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Compare and Contrast the contributions of Functionalist and Marxist theories to an understanding of social life.

Sociology has been influenced by many perspectives among those are Karl Marx also known as the Marxist theory and Functionalism. This research paper seeks to compare and contrast these two theories.
These two theories are very different in comparison but they also have a few similarities on their views about the understanding of social life. Marxism has been called a radical approach to functionalism.
Emile Durkheim was a positivist, and firmly believed that there were natural laws in society that shaped behavior. Functionalism can be compared to biology in that it sees society as an organism in which various parts of society are seen to be intertwined to form a complete system it was his faith in positivism that influenced his belief that sociology should concern itself with the study of social facts. Functionalists believed that society is constructed of various institutions. They group them into four subsystems which are economic, political, kinship and cultural and community org...

Posted by: Andres Cisneros

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