Revision summary
Parsonian functionalism collapsed under conflict and 1960s critique. Marxism faced 1989, missing polarisation, and gender-race gaps. Lyotard named the fall of metanarratives as a postmodern rupture. Giddens and Beck describe radicalised or reflexive modernity, not an end. Indian capitalism and caste show modern structures still at work.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
From the 1960s, Parsonian functionalism lost authority and Marxist certainties split or stalled. Postmodern and late-modern writers called this a rupture of modernity. The coincidence is partial. Institutions of capitalism, state, and science did not end when the two grand theories wobbled.
Body
Collapse of functionalism
- Talcott Parsons’ system over-integrated conflict and history.
- C. Wright Mills, Ralf Dahrendorf, and later phenomenology accused it of a conservative consensus myth.
- 1960s movements made “system needs” look tone-deaf.
Bankruptcy charges against Marxism
- Actually existing socialism, 1989, and missing polarisation in rich capitalism damaged a textbook sequence.
- The New Left, feminism, and race studies said class did not exhaust domination.
- Cultural Marxists and world-systems theory, after Immanuel Wallerstein, were reconstructions, not a simple death.
Rupture of modernity?
- Jean-François Lyotard named incredulity toward metanarratives, including functional progress and Marxist emancipation.
- Zygmunt Bauman’s liquid modernity and Ulrich Beck’s reflexive modernity describe a changed, not ended, modern.
- Anthony Giddens: modernity radicalises, it does not politely close.
Why coincidence is overstated
- Max Weber’s iron cage and rationalisation already doubted both consensus and redemptive history.
- Indian liberalisation, informal labour, and caste politics show modern institutions thickening, not a postmodern holiday.
- Feminist and Dalit theory criticised both functionalism and orthodox Marxism without leaving modernity’s questions of rights and the state.
Discussion
- Intellectual collapse of two school orthodoxies did coincide with a crisis of modern self-confidence.
- That is not the same as the end of modern structures.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD FUN[Functionalism collapse] --> CRISIS[Crisis of grand theory] MARX[Marxism crisis] --> CRISIS CRISIS --> TALK[Rupture talk] INST[Capital state science] --> CONT[Modernity continues] TALK --> PART[Partial coincidence]
Conclusion
Functionalism’s fall and Marxism’s crisis travelled with a rupture in modern self-description. They did not prove that modernity itself ended. Weber, Giddens, and Indian capitalist-caste modernity show continuity with new risks and voices.
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Same topic · past papers
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These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2020 · Q2(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
What are the reactions of R.K. Merton to the functionalism of social anthropologists ? Bring out the limitations of latent functions.
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