Social Integration

UNIT 8 FUNCTIONALISM AND

STRUCTURAL-FUNCTIONALISM*

Contents
8.0 Introduction
8.1 Structural-Functional Approach of Radcliffe-Brown
8.2 Functionalism of Malinowski
8.3 Further Developments of the Functional and the Structural-Functional
Method
8.4 Criticism of Functionalism
8.5 Summary
8.6 References
8.7 Answers to Check Your Progress
Objectives
After reading this unit, the learners would be able to:
 trace the origins of the functional theory;
 analyse the structural-functional theory of Radcliffe-Brown;
 comprehend the functional theory of Malinowski;
 outline the impact of these on later development of social anthropology;
and
 critically evaluate Functionalism.

8.0 INTRODUCTION
Functionalism in anthropology began in Britain and among those anthropologists,
in Africa, Australia and America, who were under influence of British
anthropology. However, its intellectual roots can be traced to France, especially
to the work of Emile Durkheim and others of the Anne sociology school, including
Marcel Mauss, Hubert among several scholars associated with Durkheim, who
can be seen as an evolutionist converted to functionalism. Durkheim (1915) began
working on the Australian Aborigines, looking for the origin of religion in their
totemic beliefs and rituals. He soon realised the role played by religion and ritual
in regulating their lives and promoting social solidarity. He specifically pointed
out the function of rituals in the maintenance of social relationships like clan
identity and solidarity.

Functionalism, the general term is more commonly used to include also structural-
functionalism. The term arose out of the scholars’ emphasis on the understanding
of the function of a particular system, institution, rituals, morals, values etc.
within the context of the particular society and culture. The functionalist through
their intense fieldwork, that comprised of living among the people to know their
way of life, dismantled many of the assumptions that were innate to evolutionism.
In this unit we shall look into the origin of the functional theory how it emerged
*Contributor: Professor Subhadra Mitra Channa, Former Professor, Department of
Anthropology, University of Delhi. New Delhi. 101
Theories of Social Structure in anthropological discourses. We would also comprehend how Radcliffe-
and Function
Brown’s structural- functional theory differs from Malinowski’s functionalism.
We would analysis the point of departure of these two approaches and critically
evaluate both of them.

8.1 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH OF

RADCLIFEE-BROWN
Radcliffe-Brown (1922, 1940), began as a positivist, trying to establish a science
of society, in the form of social anthropology. He was convinced that society as
defined by him: as organised social relationships was the core and culture, only
supported and provided content to the relationships. Like all positivist, or
objectively scientific endeavours, he also began with certain premises, like, to
begin with he conceptualised society as a closed system of interrelated parts.
Secondly, he believed that it was best to keep one’s analysis to the present as the
past was very difficult to reconstruct realistically. He was critical of the speculative
reconstruction done by the evolutionists. Thirdly, he believed in the comparative
method and accepted that it was possible to build up some generalised principles
about the working of human societies, using the comparative method. In other
words, he had faith that the social sciences could successfully duplicate the
methodology of the hard sciences like physics and chemistry and his ultimate
aim was to have a comparative science of society in the same way as there is a
science of comparative biology.

Towards this end, Radcliffe-Brown drew upon the organic analogy, or he

compared society to a living organism, with different parts which all contribute
to the functioning of the whole. To understand society, he gave the concept of
the social structure. To Radcliffe-Brown, a social structure is what is observed
by the scholar in the field. The way in which people on the ground actually
interact with each other, the norms and principles of such interaction. He
considered only the recurrent and regular interactions as part of the social structure,
leaving aside the occasional or accidental interactions. All generalisations formed
from the observation of regularities of both norms and principles of all interaction
can be complied into a structural form. This has been confusing for scholars
following him, as most of them consider what he refers to as social structure as
data, and what he refers to as structural form as social structure. Anyway, the
main character of structural form/social structure is that it is the generalised
representation of the most frequently occurring way of behaving in a particular
relationship. Secondly, the different parts of this structure are not independent of
each other, in that they affect each other, in a positive, mutually supportive way.
For example, the marriage rules of a society will be supported by its legal laws,
which in turn will be complementary to the economy and religion. Treating
structural form as a system of interrelated parts means that all parts reinforce the
working of the other parts.

