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Functional Analysis in SociologyAuthor(s): Harold FalldingSource: American Sociological Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Feb., 1963), pp. 5-13Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2090451 .

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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

February, 1963 Volume 28, No. 1

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS IN SOCIOLOGY

HAROLD FALLDING

University of New South Wales

To judge something as functional or dysfunctional is to evaluate rather than explain. Thisevaluation, however, amounts to objective measurement of the dynamic properties of thesystem concerned. Stability, adaptive change and integration can be considered the threemajor dimensions of such measurement. But before we can measure how functional they arefor man, we have to ask whether the products of operating systems meet human needs.

LIKE other statements which have ap-peared in recent years,' the papers onfunctional analysis by Kingsley Davis 2

and Ronald Philip Dore 3 illustrate theamount of spadework hat remains to be done

here. While the contributions of Talcott Par-sons 4 and Robert Merton 5 have been epoch-

1 See Harry C. Bredemeier, The Methodologyof Functionalism, American Sociological Review,20 (April, 1955), pp. 173-180; Bernard Barber,

Structural-Functional Analysis: Some Problemsand Misunderstandings, American Sociological Re-view, 21 (April, 1956), pp. 129-135; Walter Buck-ley, Structural-Functional Analysis in Modern So-ciology, in Howard Becker and Alvin Boskoff(eds.), Modern Sociological Theory in Continuityand Change, New York: The Dryden Press, 1957,pp. 236-259; Francesca Cancian, Functional Analy-sis of Change, American Sociological Review, 25(December, 1960), pp. 818-827.

2 Kingsley Davis, The Myth of FunctionalAnalysis as a Special Method in Sociology and An-thropology, American Sociological Review, 24(December, 1959), pp. 752-772.

3 Ronald Philip Dore, Function and Cause,American Sociological Review, 26 (December,1961), pp. 843-853.

-'See especially, Talcott Parsons, The Social Sys-tem, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1951; TalcottParsons, R. F. Bales, and E. A. Shils, WorkingPapers in the Theory of Action, Glencoe, Ill.: TheFree Press, 1953; Talcott Parsons and Neil J.Smelser, Economy and Society, Glencoe, Ill.: TheFree Press, 1956; Talcott Parsons, An Outline ofthe Social System, in Talcott Parsons, EdwardShils, Kaspar D. Naegele and Jesse R. Pitts (eds.),Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Socio-

making, we have not yet the common codewhich Merton sought. Yet more than everthere is need for a code that would serve asscaffolding for diverse workers to build inunison. The scaffolding could always be dis-

membered mentally by anyone looking intobasic questions,6 but for anyone interpretingdata it needs to stay provisionally fixed. Thefollowing is not the code called for but arally to persevere in winning through to it.

logical Theory, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1961,pp. 30-79.

5 See Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and So-cial Structure, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1957;Robert K. Merton, Social Problems and Socio-logical Theory, in Robert K. Merton and RobertA. Nisbet (eds.), Contemporary Social Problems,An Introduction to the Sociology of Deviant Be-havior and Social Disorganization, New York:Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961.

6 An analysis at this basic level has been under-taken by a number of authors. See, e.g., S. F. Nadel,The Foundations of Social Anthropology, London:Cohen and West, 1953, pp. 368-408; Ernest Nagel,

A Formalization of Functionalism, Logic With-out Metaphysics, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press,1956, pp. 247-283; Dorothy Emmet, Function, Pur-pose and Powers: Some Concepts in the Study ofIndividuals and Societies, London: Macmillan,1958; Carl G. Hempel, The Logic of FunctionalAnalysis, in Llewellyn Gross (ed.), Symposiumon Sociological Theory, Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peter-son and Co., 1959, pp. 271-307; Richard BevanBraithwaite, Scientific Explanation, a Study of theFunction of Theory, Probability and Law in Sci-ence, Cambridge: The University Press, 1959, pp.319-341.

5







6 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

The paper states in synoptic form onlysome of the set of assumptions which, ifassembled, might orient sociologists moreuniformly to their task. As it is the trades-man's last that is being fashioned, the writerdoes not follow into the assumptions be-hind the assumptions as the philosopherwould-yet an exercise like this makes iteasier to see what some of these postulatesare. The writer is aware, moreover, that whathe proposes as definite will still prove con-troversial. His main purpose is to representfunctional analysis in sociology not as partof explanation but as a form of measurementwhich belongs to the natural history phase

of the science. And an attempt is made toelicit some of the specific dimensions ofmeasurement, of the kind Hempel 7 hasasked for. As this proceeds, the way in whichdisorganization is implicated in dysfunctionbegins to appear plainer. The kinship con-nection of these two chief mourners hasscarcely yet been traced.

