درآمدي روش شناسانه بر تبيين كاركردي در جامعه شناسي دوركيم

A Methodological Review of Functional Explanation in Durkheimʹs Sociology

The functionalist theory is one of the several classic theories in sociology, whose methodological framework was established by Emile Durkheim and was expanded from France to all of Europe and US. This article briefly reviews the social and scientific environment of Durkheimʹs era, and then analyzes the logical construct of functional explanation and describes the difference of this theory from teleological, utilitarianism and pragmatism. Obscurity of the key terms of this theory, namely normal situation, function and social system, unfalsifiability, unhistorical nature of this theory and its inability in explaining some of the social phenomena are being studied in this article. Finally, it is suggested that in applying functional explanation, special attention must be paid to its methodological problems and the impact of such problems on social studies.