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Advantages
- explains how society minimises conflict through socialization and social control
- explains how different parts of the social system function to maintain the whole
- shows how society adapts to overcome economic and other changes
- shows how different institutions operate in complementary manner to produce overall social stability
- shows the importance of shared culture as the basis of social order
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Disadvantages
- conflicting interests are being hidden ideological manipulation
- the whole that is being maintained is capitalism which is a socially and economically unjust society
- economic changes are caused by the internal contradictions of the present social order; this is why capitalism is doomed
- social stability is based on false consciousness created by institutions like the nuclear family, education, legal and political systems
- culture is treated as though it is an undifferentiated 'glue' that everyone shares and which produces harmony; even the functionalist Merton recognised that sharing cultural values could lead to conflict)
- it is determinist
- it doesn't give sufficient weight to human agency
- it is, in effect, an ideological defence of the status quo regarding who has power and who doesn't
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