1. Functional analysis involves evalua-tion. Sociology treats behavior in situationswhich pose a problem of regulation, ratherthan dealing solely with situations whereregulation is achieved. But before we everspeak of social events, a system of regulatedinterpersonal contact either exists in somedegree, or the participants are aware thatone is called for and have adumbrated it-or, having lost what was won, have abro-gated it. To designate the realized desider-atum we can speak of a group or, alterna-tively, of social arrangements, social

organization, social structure, socialsystem. While if we speak of the functionof a social system as a whole it is simply tospecify what product is secured through thebridges and bonds thus established betweenman and man. It may be bread or bullion,music or medicine, sympathy or salvation.Then if we speak in addition of the function

7 Hempel writes: For the sake of objective testa-bility of functionalist hypotheses, it is essential,therefore, that definitions of needs or functionalprerequisites be supplemented by reasonably clearand objectively applicable criteria of what is to beconsidered a healthy state or a normal workingorder of the systems under consideration; and thatthe vague and sweeping notion of survival then beconstrued in the relativized sense of survival in ahealthy state as specified. Carl G. Hempel, op. cit.,p. 294.

of any activity contained within a socialsystem we refer to the effect it has instrengthening (or weakening) these produc-tive bonds. For instance, conflict itself hasbeen analyzed by Coser 8 as having positivefunctions in some social structures, and bythis he simply aims to show that it canstrengthen existing productive bonds by seal-ing their corrosions e.g., when a hamperinggrievance is aired and removed and everyoneis able to get on with the job. Containedwithin a casket of existing bonds conflictmay work like fire to purge them of imper-fections; but, without these, it would pre-sumably not even constitute a social phe-nomenon, much less a functional one.

The notion of function in connectionwith societies and their component groupshas been variously employed, as Merton 9

showed. But the usage that has come to pre-vail takes as the function of an activitywithin a system the contribution it makesto the whole. We have therefore come to seethe importance of specifying precisely boththe part and the whole to which a functionalstatement refers.

A practice which is func-tional within one social region need not befunctional in one which is more (or less)inclusive. Other things also have to be speci-fied if functional statements are to meananything. As Nagel 10 stressed, we shouldsay to what state of the whole the practicein question is contributory. But, more im-portant than any of this, should we not bearin mind all the time what the product ofthe whole system is, since this itself may ormay not be functional for those who bear thecost of the system and so expect to benefit?Very frequently in sociology it is whole,bounded action-systems that are beingjudged to be functional or dysfunctional forman and, only by transference, any partswithin them which may make them so. Andthis is because social action is prompted byhuman need.

The examination of the properties of the

functional system that has been under-

8 Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social Con-flict, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1956.

9 Robert K. Merton, Manifest and Latent Func-tions, Social Theory and Social Structure, Glen-coe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1957, pp. 19-84.

10 Ernest Nagel, op. cit.







FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS IN SOCIOLOGY 7

taken by Nagel 11 seems to concentrate onthe penultimate question of the sustainedfunctioning of the system of action and doesnot ask whether, when functioning, it isfunctional for those who operate it. Nagel'sformalization greatly facilitates our analysisof the internal processes of change and com-pensatory counter-change by which a systempreserves equilibrium. But this has to belinked to the more ultimate question ofwhether the system itself is functional ordysfunctional in yielding products matchedto human need. In the writer's view, askingthis ultimate question is what makes it worthwhile to ask the penultimate one.'2 Mali-

nowski's 13 insistence on this is one of hisenduring contributions to the discussion.