It is here that the organic analogy comes in. The society is like an organism and
the various institutions of the society are like the various organs of the organism,
like family, economy, legal and political institutions are like the digestive,
respiratory, circulatory and nervous system of an organism, working in tandem
and all having the common goal of preserving the health in the case of a living
organism, and social equilibrium, in the case of a society. The important
102 methodological issue here is that this equilibrium or health is measured only at
one point in time. Structural-functionalism is a synchronic method, focusing Functionalism and
Structural-Functionalism
only on the present. As a result of this approach, we have a series of ethnographies
that seem to be frozen is space and time. These have become known as “The
Nuer’ by E.E Evans Pritchard, ‘Andaman Islanders’ by Radcliffe-Brown, ‘The
Naked Nagas’ by Fürer-Haimendorf and so on. It seems that these societies have
been captured on a canvass to be preserved for posterity. It is this ahistoricity
that came in for criticism at a later stage.

In tune with his positivist approach and his search for universal laws that should
apply to most societies, Radcliffe-Brown made a comparative study of some
societies and their institutions to bring out his major works on kinship and religion.
His study of the Andaman Islanders (1922), follows Durkheim closely as he
explains rituals, such as the initiation rituals of the young people, as functional
for the social solidarity of the island people. He explained how by the use of
taboos on certain food items, the young people, who were going to become adult
members of society, learnt to be responsible users of valued food items. In a
subsistence- based society dependent on natural supply of food, careful use of
food is critical to survival of the entire group. According to Radcliffe-Brown,
anything that is of great social significance assumes symbolic significance in
terms of ritual value. He borrowed the term taboo from Polynesia. He explained
the social value of several instances of taboos. Like the strict taboos on the father
of an unborn child, as something that instils the responsibilities of fatherhood on
a man and makes him share the physical pregnancy of his wife. When Radcliffe-
Brown is referring to people he is actually talking about the abstracted category
of a social person, or a social status, as it was called later. Like husband and wife
refer to the collective ideal of a husband or a wife as distilled from the data on
real persons and situations. Therefore, in every case his explanation is directed
towards social solidarity and the needs of the total social structure or structural
form as he calls it. Overall, it is an objectification of the real situations and
devoid of any personal content like emotions. If sentiments are mentioned they
are also in an abstracted sense.

One of the most significant contributions of Radcliffe-Brown (1950) is to kinship

theory as condensed in his classic introduction to African Systems of Kinship
and Marriage. In this he has tried to put forward three rules of kinship that can
be taken as applicable to a large number of societies. These are:
1) The Unity of the Sibling Group
2) The Opposition of Adjacent generations
3) Merging of alternate generations
These condense some principles, norms and etiquettes (his three elements of
kinship behaviour) of descent- based kinship systems. He also analysed kinship
terms as reflecting these principles. For example, in many parts of India, like in
Bengal, grandfather and grandson call each other by reciprocal terms (merging
of alternate generations), like dadubhai (dadu- grandfather, bhai- brother), unity
of sibling groups is expressed in the substitutability of a person by his sibling,
usually the younger sibling as he or she is the natural successor in the lineal
order of kinship. This is reflected in practices of sororate and levirate.While
expressing the principle of unity of the sibling groups, these practices also help
in reproduction of lineages and keep the society going.

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Theories of Social Structure
and Function Reflection
Sororate and Levirate: In the former, a younger sister can replace her
elder sister as a wife and in the latter, a younger brother can replace his
elder brother as a husband. Levirate is practiced in many parts of north-
west India and sororate is common in almost all regions of India.

