Who Now Debates Functionalism? From System, Change and Conflict to "Culture, Choice, and Praxis".

This paper makes a strategic return to an earlier sociological era as a way of charting where we have been and where we are heading. Specifically, it returns to the debate over functionalism as represented in a volume edited by the author and Richard Peterson in 1967 entitled System, Change and Conflict. The paper argues that little of that controversy remains, but that several key issues have taken on new forms and serve as the foci of new disputes. A comparable volume today would require a quite different title, perhaps "Culture, Choice, and Praxis." The paper briefly reviews the three new movements referred to and the issues surrounding them. It concludes with remarks on the changing role of theory itself within sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]