Furthermore, there is a teleological resi-due in functional thinking that is scarcelydisposed of by Nagel's 14 demonstration thatthe explanatory element in functionalism issimply causal explanation put in a round-about way. Where a need-satisfaction standsat the end of a process of human endeavourit exercises some directive power over theefforts taken to achieve it. Here we have acase, then, of the kind of process for whichBraithwaite 15 has striven to preserve recog-nition, wherein the anticipated future goalcontrols the present movement towards it,so that the end achieved is not the passiveeffect of a causal chain but, to some extent

11 Ibid.12 Bredemeier suggests that functional analysis

loses its point if it fails to hold in view at leastthe needs which are induced in the actors by thenormative definitions of the dominant culture.Harry C. Bredemeier, op. cit., p. 179. Cancian, onthe other hand, passes over the idea that func-tional might mean fulfilling a basic need for noreason save that such a view is inappropriate ac-cording to Nagel's concept of a functional system.Francesca Cancian, op. cit., p. 820. Even so, onewonders whether it would be as inappropriate asCancian says. For we would scarcely ask, asCancian suggests, what keeps need constant butwould make need-satisfaction our G, and askwhether or not this is maintained.

13 B. Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture,and Other Essays, New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1960.

14 Ernest Nagel, Teleological Explanation andTeleological Systems, in Herbert Feigl and MayBrodbeck (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy ofScience, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.,1953, pp. 537-558.

15 Richard Bevan Braithwaite, op. cit., pp. 328-336.

at least, the cause of its own causes. Braith-waite 16 points out that the field of studyexplored by cybernetics is largely concernedwith teleological mechanisms like this. Suchprocesses, once launched, may achieve theend in view-or may fail and so be invain. Does not the anticipation of an endto be achieved underlie all our judgmentsof function or dysfunction, when those judg-ments are made in such a way as to implya comparison with the alternative possibleoutcome? In the writer's view, what we areinterested in when we make this comparisonis not explanation but evaluation.

2. The evaluation involved in functional

analysis is objective and needs no apology.To ask the function of any social arrange-ment is to call for its justification-or alter-natively for its condemnation. The positiveand negative polarity inherent in the terms(eu) functional and dysfunctional shouldbetray at once that evaluation is afoot. Agreat deal of unnecessary hedging in socio-logical work would be obviated if this couldbe frankly admitted. At the same time, socio-logical work could be more easily purged ofcovert, private evaluations, if it were allowedthat evaluation of this objective kind is in-trinsic in sociological analysis, and alto-gether honorable. Yet, in saying this, wehave to distinguish the two meanings givento subjective when that state of mind isunfavorably contrasted with the objective.It can mean biased or intuitive. When it hasthe former meaning subjectivity is to be de-plored, because by it the person's perception

is distorted. When it has the latter meaningit is simply to be regretted, since the personis not yet able to share his vision of whatmay well be the truth. The first kind ofsubjectivity has to be expunged from sciencealtogether, but the second kind is the anlageof science and has to be protected andfostered till its testimony can be objectified.In saying that the evaluation in functionalanalysis is objective, freedom from subjec-tivity of the first kind is mainly what isbeing claimed of course. Yet this gives usgrounds for believing that freedom fromsubjectivity of the second kind can also beachieved with time.

We imply objective evaluation of two

16 Ibid., p. 328.








kinds, in fact, whenever we give a function.Basically, we are making a judgment as towhether the expenditure that goes into thecreation and maintenance of the arrange-ment is worthwhile; but we determine thisworthwhileness by both a backward and aforward look, as it were. The backward looktries to sum up the efficiency of the arrange-ment in producing its effects. To the extentthat it is inefficient, wasteful, it is dysfunc-tional in a way. The forward look examineswhether the effects themselves are valuablein terms of some schedule of needs which wepostulate for the life of man in society.Some instances will make this plainer.

We may say, as GluckmanI7 has done,that the function of rituals of rebellion inAfrica is to channel off the resentment thatthe natives feel for their chiefs and so pre-serve stability in the existing authority ar-rangements-thereby ensuring the continu-ing supply of everything those arrangementsguarantee. We would then be implying (i)that these ritual expressions of aggressionare efficient means of dissipating resentmentand (ii) that it is desirable to maintain anuninterrupted need-satisfaction, and hencesocial stability. We may say, with Davis,18that the function of social stratification isto insure that the most important positionsare conscientiously filled by the most quali-fied persons. 19 We would then be implying(i) that a grading of rewards is an efficientmeans of motivating suitable persons to ac-cept greater responsibilities, while a divisionof labor into tasks of unequal importance

is an efficient means of securing commonneeds, and (ii) that it is desirable to satisfycommon needs continuously. We may say,with Merton,20 that the function of the po-litical boss in the U.S.A. is to organize,centralize and maintain in good workingcondition 'the scattered fragments of power'which are at present dispersed. 1 We would

17 Max Gluckman, Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa, Manchester: University of ManchesterPress, 1954.

18 Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore, SomePrinciples of Stratification, American SociologicalReview, 10 (April, 1945), pp. 242-249; KingsleyDavis, Human Society, New York: Macmillan,1959, pp. 364-389.