Radcliffe-Brown also put forward the practices such as avoidance rules and joking
relationships. Although very different in content these serve the same function.
They protect relationships in a situation where they are liable to be stressed
because of the existence of related principles and practices. Let us take avoidance
that is practised in Indian families between father- in- law and daughter- in- law
and between a son- in- law and his mother- in- law. Given the reality of early age
marriage in India, which still persists to a large extent, it is possible that a man
may still be relatively young even when his son gets married. As a human being
there is possibility of the father-in-law as well as the elder brother-in-law, getting
sexually attracted to the bride, given the close family living conditions. To avoid
the stress on the social system if this happens, there is strict prohibition of
interaction between them, to the extent of the woman observing veiling (purdah)
of her face in front of them. The same goes for the son- in- law and mother- in-
law relationship. A woman may be just in her mid-youth when her daughter gets
married and to avoid any untoward incidence strict adherence to avoidance is
practised.
The joking relationships perform the same functions but in a opposite way. In
India the joking relationship between a woman and her husband’s younger brother
is legendary and so is that between a man and his wife’s younger sister. By the
rules of marriage commonly practiced, these are both marriageable relations.
But most of the time they remain only potentially so. Thus, to avoid the
development of any serious relationship, the sexual tensions are dissipated through
joking. The descriptions of kinship behaviour as given by Radcliffe-Brown, are
still very much applicable to many parts of the world, and the value of his analysis
is realised when readers, say in India, can apply these rules to their day to day
lives so easily.
Criticisms of Structural-functionalism
Structural-functionalism, apart from being ahistorical and synchronic, is also
based upon a holistic view of society. According to it, all the various aspects of
society are not independent of each other, but interdependent, just like the body
of a living organism. While considering society as a system, it follows that like a
system society is also a bounded unit. Anything that takes place inside a society
is affected by other parts of the society, but not from its exterior. Like for example,
the religious and economic aspects of a society are interdependent on each other,
but not on the outside.

Thus, in addition to ahistoricity and boundedness, structural functionalism carries

an element of isolation. At the time when this theory was popular, the British
social anthropology was a part of the British colonial system. It was thus,
extending its rule over many regions, that then became the objects of study for
the anthropologists. They assumed isolation of societies like the Andaman
Islanders, that was already deeply impacted by colonial rule. Later anthropologists
like Eric Wolf have criticised the assumption of ahistoricity of societies that
were part of a global system of trade and travel for several centuries before
104 colonisation.
Structural-functionalism follows Durkheim (1938) who said that a social fact Functionalism and
Structural-Functionalism
can be explained only by another social fact. Therefore structural -functional
explanations are limited to other social variables interior to the society. In this
way, they remain isolated from psychological and historical variables in their
explanations, although not quite from the environment, that is incorporated by
the indigenous people into their cosmologies. For example, in the Andaman
Islanders, we find that natural elements like the winds and rain are deified as
supernatural beings and included within their pantheon. In the next section we
examine the functional theory of Malinowski that although similar in basic
principle to that of Radcliffe-Brown, deviates in important aspect of methodology.

Check Your Progress 1

1) Functionalism in anthropology began in which country?
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2) To which country can we trace the intellectual roots of functionalism and to
which sociologist?
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3) How did Radcliffe-Brown define ‘social structure’?
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4) What is organic analogy?
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Theories of Social Structure
and Function 8.2 FUNCTIONALISM OF MALINOWSKI
The most significant difference between the approach of Radcliffe-Brown and
Malinowski is that the latter grounds his functionalism in the individual and not
in the abstracted category of society, although his individual is firmly entrenched
within society. When he talks of something being functional, it is functional to
the individual as a member of society and not to the society directly, ignoring the
individual. To Malinowski (1939), functionalism is marked by its emphasis on
the individual and it is this what sets it apart from other theories. Here he was
probably referring to theories like evolutionism and diffusionism that predate
functionalism that are grand theories dealing with universal processes. In
functionalism, he prefers to focus on the individual in relation to his or her
environment, to which the individual responds as a member of a culture. He
situates the individual in a culture. To him the relationships are manifestations of
feelings and sense of cooperation or duty, or even repulsion. The web of
relationships thus, formed is a secondary feature, of the mutuality of emotions
that forms the group. In other words, in a diametric opposition to Radcliffe-
Brown, he begins his analysis from culture, keeping the social relationships as
secondary. Methodologically, in his own words, “Empirically speaking, the
fieldworker has to collect texts, statements, and opinions, side by side with the
observation of behaviour and the study of material culture”(2014:91). He was
emphatic about the importance of language as it is the prime media of
understanding a culture. He believed that symbolism was the bed rock of human
life as it enabled them to have a language for communication, which in turn led
to the emergence of culture.

