Critics of functionalism have argued that it tends to ignore coercion and conflict. For example, Alvin Gouldner states, ‘While stressing the importance of the ends and values that men pursue, Parsons never asks whose ends and values these are.
Are they pursuing their own ends or those imposed upon them by others?’ Few functionalists give serious consideration to the possibility that some groups in society, acting in terms of their own particular interests, dominate others. From this point of view social order is imposed by the powerful and value consensus is merely a legitimation of the position of the dominant group.