19 Ibid., p. 367.20 Robert K. Merton, op. cit., pp. 70-82.21 Ibid., p. 72.

then be implying (i) that buying politicalsupport from diversified groups by dispens-ing help to them is an efficient means ofconcentrating power and (ii) that all suchgroups need some access to power and thatthe power secured by them needs to be con-centrated to some degree. Or finally we maysay, with Parsons,22 that two functions ofinstitutionalizing a collectivity-orientationin the professional role of the scientist are(a) to protect the public from arbitraryinterference by men whose special knowl-edge gives them an advantage and (b) toexpose the ideas of any scientist to the crit-ical scrutiny of his fellows. We would then

be implying (i) that role-institutionalizationis an efficient means of restraining indivi-duals who, in an intellectual sense, handledynamite, and (ii) that society needs theircontribution to knowledge.

But it would save misunderstanding f itcould be appreciated that evaluation madein ways like the above is sociological evalua-tion only. So far as present society is con-cerned, X is functional, Y dysfunctional-that is always the implicit stipulation. Theremay well be supernal heights or historicalperspectives from which a socially func-tional arrangement can be judged bad and adysfunctional one good-just as ill-healthis sometimes recalled with gratitude becauseit brought spiritual blessing, or poverty be-cause it put one in the way of great fortuneat a later time-but that would not be in-compatible with recognizing the arrange-ments as socially functional or dysfunc-tional.23 Futhermore, this helps us to see

22 Talcott Parsons, The Social System, London:Tavistock, 1952, pp. 335-345.

23 Merton makes the same point as this when hestresses that judgments about social disorganizationare not moralizing judgments but technical judg-ments about the working of social systems. RobertK. Merton, Social Problems and SociologicalTheory, in Robert K. Merton and Robert A.Nisbet (eds.), Contemporary Social Problems, AnIntroduction to the Sociology of Deviant Behaviorand Social Disorganization, New York: Harcourt,Brace and World, 1961, pp. 719-723. Although heis referring to the notion of social disorganization,Merton attempts in this same essay to relate socialdisorganization to social dysfunction. He suggeststhat disorganization may be viewed as the resultantof multiple dysfunctions. Ibid., pp. 731-737. Martin-dale states that all the critics of the notion of so-cial disorganization base their objection at least








that intellectual judgments about functionand dysfunction contain no ethical impera-tive. We cannot pass from The instructionof children is functional to Thou shaltinstruct children. As sociologists we holdno whip. (Fortunately, though, our soci-ology is redeemed from the final futility bythe fact that men exist who are not sociolo-gists merely.)

3. Evaluating social arrangements as func-tional or dysfunctional is equivalent to clas-sifying them as normal or pathological. Thisis a necessary preliminary to the search forcausal explanation. A physiologist cannotarrive at the function of the liver by gener-

alizing directly from a random collection oflivers which contains some diseased speci-mens. He distinguishes between the diseasedand healthy organs at the outset and, settingthe diseased ones aside, generalizes from thehealthy ones. Certainly, by contrast, hegains some understanding of healthy func-tioning from an examination of the diseasedcases, but can only do so if he first sets themin opposition by classifying them apart. Hisaccount of the liver would be altogether con-founded if it simply averaged the propertiesof the whole collection. Distinguishing nor-mal from pathological cases is one of his firstassignments, and precedes causal knowledgeof the conditions of normal or pathologicalfunctioning. Social systems are more complexthan livers, of course, but the two things arealike in this respect. The instance will there-fore serve to show what confusion can in-vade an intellectual discipline if, being

concerned with things that have system-properties, t fails to recognize that characterin them and evaluate them accordingly. It

partly on the fact that valuations are inherent in it.See Don Martindale, Social Disorganization: TheConflict of Normative and Empirical Approaches,in Howard Becker and Alvin Boskoff (eds.), Mod-ern Sociological Theory in Continuity and Change,New York: The Dryden Press, 1957, pp. 340-367;E. M. Lemert, Social Pathology, New York: Mc-Graw-Hill Book Co., 1951, pp. 3-26; C. WrightMills, The Professional Ideology of Social Pa-thologists, American Journal of Sociology, 49(Sept., 1943), pp. 165-180; Louis Wirth, Ideo-logical Aspects of Social Disorganization, Ameri-can Sociological Review, 5 (Aug., 1940), pp. 472-482. But could the critics see that the need forevaluations originates from the data and not theevaluators the practice might seem less objection-able to them.