The individual to him is a compound of the biological and the cultural. As a

biological being, every individual has what he referred to as primary/basic needs.
The need for nourishment, for fulfilment of sexual desires and the need for
protection from the environment. The individual also needs oxygen for breathing,
rest and relaxation and recreation for mental stability. Humans also need to be
nurtured into adults from infancy, the human period of dependency being longer
than that of most animals and they need to be trained to become successful adult
members of a culture. The primary needs are not satisfied by direct engagement
with the environment, but are mediated through culture and the manner in which
they are satisfied, is a process that creates more needs, that he labels as
instrumental needs. Finally, as a sign of being human, they have symbolic or
integrative needs, that are represented by the capacity for abstract thinking and
imagination.

Beginning with the basic needs, we know that humans do not eat anything or at
any time, or in any manner. In other words, the very basic satisfaction of hunger,
that for any other species is an uncontrolled response to food, is a controlled and
highly systematised activity for humans. Each culture for example has its own
definition of what stands for food, what is edible and what is not edible. There
are also clear cultural prescriptions and labels for when to eat food, like breakfast,
lunch and dinner. Field anthropologists know that meal times and their nature
vary considerably from culture to culture. Some people eat twice a day, some eat
four times a day. The British culture of an elaborate ‘tea time’ for example has
been transmitted to many parts of the world in the colonial period, as has the
concept of a breakfast to be eaten as a special meal. Therefore, each group has its
own norms about what to eat, when to eat and how to eat? The last aspect is also
106
very important as eating etiquettes are a very important part of all cultures. Like Functionalism and
Structural-Functionalism
in a traditional upper caste Hindu family there are many norms and rules for
eating a meal. If anything leads to the upsetting of a rule, the meal may be
abandoned. Therefore, we see that for humans there is not a direct correlation
between hunger and food and everything is mediated by culture.

Reproduction and satisfaction of sexual urge are similarly, possible only under
cultural constraints, that are sometimes very strongly imposed, like the universal
incest taboo. There is no human society, present or in the past, that did not impose
strong sanctions against incest, again culturally defined.

The same goes for shelter, recreation and all other human primary drives.
Malinowski, unlike the British structural -functionalists did not evade the
psychological dimensions, rather he emphasised upon it, referring to the basic
needs as those drives, emotions and desires that strongly motivate the humans to
seek for their fulfilment through various cultural means.

The manner of fulfilling these basic needs then give rise to other related needs as
the raw needs are shaped by the cultural dictates developed in a social milieu.
For example, the entire process of basic sexual desires is regulated by a highly
complex set of rules, legal requirements, social norms, values, ethics and
principles, embodied in family and marriage. Marriage involves many rules and
norms, that are enforced through the legal processes and derived from larger and
more abstract systems of thought and cosmological principles like religion,
morality and values. Notions of what is right, what is wrong, what is a sin, what
is a virtue inform the rules and regulations of marriage in any society. In some
societies for example marriages are seen as fulfilment of a divine relationship,
like among Hindus and Catholics. In others like in Islam, it is only a social
contract. Rules of incest also vary from society to society and are in turn informed
by larger historical processes.

