Robert K. Merton was born to working class Jewish Eastern European immigrants in Philadelphia. He started his sociological career under the guidance of George E. Simpson at Temple University in Philadelphia (1927-1931), and Pitrim A. Sorokin in Harvard University (1931-1936).

He taught at Harvard until 1939, when he became professor and chairman of the Department of Sociology at Tulane University. In 1941 he joined the Columbia University faculty, becoming Giddings Professor of Sociology in 1963. He was named to the University's highest academic rank, University Professor, in 1974 and became Special Service Professor upon his retirement in 1979, a title reserved by the Trustees for emeritus faculty who "render special services to the University." He withdrew from teaching in 1984. In 1994, Merton was awarded the US National Medal of Science and was the first sociologist to receive the prize.Merton was married twice, including to fellow sociologist Harriet Zuckerman. He had one son and two daughters from the first marriage, including Robert C. Merton, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in economics.

Merton’s Functionalism

The major figure in functional sociology during the late 1930s and early 1940s was Robert K. Merton. Only much later in the early 1950s was the elaborate Parsonian scheme to unfold, In  the  1949 edition of his classic, Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton notes that “functional analysis is at once the most promising and least codified of contemporary orientations, Merton emphasizes that functionalism represents  a  “triple-alliance between  theory,  method  and  data.”  That is, functionalism, on the one hand, is a useful method for collecting and arranging data, while on the other hand, it promises to be a useful way to interpret and explain regularities that emerge from empirical investigations. Merton views, the methodological component of functionalism to be the weakest. Yet as the eloquent advocate of the “middle range” strategy for theory building, he recognizes that functional methods should lead to data collection and arrangement that facilitates functional theorizing, or functional interpretations of data.

Thus Merton’s analysis of functionalism is directed toward creating an approach that guides both data collection and its theoretical interpretation.

Merton  devotes  considerable  effort  to  questioning  three “functional postulates” that he feels have come to dominate functional inquiry . What separates him from the traditional ones is his new insights, the way he goes beyond the boundaries of traditional functionalism. That is why it is important to know how Merton refutes the postulates of traditional functionalism-the postulates of unity, universalism and indispensability and proposes refreshingly innovative changes, the changes that enable him to see that everything is not functional. Merton

Postulate of Functional Unity

Radcliffe-Brown, says Merton, is one of the chief exponents of the postulate of functional unity. To quote from Radcliffe-Brown: ‘The function of a particular social usage is the contribution it makes to the total social life as the functioning of the total social system’,  What is implicit in such a postulate is that a social function has a certain kind of unity and all parts of the social system work together with a sufficient degree of harmony or internal consistency.

Perhaps the postulant of functional unity makes sense and remains valid in relatively homogeneous, non-literate civilization. But in a modern complex society, the postulate of functional unity, as Merton argues, needs to be redefined.

First, Merton doubts whether all societies are solidly integrated and hence every culturally standardized practice or belief is functional for the society as a whole.

Secondly, Merton wants the sociologists to remember that social usages or beliefs may be functional for some groups and dysfunctional for others in the same society.

Postulate of Universal Functionalism

This postulate holds that all social or cultural forms have positive functions. Malinowski, says Merton, advances this in its most extreme form. As Malinowski says, ‘In every types of civilization, every custom, material object, idea and belief fulfils some vital function’.

A moment’s reflection is enough to make you see the shortcomings of such a postulate. Because, as you have already learned, an item a social belief or a cultural practice may have dysfunctions also. And it may happen that a net balance of functional consequences is negative, not positive. Merton argues and, it seems, you would agree with him-that he functionalists must focus on a net balance of functional consequences, positive as well as negative, but, by no means, positive only.

Postulate Of Functional Indispensibility

Implicit in this postulate is the belief and Malinowski asserts it that whatever fulfils some vital function , be it custom, a cultural practise, is indispensible in that society . In other words all that persists in a society is indispensable and nothing, it seems can be altered.

A functional analyst, Merton says, should assume that nothing, in fact, is indispensable. There are functional alternatives, equivalents or substitutes. In other words, the same function served by a given item, under changed circumstances, may be fulfilled by another item. For example, in modern societies where women too work outside the home, some functions of the family such as, childcare can be performed by other institutions- like creches, day care centres, and so on.