should show, further, that evaluation, forcedupon us in this way, is simply scientificmeasurement. It amounts to quantificationof those dynamic properties, possession ofwhich defines the class of things in question.To evaluate systems is to have appropriatedthe dimensions for measuring them. In whatfollows, the three major dimensions for thesignificant measurement of social systemsare proposed, as well as some of the minordimensions implied in them.

It may require a titanic effort to overcomethe clinging prejudice that any view aboutsocial desiderata will be ideologically coloredand therefore suspect, but the effort has to

be made. Through the whole of modern so-ciology two principal objective social imper-atives have been fulminating, forcing recog-nition for themselves. Adaptive change(which implies rationality) and stabilityhave both had to be assumed necessary inthe social arrangements men make. Theseare the two main components of efficiencywhich, it was said, we gauge by a kind ofbackward look. They are the states of thesocial system (Nagel's G's) without whichit cannot be properly productive of any-thing. They are, as such, nobody's politicalideology; and there is no sense in callinga sociologist conservative or radical becausehis work illustrates the necessity of the oneor the other-and as likely as not it willillustrate the necessity of both. Man, ananxious creature who looks before and after,works for his satisfactions over time andhas therefore to bind time, and social organ-

ization and culture take their origin fromthis and must develop a certain conservatismto be of service to him. Yet, even in its mostcolloquial usage, stability has never meantfixity. We must not suppose that stable socialarrangements mean arrangements that arefixed forever. They are simply arrangementsthat materialize as expected for as long asthey are wanted. In no sense, either, is sta-bility an opposite of change, so it wouldbe wrong to think that combining

them nec-essarily meant striking some mean of mod-eration or gradualism. Commitment to sta-bility still leaves men free to adapt to aworld which changes, or of which theirknowledge changes, by various means. Butto be of service stable social arrangementsmust yield-have a certain plasticity.








We have no choice except to take asnormal, healthy or functional those socialarrangements which exhibit both stabilityand adaptive change in the combination de-manded by the time and place, and as ab-normal, pathological or dysfunctional insome degree those which do not (and it isof course a matter of degree). It is admit-tedly a delicate calculation to make andoften still largely beyond us, so we make itin a rough, rule-of-thumb way (perhaps ina way which is subjective in the second ofthe above senses.) Yet we have no choicebut to make it-and very early in our sort-ing of the data. To do this does not imply

that the abnormal or pathological phenom-enon is being pronouced evil in someultimate sense. It simply means it is beingclassified sociologically, given a negativesociological valency so that it will not beconfused with the positive counterpart whichin other respects will deceptively resembleit. The well-organized family is thus not tobe taken for the same sociological phenom-enon as the disorganized one, the high moraledepartment store for the same thing as thelow morale store, the nation riddled withsuicide and homicide for the same thing asthe one where these are rare, the church orschool which moves with the times for thesame thing as the one made redundantthrough its archaisms. It is only after wehave set such contrasting phenomena inclasses apart that we can sample the casesin each class and arrive at causal laws aboutfunctional and dysfunctional systems. It

would be a pity if the attention that has beengiven to functionalism were taken for an in-vitation to make functional analysis the endof sociological inquiry-for then it would bestill-born. It is rather the end of sociology toexplain- explained functions: to showwhat things have a constant association withvarious functional or dysfunctional opera-tions.

