Newer Contributions of Robert K

Robert King Merton (1910-2003) is a self-styled “Durkheimian,” writing very much in the functional tradition. In conceiving of society as a system it becomes natural to see it, like other systems, as composed of parts that are interrelated and whose operations have consequences on the whole. For example, when examining a simple system like the human body it becomes readily apparent that the various organs are interrelated and impact the overall health of the body. So is it with sociocultural systems. Functional analysis is a consequence of thinking of society as a total system. Functionalism is the analysis of social phenomena in terms of their effect on other phenomena and on the sociocultural system as a whole.