COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ORDER: A FUNCTIONALIST APPROACH

SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) a novel disease was rst noticeable in 2019 at the Wuhan region in Peoples Republic of China as an epidemic. Later it grows into a global pandemic causing disorganisation to global system of development. Countries (industrial and less industrial) were at cross road to challenges posed by this dreadful cankerworm in areas like government spending, health, economy (trade and investment), education, agriculture and the like. Restriction of movement of people and goods across national boundaries either initiate a new world order or exacerbate existing order. This paper relied on secondary data to mirror functionalists view on developmental processes of society especially how society regenerate itself amidst serious challenges on it cohesiveness, stability, equilibrium, maintenance and productivity. It argued that since all units of the social system are independent but interconnected, a dysfunction in any of these component parts would result to imbalance in the entire structure of social system as epitomised in the covid-19 crisis. Even though critics accused functionalists of lack of being explicit on how social change occurs within the social structure. The paper concluded that how functionalism express the social system as product of interdependence of functional parts is signicant to understanding the network of relationship as well as adaptive mechanism particularly in the era of novel coronavirus (Covid-19).

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