4. The stabilization of rational arrange-ments is what we mean by social organiza-tion (social cohesion or solidarity beingroughly synonymous.) The stability require-ment presents an internal challenge, the ra-tionality requirement an external challenge.The internal challenge to social organizationis to motivate lasting support. Stability isonly secured in social arrangements f every-one involved in them is satisfied with them

-at the very least prepared to put up withthem. Everyone must have his reward orthe guarantee of it. Thus the maintenanceof stability is essentially a matter of the en-listment of motives. While every person'sreward will not be the same, everyone willhave the same expectation of a certain re-ward and hence share a positive regard for,or valuation of, the arrangements. We prob-ably claim too much if we mean more thanthis when we say that value-consensus s thebasis of social order. But where this is lack-ing in even a single individual there will bedisorganization in some degree, however lo-calized. His guarantee of reward is the indi-

vidual's security, and conformity to the ar-rangements of the group is what he willgive in return for the security gained. Inthis lies the group's power of control overhim, and the insurance of its own organiza-tion at the same time. A consensus (of thekind specified) and security and control forindividuals, are therefore further indices ofsocial normality. We can also say that com-munication of a certain effectiveness willbe necessary if everyone involved is to knowwhat the arrangements are and if consensusis to be reached in upholding them. Stabilityimplies all this.

But we can say more. Whether individ-uals are satisfied with their rewards dependslargely on whether they think them fair incomparison with the rewards of others. Anysocial system at all is in danger of beingconvulsed if a supposed injustice is un-earthed-although the convulsion does not

necessarily occur. The victim may grin andbear it if he thinks rebellion will provemore costly of justice still. Or there may besanctioned channels through which he willwork for a change. But, on the other hand,he may harbor resentment and be uncooper-ative, or take the law into his own handsand fight for his rights. Whatever the even-tuality, the basement beneath every socialsystem is piled with inflammatory tinder.Justice is the thing that damps it, althoughit is essentially subjective justice. It is justicewhich is seen and felt to be sufficient ( fairenough ) by those concerned. And what isaccepted as sufficient today may appear ina different light tomorrow-even withoutthe situation changing.

This is the craving in the elementary so-cial nature of man which has to be appeased








by the institutions man makes if it is not todevour them. Homans,24 having exploredthis subinstitutional level of behavior,points out how men face a problem peren-nially of reconciling their institutions withit. The social processes of Park and Bur-gess 25 could be regarded as stages on theway to the reconciliation. As a condition ofstability, then, sufficing justice must beadded to the indices of social normality.Some people's misgivings about function-alism stem from a suspicion that the positiveregard it pays to stability implies a condem-nation of just revolt. But this is a misreadingof functionalism's case; and it is unfortunate

if, because of it, lovers of justice have failedto take functionalists for their friends. Ac-tually, functionalism implies that a systemis deficient in respect of stability, if anyoneunder it withdraws support through beingdenied justice.

5. The external challenge to social organ-ization is to cope with present and foresee-able circumstances. Change in their exter-nal situation may force a group to makerearrangements, but a change in theirknowledge of the same situation can havethe same effect. (A changed view of thejustice of existing arrangements is but aninstance of the latter.) The ultimate sourceof the external impulse to change, there-fore, is new knowledge-or probably morecorrect still, novel experience. Washburne 6

has proposed the overwhelming event as thesource of all social change, and thereby sim-plifies our thinking about it considerably.

But there seems no reason why an eventshould be overwhelming in its proportionsin order to force social change, so long asit is overwhelming n its novelty. Man's in-telligence and sensibility impose on him agrowing burden of new knowledge; to ac-commodate, he must change his ways con-tinually. He has no option but to be putat a loss through having one day's practicemade unequal to the next day's knowledge.

He does have some option, though, in his

24 George Caspar Homans, Social Behavior: ItsElementary Forms, New York: Harcourt, Braceand World, 1961, pp. 378-398.

25 Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, In-troduction to the Science of Sociology, Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1924.

26 Norman Foster Washburne, Interpreting So-cial Change in America, New York: Random House,1954.

reaction to this. This state is essentially theone of anomie where procedures and normsfor dealing with perceived realities are lack-ing. Individuals can be torpedoed by thisexperience or seek recovery: a negative andpositive reaction are both possible. One in-stance of the negative reaction is the anomicsuicide which Durkheim 27 identified. Otherinstances, which do not require going out oflife altogether, are the various forms ofpseudo-conformity commonly styled hypoc-risy. Such are the bohemian and phil-istine stances described by Thomas andZnaniecki 28-and are the other-directed-ness and tradition-directedness of Ries-

