Functionalism

      Emile Durkheim may be known as the Father of Sociology.  Durkheim focused a lot on the topic of social order.  Without his findings society would be a mess, but luckily for us Durkheim came up with his own theory dealing with functionalism.  Functionalism is most commonly known as an orientation that views society as interdependent parts whose functions contribute to the stability and survivor of the system.  In short functionalism is the different parts of society working together to acquire one certain goal.  The goal? A successful society.  There are a couple of concepts to functionalism, but the most important concepts to me are, social order, social structure, and family.

      Social order is how we maintain the order in our society.  Too little rules can allow people to do more things, and among those things there might be some bad out'comes.  Too many rules and society will feel suppressed, which be good, but after a while rebellion will be too much for the government.  Humans are also naturally selfish, so we tend to do whatever we need to in order to further benefit ourselves.  The rules that the government implement on us are to evidently protect ourselves from ourselves.

      Social structure is the norms and values that we grow up with.  The values and norms depend on what society we live in.  We are born into these norms.  The way we behave is what make us a society.  Different societies behave in different ways. "Durkheim believed that people's behavior was shaped by the system of norms and values that they were born into".

      The last one is family.  Family provides sexual, economic, reproductive, and educational functions to the theory functionalism.  Sexual to me in this case means how the kids grow up to be.  If the dad teaches his son not be tough then he will most likely be a weak adult.  Economic is the gross income.  If the family does not have money then that child will probably have a tough time paying for college.  Reproductive is how the family keeps growing and keeps adding income into the nation.  The last one is educational.  If the parents did not go very far in school then the kids will do the same.
     
 Refrences:

 Dictionary.com

http://realsociology.edublogs.org/2010/12/13/class-notes-functionalism-key-ideas-and-durkheims-     functionalism/

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/sociology/theories-in-sociology/concepts-of-functionalism/