Onřej Landa
From The Jungle To The Airport Terminal
179808
Spring semester 2007
Functionalist perspectives in anthropology
The roots of functionalism
We call functionalism the anthropology which was constitute in Great Britain in the 1920s. It
was one of the most important steps for making a British way of anthropological thinking.
When the evolutionistic and difuzionistic theories of social processes were overcome,
functionalism was very important in founding the British social anthropology as an alternative
way to American culture anthropology.
The functionalism as a way of thinking has its own intellectual roots in the philosophy and
psychology of the beginning of the 20ies century. From philosophy let’s name for example
empiriocriticsm and from psychology behaviorism, gestalt and psychoanalysis. But I have to
say that the strongest portion in forming functionalism has the Emile Durkheim´s sociology.
His conception of society as a self-regulated integral system which is independent on
individual psyche and its methods based on inductive studying of social reality we can
consider as fundamental roots of functionalistic anthropology.
From the view of postmodernism
I think that the most important word in functionalism apart from function is really the system.
From that word we could feel a movement towards the holistic thinking which overcome the
old cartezian scientific paradigm. But if we look closer we will see that this system is still
more like the system in mechanical meaning- the system as a machine, than the system in
holistic meaning. Just have a look on the three postulates of functionalism:
1) The postulate of functionalistic unity of the society. This postulate says that every
component of social system ( especially institutions as a basic structural module of
society ) serves to preservation of the whole
2) The postulate of positive universalism of functionalism. It means that every
component has a positive function for the whole
3) The postulate of functional importance. Every important life function is
unsubstitutable part of the social system and it is not possible to separate it.
When we see these postulates, we could say: Well, it is quite holistic, just have look on the
emphasis of whole. Yes, the emphasis is there, but for me, to understand the functionalism
as a holistic system of thinking, there is incorrect direction of the view on the whole. It is
watched from the components. The quality of the components makes the quality of the
whole. The postulates actually emphasize the components, parts of the system and not the
system itself. And I think that holistic thinking is the exact opposite. The quality of the
whole developed the quality of the components and every component is related with all the
others. And because I respect the holistic perspective I consider the system in
functionalistic meaning as a very narrow idea which is not relevant for explanation of
social world.
Fieldwork
I think the main asset of functionalism is the emphasis on the importance of a fieldwork.
The step from libraries to the real world is one of the most distinguish signs which
separated (and still does) the anthropologists from other social scientist. Developing of the
ethnographic method was actually one of the main factors in creating the functionalistic
perspective in anthropology. It is not a coincidence that the founders and leaders of
functionalism were great ethnographers Bronislav Kasper Malinowski and Alfred Reginald
Radcliffe-Brown. The time of birth of functionalism is holt the year 1922 when the books
Adamant’s islanders by Radcliffe-Brown and Argonauts of the western pacific by
Malinowski were brought out.
I don’t want to write more about the fieldwork and ethnography, because it is a subject for
different essay topic, but I am going to look closer on these two main representative of
functionalism, and I think that it is necessary to mention that despite quite different
opinions about functionalism and anthropology at all these two men had, the emphasis on
ethnography was something what connected them. Let’s have a look on these two strong
personalities in the history of anthropology.
Bronislav Kasper Malinowski
It was probably this man who brought the key word function to the anthropology. He even
thought himself as a leader of the revolutionary motion in anthropology and there is no
doubt that he didn’t mean by this motion anything else than Functionalism. With all the
problems that this concept brings. Just for illustration what I mean by this problem, lets
have a look on the Radcliffe-Brown statement from the book Structure and function in
primitive society: “This Functional School does not really exists: it is a myth invented by
Professor Malinowski” (A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, 1961).
Malinowski brought a lot of theories relating with society. I am going to mention just one
of them – the theory of needs, which is a base of his conceptions of human, society and
culture. This theory says that there are three main needs which a man has:
1) The basic (biological) needs which consist of metabolism, reproduction, comfort,
safety, relaxation, movement and grow. These needs want to be satisfied, so they
cause a culture reaction, they cause another need which is
2) The instrumental need as a kinship system, delivery, hiding place, clothes,
protection and so far.
3) The symbolic and integrative need that come from existence of the system of
thinking and believes. These needs are satisfied by science, magic, religion, art,
games and ceremonies.
The satisfaction of these needs is realized by actions that are connected in systems –
institutions.
Institution is another key word of Malinowski´s anthropology and he was actually the first
scientist who brought the topic of studying institutions into the social science. He was
interested in institution a lot and brought a lot of thought-provoking ideas about its
structure and processes, but I am not going to focus on it.
I am more interested in his conceptions of culture. He doesn’t offer one exact definition of
culture, as any anthropologist has never done, but he sees it from two different
perspectives:
1) As a medium of adaptation where we can easily find the connection with the theory of
needs.
2) As an integral and self-regulated system which is based on six integration principles. I
assume that in this concept there is more than obvious the relation with Durkheim´s
sociology whose lectures Malinowski used to visit in the first ten of 20.century with a great
interest.
To see the culture as a system is something very typical for British school of anthropology
and, in my opinion, Malinowski was the real founder of that way of anthropological
thinking.
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown
This man represents another branch of functionalism. He is the founder of the way of
thinking called the structural functionalism. From that we can easily find out that the base
which connects the classical functionalism represented by Malinowski a Radcliffe-Brown´s
structural functionalism is still the function and if we talk about the Radclife-Brown
functionalistic thinking we can just appeal to the postulates I mentioned above. What
makes his perspective special is his emphasis on social structure.
Radcliffe-Brown sees the social world and its organization as an analogy to the body and
that is the main source of his thoughts about social structure, which he sees as an
organization of relationships among people that is controlled by institution.
But to be honest, I have nothing to say about his conception of social structure. I have
already written about functionalistic system and I see both very similar so I hold any deeper
analysis of the Radcliffe-Brown´s social structure as useless. Even the article On social
structure haven’t brought anything useful for understanding the specifics of structural
functionalism to me.
Much more interesting I consider the idea of social value but for writing any relevant about
this topic I would need to read the Adamant´s Islanders what I haven’t.
Conclusion
I think that functionalism is a very important (even essential) step in the evolution of
anthropological thinking. It has brought a lot of new impulses for new ideas. It showed a
new perspective which was need to try. And it worked in many ways. But, of course, the
knowledge of the man is still developing and for that reason, the functionalism is now the
past. Very important and integrated past, but still the past. First man who overcame it was
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, but that is a different topic…
Literature
Burton, John W. (1988) Shadows at Twilight: A Note on History and the Ethnographic
Present. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 132(4): 420–433.
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1939) The Group and the Individual in Functional Analysis. The
American Journal of Sociology, 44(6): 938–964.
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1965 [1940]) On Social Structure, Chapter 10. In Structure and
Function in Primitive Society. New York: Free Press, 188–204.
Soukup, Václav (2004), Dějiny antropologie (Encyklopedický přehled dějin fyzické
antropologie, paleoantropologie, sociální a kulturní antropologie) , Universita Karlova V
Praze, Nakladatelství Karolinum, 425-440