man 29 identical with them? But the posi-tive reaction to anomie, whereby recoveryis achieved, is one of reorganization. Andthis is not infrequently (perhaps always)approached by a denouement of collectivebehavior and ideology. By collective behaviorin some form men make a primitive com-munication of sharing in a predicament, andthen, in resurgent ideology they re-affirmtheir responsibility to one another as men.This tides them over the break-down intheir actual role obligations, and preparesthem for a different definition of duties. Theresiliency or adaptability we look for in so-cial systems when making functional anal-ysis requires them to meet novelties by ab-sorbing them in this way, rather than bethemselves shattered by shock. Once again,it shows misunderstanding when critics offunctionalism represent it as opposed tochange. It is not opposed to change in social

systems but to their death when they havestill a work to do. If some novelty shouldleave men unable to cope completely, thatwould not be social change but social ex-tinction. It is from knowing that human lifeis impossible without society and societyimpossible without adaptive change that thefunctionalist deprecates this bleak alterna-tive. The writer wonders, though, whetherattempts to defend the usefulness of func-tional analysis for the study of change havesufficiently exploited the fact that an adapta-

27 Emile Durkheim, Suicide, edited by GeorgeSimpson, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1951.

28 William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, ThePolish Peasant in Europe and America, New York:Dover Publications, 1958.

29 David Riesman, in collaboration with ReuelDenney and Nathan Glazer, The Lonely Crowd,New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.








tion requirement implies that readiness tochange is itself one of the properties of thesystem which has to be maintained.30

As well as large-scale changes, changeshave constantly to be made within theminutiae of life. Even in those safe placesof society where norms are firmly estab-lished, the norms rarely fit the case exactly.So it is required that the actors themselvessupply an informal, on-the-spot structurelike an inner lining to the formal. Both forthese minor adaptations and for major onesthe recruits to any social system need tocome equipped in advance to do both moreand different things than the rules prescribe.

Here is a critical instance of the past layingits hand on the present. For what re-assertsitself here is nurture, not biological nature.It is the human nature which is fashionedin the primary group which constitutes thisregenerative capacity, and if any man hasbeen denied this group he will be deniedthis nature and capacity also. If ideologyis the theory of recovery, the imprint ofprimary group involvements is the empiricalbasis of the theory. In the primary groupmen will have experienced the unrestrictedmutuality, the universal love, which acts likeembryonic tissue for the secondary struc-tures that can grow anew between themwherever their ways drift into chaos.31

6. If a diversity of arrangements s madeby the one set of individuals, it is requiredthat the arrangements be integrated among

30 Cancian, in replying to critics of functionalism,and to Dahrendorf and Hield especially, comes closeto doing so when she states that examining a stablerate of change is one of the four possible ways inwhich change can be incorporated in functionalanalysis. See Francesca Cancian, op. cit., pp. 823-826; Ralf Dahrendorf, Out of Utopia, AmericanJournal of Sociology, 64 (September, 1958), pp.115-127; Wayne Hield, The Study of Change inSocial Science, British Journal of Sociology, 5(March, 1954), pp. 1-10. But this hardly suffices.It is not a stable rate of change that the normalsociety must exhibit, but a stable capacity to changeat variable rates according to the challenge of thetimes.

31 Students of disaster draw attention to the wayin which primary group solidarity reasserts itselfwhen secondary structures collapse, thus supplyingevidence for Cooley's idea that the primary groupis the nucleus from which all social organizationgrows. See Charles E. Fritz, Disaster, in RobertK. Merton and Robert A. Nisbet, op. cit., p. 689;Charles H. Cooley, Social Organization, New York:Scribner, 1909.

themselves. A third objective social impera-tive appears in modern sociology, wheneverthe system to be analyzed has more than oneside to it. This is integration. Just as a dis-course needs to be coherent and consistentto be convincing, a social system needs to beintegrated to be productive. For just as adiscourse draws separate facts together, asocial system may be compounded of a num-ber of sets of arrangements. Food produc-tion, say, as well as the maintenance ofhealth and the taking of recreation, may allbe undertaken by one set of people. Thesevarious activities must be so deployed thatthey do not interfere with one another. If

