Even though very few people would say that war is a preferred method for resolving a dispute, it still has performed this function. No matter what one might think of war, historically it has resolved disputes between nations, with the winner of the war winning the dispute. First, war helps resolve international disputes over matters such as territorial boundaries and religious and other ideologies. Park’s essay outlined several functions of war. In January 1941, less than a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Park published an influential essay called “The Social Function of War: Observations and Notes,” in a leading sociology journal (Park, 1941). Park, the 1925 president of the American Sociological Association (which was then called the American Sociological Society-a name that was later changed because of its acronym!). Perhaps the first sociologist to make this point for war was Robert E. In this spirit, functionalism similarly emphasizes the ways in which war and terrorism are useful for society, however horrible they are in so many other ways. To use an example from Chapter 1 “Understanding Social Problems”, crime certainly causes many problems, but it also creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in law enforcement, courts and corrections, home security, and other sectors of the economy that deal with crime. One of functionalism’s most important insights is that social problems might actually be useful in this way, however many difficulties they might otherwise cause. Recall that functionalism emphasizes the usefulness of certain behaviors and social institutions for many aspects of society.
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