ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a basic framework for investigating social dysfunctions. It addresses conceptual problems rather than detailed explanatory models that involve dysfunctions. The mechanism of social change rests on the dysfunctionality of worker association. Technological development unwittingly leads to the association of workers. The chapter looks at dysfunctions in early social theory to provide an overview of different concepts of dysfunctions, their explanatory value, and the theoretical problems to which they give rise. Explicit reference to dysfunctions can be traced back to the very beginning of social sciences when social theorists often conceptualized societies in analogy to organisms and mostly viewed evolution as the development of the social organism. Several similar terms are commonly used interchangeably. The chapter explains the concept of dysfunction to Emile Durkheim’s theory of anomie to better understand the motives behind early discussions of dysfunctions.
