Recent Developments in the Functionalist Approach to Change

This paper describes important revisions in the functionalist approach to social change. It is argued that these amendations are, in part, a response to the criticisms of the functionalist tradition issued during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The revisions include: expanding the functionalist conception of change; elaborating the theory's explanatory framework by incorporating notions of contingency, group mobilization, and conflict; and extending this tradition's analysis of the consequences of change. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possible directions this approach may pursue in the immediate future.