Although marriage takes place between individuals, they represent their social
groups, social hierarchy and many other aspects. Therefore, according to
Malinowski, marriage is a secondary need that is linked to the primary need of
sexual satisfaction, but marriage goes way beyond this primary purpose and fulfils
many other needs like that of sustenance, economic cooperation, social status
and so on. Related to marriage is the family, that helps to convert the human raw
material into a cultural being. Humans do not operate as biological beings, and
as we have discussed, even the most basic biological requirements are culturally
conditioned. For all these conditions to be reproduced, there are a set of derived
needs. Like if humans consume food that is not picked raw from the environment,
they need an entire economic system to produce it. Which means there have to
be other related institutions like productive units like farms and factories, to
produce which we need other kinds of raw material and so on. Therefore, as
Malinowski puts it, even the simplest need has to go through a very complicated
process to be fulfilled and in the process creates many more needs and many
more institutions for their fulfilment. This is how human culture becomes more
and more complex and so does the group embodying that culture. These are the
instrumental aspects of cultures and to fulfil them there are a set of organised
activities called institutions, which consist of a set of personnel, who are organised
in a set of rights and duties towards each other, following a set pattern of norms
and obeying an overall charter that is specific to that institution. For example, if
we take the family as an institution, then, the family must live together as a 107
Theories of Social Structure household, have a home, behave like a production and consumption unit, or if
and Function
production is located outside, the household is a consumption unit. It must have
resources for fulfilling the subsistence and other needs of its members. The family
also acts as an educational institution, caring for and also educating its new
members, who are born in it, to be become successful members of the culture. It
is also located within a larger culture and group which provides it with the legal
norms that it must follow and the wider society that provides it with a charter
that must be its goal, namely to reproduce not only physical members of that
culture, but also properly trained and educated ones to become successful
members for reproducing the culture.

Lastly, as humans our needs go beyond our primary bodily needs, often even
superseding them. For example, individuals may give up on their primary needs
of sexuality in order to fulfil their need for spiritual satisfaction. Humans take to
asceticism and become monks and nunsto fulfil their higher, symbolic desire for
the quest for divinity and inner peace. Individuals as members of a culture also
learn self- control, deferment of pleasure and many other ways of controlling
their instinctual desires and needs. These higher, esoteric ends are the integrative
needs of individuals that include aesthetic needs for art, literature and music.
Even in the earliest stage of human evolution we find cave paintings and remnants
of culture that indicates that humans were not just concerned with fulfilment of
their basic and instrumental needs, but always had expressive and creative needs
that they fulfilled by making drawings and scratched lines on the most primitive
of stone tools.

At this stage of needs, Malinowski has introduced the notion of values, that is
inherent in the concept of symbolisation. As humans we value things, acts and
events, not for their instrumental need fulfilling objectives, but for their symbolic
value, like keeping a fast has symbolic value although it does not fulfil our basic
need for hunger. As humans therefore we fulfil all levels of needs as cultured
beings.

Like Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski also gave a lot of attention to rituals, and

their functions for a group of people bound by a common culture. He too took
the holistic method, approaching all cultures as systemic wholes, but he did not
use the organic analogy and put all social relationships at the back of his analysis,
treating them as by products of the individual’s engagement with the group.

His explanation of the role of rituals in economic activities was that rituals play
an important role whenever there is the chance of failure, danger and uncertainty
(Malinowski 1948). Like when a person goes on a long sea voyage, there will be
elaborate rituals as the journey is fraught with uncertainties about the weather,
the unpredictable changes in the sea and unknown dangers. According to him,
rituals are not substituted for skills, for example the Kiriwinians (the people of
the Trobriand Islands) are expert seafaring people with great navigation skills.
But there are always the grey zones of uncertainty, the sea is always full of
dangers, as we know even from our recent experiences, when science and
technology are so much more advanced. Rituals provide the sense of security
and provide psychological support in order to create a positive frame of mind,
that also ensures a higher rate of success. His work on the rituals of the coral
garden horticulture in the Trobriand is well known, where he has highlighted the
role of the towosi (garden magician). Rituals are performed for every step of the
108 gardening activities and he notes that the people are very deferential to the
commands of the magician. As with his entire theory of functionalism, the role Functionalism and
Structural-Functionalism
of ritual is towards the psychological state of the individual, that in turn helps
maintain the group and its culture.

