section_path: Conceptions/In sociology/Functionalism
section_name: Functionalism
paragraph_text: Functionalism
  
  According to the functionalist school of thought, individuals in society work together like organs in the body to create emergent behavior, sometimes referred to as collective consciousness. 19th century sociologists Auguste Comte and Émile Durkheim, for example, believed that society constitutes a separate "level" of reality, distinct from both biological and inorganic matter. Explanations of social phenomena had therefore to be constructed within this level, individuals being merely transient occupants of comparatively stable social roles.