they are all scheduled for one time, for in-stance, they will. If the product of one isan obstacle to the achievement of another,they will-as when some food which isharmful to health is produced and used. Thecompatibility of their ends has always ulti-mately to be faced by a group if they arenot to leave themselves open to self-defeat.This forces them to settle on some heirarchyfor their preferences, so that they will knowwhich to further when the ends come intocompetition with one another. It will forcethem further. They will have to settlewhether any of their aims are to be pursuedfor their own sake and without limit (andperhaps these alone should be called their

values ). All questions of the compati-bility of ends are really economic questions,in the most generic sense of that term. Forthese considerations are forced on us by scar-city-by how far the material will stretch.Included in the material in this case isthat of which man himself is made. Being ina state of contradiction, for example, can beintellectually, emotionally or morally insup-portable by man because of the way he ismade-just as it is impossible for a caketo be both actual and eaten because of thenature of cakes.

While all co-ordinating efforts contributeto social integration, legislation and adjudi-cation are two of its most deliberate

expres-sions. But the sanctifying or sacralizingoperations of religion probably provide theprototypical instance of it. This is thegroup's radical approach to integration, inthat it is the object here not to deny anynormal activity, but to deny autonomy ofaim to every activity. All activities, and the







BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS 13

society itself, are recalled to the service ofan overmastering end, and thereby inte-grated among themselves.

7. It is because the demand for need-sat-isfaction through them is unrelenting, thatsocial arrangements must achieve stability,adaptive change and integration. For thisreason, making judgments of function ordysfunction, normality or pathology, pre-supposes a whole catalogue of assumptionsabout human needs. It was said that partof our judgment that an operation is func-tional rests on our assumption that theproduct of the operation is needed by man.This must be one of the main reasons why

functional thinking seems unsatisfactory tomany people-for who shall say what thethings are that man must have under allcircumstances? And who shall so disentanglethe inherited need from its cultural modifica-tion as to evaluate the latter as a means ofsupplying the former? Yet, unsatisfactorythough this admittedly seems, such assump-tions must be made if sociological work is tohave depth and significance. These assump-tions make a back-drop of our own provid-ing to all the empirical observations wemake. But the back-drop is not itself non-

empirical for all that. It has been wovenfrom the cumulative experience of mankind,as we have each been able to absorb this.We accept as human needs all those satisfac-tions which men have striven to repeat atmany different times and places and by manydifferent means. We assume that men needfood, for example, because, under so manyvaried circumstances, we know they haveacted as though they needed it. It is not forany different reason that we assume theyneed shelter, mutual protection, status, skill-fulness, explanations of natural phenomenaand the consolations of religion. What anysociologist assumes here should hardly be

that minimum range of needs to which allhis colleagues will give ready assent, butthat whole spectrum to which his own vi-sion has admitted him. It is precisely herethat the social scientist is served by his ex-plorations of the arts and humanities, aswell as by the diversity of his experienceand his range of sympathy and imagination.Perhaps it is by exceptional endowment herethat the great sociologist is marked out.If he lends us his eyes for a time we maydevise instruments which will compensateother men for their partial blindness.

BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS *

WILBERT E. MOORE tPrinceton University

A review of the functional theory of stratification indicates some neglect of dysfunctionsand other dynamic elements in systems of social inequality, but does not find the criticspersuasive on the possibility of eliminating inequality. In behavioral terms inequality isseen as deriving from the probability of differential valuation of performance, qualities (aprospective view of performance) and achievements (a retrospective view of performance).In structural terms these variables are seen as modes of access to positions, but positionaldifferentiation is independently linked to inequality of rewards. Although equity strainsinhere in any system of differential rewards, there is no reason to suppose that an equali-tarian system would be free from such strains, as fairness and complete equality are scarcelysynonymous and equalitarianism as a value is rather restrictive in its context of applicability.

HE theoretical ontroversy ver the in-

terpretation of social inequality is oneof the most enduring disputes in con-temporary sociology. Now nearing the end

*The title of course is borrowed from GeorgeOrwell's Animal Farm, New York: Harcourt, Brace,1954.

t The present essay is partially derived from ajoint work with Arnold S. Feldman, Order and

of a second decade since the publication of

the essay by Davis and Moore 1 and more

Change in Industrial Societies, now in preparation.I also benefited from critical comments by my col-laborator, but accept sole responsibility for thepresent formulation.

1 Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore, SomePrinciples of Stratification, American SociologicalReview, 10 (April, 1945), pp. 242-249.


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