Check Your Progress 2

5) According to Malinowski what is the emphasis that makes functionalism
stand apart from other theories?
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6) What are the needs of individuals in a group, as identified by Malinowski?
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7) How does culture function to fulfil the needs of individuals?
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8) What is the relationship between human needs and culture?
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8.3 FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE

FUNCTIONAL AND STRUCTURAL-
FUNCTIONAL METHOD
British social anthropology followed up the work of Radcliffe-Brown with that
of Edmund Leach, Raymond Firth, E.E. Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes among
others. Each one of them tried to modify the static structural-functional method 109
Theories of Social Structure with some innovations from their own field experiences. Leach (1970) went on
and Function
to understand social structure at a level of abstraction, where it can be considered
as a ‘model’. In his study of the Kachin of highland Burma, he identified three
such model structures, and the individuals making choices between them. At the
level of the entire society, the sum of individual choices makes possible three
models of Kachin society that oscillate between, a highly centralised Shan
kingdom at one end, a completely anarchic, democratic Gumlao, system at the
other end and an intermediate system known as Gumsa, in between. Most scholars
who describe the Kachin, define the intermediate stable Gumsa system as the
reality, but if one observes the system over a time period, it is clear that the
Gumsa is either tending towards the autocratic Shan system or dissolving into
the anarchic Gumlao system. Therefore, what appears static is actually a system
that is tending towards one or the other extreme. Leach has termed this as an
oscillating equilibrium, a concept that he further explored when he became more
of a structuralist of the school of Lévi-Strauss.

Firth also found that the concept of social structure was too static and could not
identify any change. His restudy of Tikopia (1960), led him to discover that
societies do not remain static in time, they do change. He identified two kinds of
change, Organisational and Structural (1961). By organisational change he meant
the kind of change that does not affect the overall character of the system, like if
a different political party wins an election, there is likely to be much change in
society, yet the overall democratic nature will not change. But if a society converts
from a democracy into an autocracy, it will be a structural change. By his restudy
of Tikopia he developed a dual synchronic model of change, that while confirming
to the equilibrium model of the functional school, also accepted that change is
possible. He was of the opinion that societies move from one state of equilibrium
to another state of equilibrium.

E.E. Evans Pritchard (1940), made his study of the Nuer of Sudan, East Africa,
in the classical functional mode, but he analysed the Nuer social structure in
relation to the environment, using for the first time the term ecology (spelled as
oecology). He described in great details the way the Nuer society adapts to changes
in the environment and looked upon it as a cyclical process of change that the
society goes through every seasonal cycle.

Meyer Fortes (1949), introduced the concept of structural time, to show that any
static description of the kinship structure is bound to be erroneous as changes
such as life cycle changes, changes in the normal course of the family due to
existing rules of residence and biological life span of the individuals, makes
changes that if studied only in one time frame is bound to produce a description
of society that may not be true to reality. In his book Time and Social Structure
(1970), he has shown that time needs to be an essential component of the
understanding of social structure in the true sense.

Check Your Progress 3

9) Name some of the scholars who worked from within the Structural-
Functional School and modified it.
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 Functionalism and
8.4 CRITICISM OF FUNCTIONALISM Structural-Functionalism

The major criticism of functionalism was it ignored the historical realities not
only of the past but also of the present. Most of the classical ethnographies were
done in the hey day of colonialism and the societies studied in Africa, Australia
and other colonies had been severely impacted by colonial rule (Asad 1973). It
is noted that the Andaman Islanders about whom Radcliffe-Brown gave such a
tranquil picture were practically depopulated even at the time he did his fieldwork.
Most of his work is written from the memory reconstructs of the few informants
that were left. In their attempts to prove the theory of equilibrium and social
solidarity, they overlooked the conflicts and internal dissentions as well.

Moreover, the entire perspective of objectivity in doing analysis also underwent

great criticism as restudies revealed the subjective bias of the earlier
anthropologists, even those of great repute like Malinowski. By the end of the
twentieth century, the entire discipline of anthropology was undergoing great
changes in methodology and perspective with reflexivity taking the place of
objectivity and the ethnographies being more centred on narratives from the
informants and the intersubjective experience of fieldwork (Clifford and Marcus
1986).

The concept of a system also broke down with intensification of communication

across the globe and globalisation. But as Wolf (1982) had shown, the non-western
world was never isolated, there was active trade and migration going on among
them. It was European ethnocentrism that had made them begin to think about
history only when the first white men stepped in to these societies. Overall, the
criticism of Functionalism was directed towards its Eurocentric biases, its ignoring
of history especially of the effects of colonisation itself, and its subjectivity in
dealing with the native populations. This subjectivity was also white, male centric
and later criticised by women and non-white anthropologists. Methodologically
the very notion of function was seen as tautological, putting the effect as the
cause of an event.

