other persuasions. It was a small price in comparison with the gain.

And yet most of the major functionalists rejected this strategy of consolidation for one of expansion. True, they continue to accept the Comtean division of sociology into social statics and dynamics, predicating the former of ‘structure’ and the latter of ‘change’. As we shall see also, the static model of a stable integration of systemic parts continues to pervade their analyses of social processes in subtle guises. At the same tim...

Table of contents

• Monographs in Social Theory
• Contents
• Preface
• chapter 1 Functionalism and social change
• chapter 2 The ‘neo-evolutionary’ revival
• chapter 3 The stages of evolution
• chapter 4 Modernism and modernisation
• chapter 5 Revolution
• chapter 6 Equilibrium and change
• chapter 7 Evolution and history
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index