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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
I HAVE A STRONG RESISTANCE TO LOOKING BACK ON THINGS which I have written in the past: sometimes they may not seem too bad, but more often I notice inadequacies which are embarrassing if not painful. In any case, life and one's interests move on, and one leaves past writings for others to make what they will of them. But on reflection I thought that I would like to take a look at the question which I was addressing in Function, Purpose, and Powers, and see how it might appear more than a generation later.
First edition, London, Macmillan, 1958; second edition Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1972.
2 Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1967.
3 Structure and Function in Primitive Society, London, 1952, p. 180.
4 ibid., p. 11.
5 The distinction between ‘manifest’ and ‘latent’ functions was made by Robert Merton, the most sophisticated proponent of this approach. See his paper under this title in Social Theory and Social Structure, Illinois, Free Press, 1951.
6 Function, Purpose, and Powers, p. 293.
7 ibid., pp. 135–6.
8 Social Theory and Modem Sociology, Blackwell, 1987, p. 24.
9 See ‘Functional Explanations in Sociology’ in Ulysses and the Sirens, Cambridge, 1979, pp. 28ff.
10 A collection of papers with this approach is Rational Choice, ed. Jon Elster, Blackwell, 1986.
11 Amartya Sen is constantly making some acute criticisms of the applicability of rational choice and preference theories to what actually happens in social contexts. See for instance his essay in the volume cited above.