Check Your Progress4

10) What are the major points of criticism of Functional theory?
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8.5 SUMMARY
Theory of Functionalism arose as a criticism of what was termed as ‘speculative
history’ of evolutionism, as well as the judgemental nature of the theory that
classified groups as high and low making a politically objectionable use of the
concept of the ‘primitive’. The word primitive denotes the past, yet the
evolutionists used it for contemporary communities, implying they were stuck
in the past, or being socially and culturally inferior to the more evolved people. 111
Theories of Social Structure Direct implication of the evolutionary theory was the justification of colonisation
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on moral grounds. The white Europeans, having been put on the highest scale of
civilization by the intellectuals of their own breed, justified their plunder of the
colonies in the name of ‘civilising’ them. Functionalism, which was an outcome
of the scholar’s direct involvement with the community through fieldwork,
emphasised the concept of ‘cultural ethnocentrism’; indicating that the natural
tendency to appreciate one’s own culture above all others, was not morally
justified. The political implication of functionalism was that it directed itself
towards equalising all cultures, by saying that all societies are in equilibrium
and all cultural elements and social institutions are relevant in their own context.
While recognising that some cultures are simple and some are more complex, it
demolished the value that was associated with some cultures, calling them
superior. In fact, it defended all kinds of customs and practices by saying
everything had a relevance in its own context. We see here a paradigm shift from
evolutionism; rejection of speculative reconstructions, a focus on the present
and conceptualising societies as systems. The evolutionists had treated social
institutions such as religion, economy and political as forming separate strands,
comparing them individually across cultures. Functionalists treated all institutions
and cultural elements as interrelated to other elements in that same society. They
compared entire societies and cultures and not individual traits across societies.

8.6 REFERENCES
Asad, Talal. (ed.) 1973. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. Atlantic
Highlands: Humanities Press.
Axel, Brian Keith. 2002. From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and its
Futures. Durham: Duke University Press.
Barnard, Alan. 2000. History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Clifford, James and George E Marcus. (eds.) 1986. Writing Cultures: The Poetics
and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Durkheim, Emile 1938. The Rules of Sociological Method.(ed.) George E.G
Catlin, New York: The Free Press.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E.1940. The Nuer. London.
Firth, Raymond. 1969. Social Change in Tikopia, Restudy of a Polynesian
Community after a Generation. New York: Macmillan.
1961[1951]. Elements of Social Organization. Boston: Beacon Press.
1949. ‘Time and Social Structure: An Ashanti Case Study’ In Social
Structure: Studies Presented to Radcliffe-Brown. Edited, Meyer Fortes. Oxford:
Oxford University Press
1936. We the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia.
London: George Allen And Unwin.
Leach, Edmund. 1970 [1954]. Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of
Kachin Social Structure. London: Athlone Press.

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Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific, London: George Functionalism and
Structural-Functionalism
Routledge and Sons.
1939. ‘The Group and the Individual in Functional Analysis’ The American
Journal of Sociology. 44(6):938-47; Reprinted in Anthropology in Theory: Issues
in Epistemology (eds.) Henrietta L Moore and Tod Sanders, Wiley
Blackwell(2014). pp 90-101.
1949. A Scientific Theory of Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina.
1992[1948]. Magic, Science and Religion and other essays. Illinois:
Waveland Press.
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1958. Method in Social Anthropology, Selected Essays
by Radcliffe-Brown. (edited) M.N. Srinivas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
1950. ‘Introduction’. African Systems of Kinship and Marriage (ed) A.R.
Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde. London: Oxford University Press
1940. ‘On Social Structure’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
70(1):189-200
1922. The Andaman Islanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wolf, Eric. 1982. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University
of California Press.

8.7 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1) Refer to section 8.0
2) Refer to section 8.0
3) Refer to section 8.1
4) Refer to section 8.1.
5) Refer to section 8.2
6) Refer to section 8.2
7) Refer to section 8.2
8) Refer to section 8.2
9) Refer to section 8.3
10) Refer to section 8.4

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