Before revision: Functionalism and neofunctionalism in the theory of international relations is politically purposive, and therefore unrelated to the sociological functionalism described in the rest of this article..... Parsonian Thinking In sociology, neofunctionalism represents a revival of the thought of Talcott Parsons by Jeffrey C. Alexander, who sees neofunctionalism as having 5 central tendencies: to create a form of structural functionalism that is multidimensional and includes micro as well as macro levels of analysis to push functionalism to the left and reject Parsons’s optimism about modernity to argue for an implicit democratic thrust in functional analysis to incorporate a conflict orientation, and to emphasize uncertainty and interactional creativity.
After revision: Parsonian Thinking In sociology, neofunctionalism represents a revival of the thought of Talcott Parsons by Jeffrey C. Alexander, who sees neofunctionalism as having 5 central tendencies: to create a form of structural functionalism that is multidimensional and includes micro as well as macro levels of analysis to push functionalism to the left and reject Parsons’s optimism about modernity to argue for an implicit democratic thrust in functional analysis to incorporate a conflict orientation, and to emphasize uncertainty and interactional creativity.