ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the functionalist perspective of sport. It shows that while functionalism and its variations are mostly out of vogue in contemporary social science, the theory, especially the concept of a social system, is actually quite applicable to the study of sport. Playing within the system is reflective of the functionalist perspective, especially the system analysis promoted by Talcott Parsons. Sports teams are also evaluated on their ability to meet their goals. Team owners evaluate everyone in their organization based on their functionality. Sport, as a social institution composed of social systems with interrelated parts and a plurality of individual and group actors interacting with one another, lends itself to functionalist analysis. The functionalist argument is generally endorsed by those who support sport and sport participation. Parsons’s structural functionalist perspective has a dual focus on the structural forces that shape human behaviour and the means and ways that the social system addresses societal needs.
