著者

竹内 真澄

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

桃山学院大学社会学論集 (ISSN:02876647)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.46, no.2, pp.47-74, 2012-12-21

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Functionalism, a main stream of sociological theory from its birth, faced transitions following its inception in the 19th century to the present time. The historical origin of sociological functionalism can be found in the work of Auguste Comte (1798-1857). How did Comte contribute to the formation of functionalism? This paper qualitatively analyzes Comte's theoretical work in two stages of modernization from simple civil society to industrial capitalism. The modern class is the cooperative relation between entrepreneur and operator, according to Comte's view. Comte used the word "entrepreneur" instead of capitalist, as well as "operator" instead of worker. Thereby, capitalist class domination and exploitation of workers were reduced to spontaneous subordination of operators to entrepreneurs. In addition, Comte rejected the ideal of self-government, the social contract, and autonomy arguing for the spontaneous subordination in modern corporations. He pointed to the subordination deriving particular divisions of labor from general divisions of labor. Thus, the general controls the particular. In this way, he argued that a modern class hierarchy emerged after the French and Industrial Revolutions. This is the very point that I emphasize. By Comte's theoretical construction, the function of exploitation was as mere task of modern organization. As a result, throughout the development of functionalist theory many scholars unconsciously depended on Comte's work. Yet, the performance of functionalism is not sufficient to explain modern society. The following generations of sociologists should discover new theoretical solutions to understand social disintegration outside of modern corporations. Nevertheless, Comte contributed greatly to the formation of main stream sociology.