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A Functionalist Analysis of Merton's Development of Parsons

Merton thought about three basic assumptions of functionalism and developed them respectively.

In view of the hypothesis of functional consistency, he thinks it masks the inconsistency in all aspects of the system.

According to the hypothesis of functional universality, he put forward positive function and negative function, explicit function and implicit function.

According to the assumption that function is indispensable, he believes that there are functional substitutes in the social system.

On this basis, he put forward the paradigm of functional analysis. Contrary to Parsons, he advocated the middle-level theory view, that is, he paid attention to both grand and pure theoretical fields and empirical research to construct the middle-level theory.