CRITIQUE OF FUNCTIONALISM
What is the Functionalist view of Human Nature?
What is the Relationship between the individual
and the society?
How do Functionalists account for change?
How do functionalists deal with conflict?
How is the function of a given institution
determined?
Must all institutions have a function?
FRANZ BOAS
1858-1942
Boas en route to Baffin
Island 1883 and Central
Inuit; to study of
reflectivity of sea-water
CENTRAL ESKIMO (IGULIK)
STUDY
Inuit can perceive and name hundreds
of colors and qualities of sea-water and
surfaces unknown in European
languages…
•
distinctions which can be
described ‘scientifically’ in
physics and optics
•
and which are of adaptive value
to a sea-mammal hunting culture
Boas’ study: earliest anthropological
attempt to describe a non-European
‘ethno-science’ in phenomenological
terms
Analyst seeks to understand phenomena by grasping
how they make sense within the framework of the
subject’s thought-world i.e relatively
1885: First expedition
to Northwest Coast
(Bella Coola)
1886: First collecting
trip for American
Museum of Natural
History (New York City)
to Nootka and Kwakiutl
— massive
documentation of
Northwest Coast culture
Anti-Evolutionist
 Evolutionism assumes what it is trying to prove
 Order of cultural traits is arbitrary, eg representative
and geometric art forms
positioning individual cultures on the savagerybarbarism-civilization ladder discounts their particularity
and integrity
 sidesteps the important task of reconstructing unwritten
histories for non-Western peoples
Rational psychological explanation is misleading i.e.
people did not reason themselves out of their primitive
state because one of the fundamental characteristics of
people is that they act automatically and unconsciously
Anti-Diffusionist
 Claims for historical contact for enormously large areas
unlikely
 Improbable that cultural traits remained unchanged for
thousands of years
 traits are arbitrarily selected only to prove the theory
 No attempt to demonstrate whether similar cultural
traits are due to independent invention eg. Marriage
patterns
 Uninterested in how cultures change
CULTURAL/HISTORICAL
PARTICULARISM
Three pillars explain cultural customs
1. Cultures can only be understood with
reference to their particular historical
development. Therefore each culture is
unique
2. Environmental conditions
3. Individual psychological factors
CULTURAL/HISTORICAL
PARTICULARISM
idea was not to make a preconceived hypothesis,
but to collect as much data about a particular culture without
any theory
general theories of human Behaviour would arise once
enough data had been collected
“We refrain from the attempt to solve the fundamental
problem of the general development of civilization until we
have been able to unravel the processes that are going on under
our eyes”
Hallmark of historical particularism became the intensive
study of specific cultures through long periods of fieldwork
BOASIAN CONCEPT OF CULTURE
• superorganic —the product of collective or
group life; but the individual has an influence
• unconscious — a filter through which reality is
perceived, but which is not itself the object of
attention
• adaptive — culture ultimately helps indivudlas
adapt to their environment.
Four Field Approach
SOCIAL
AND
CULTURAL
ARCHAEOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY
PHYSICAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
LINGUISTICS
Influential generation of anthropologists trained under
Boas at Columbia University and established Boasian
doctrines in North American universities:
 Alfred A. Kroeber
 Ruth Benedict
 Margaret Mead
 Rhoda Métraux
 Robert Lowie
 Edward Sapir
 Paul Radin
 Alexander A. Goldenweiser
 Clark Wissler
FRANZ BOAS
 Cultural/historical particularism
 “race, language, and culture” as independent
variables
 Relativism
 superorganic
 Cultural Determinism
 Data Collection “without” theory
 Emphasis on Fieldwork
 4-field approach
Alfred Louis Kroeber
(1876-1960)
1897 enrolled in a course in
American Indian languages at
Columbia University offered by
Franz Boas
“ no culture is wholly intelligible
without reference to the noncultural or
so-called environmental factors with
which it in relation and which condition
it" (Kroeber, 1939: 205).
“cultures occur in nature as wholes; and
these wholes can never be entirely
formulated through consideration of
their elements.
ARCTIC
NORTHWEST
COAST
Cultural and
natural
areas of
Native North
America
(1939)
SUBARCTIC
PLATEAU
PLAINS
BASIN
PRAIRIE
CALIFORNIA
BAJA
CALIFORNIA
SOUTHWEST
NATIVE NORTH AMERICA:
CULTURE AREAS
EASTERN
WOODLANDS
N-E
MEXICO
MESOAMERICA
The Superorganic
“The superorganic or superspsychic or super-individual
that we call civilization appears to have an existence, an
order, and a causality as objective and as determinable as
those of the subpsychic or inorganic”
 individuals have very little if any impact on a culture’s
development and change
 Culture plays a determining role in individual human behaviour.
 Culture has an existence outside of us and compelled us to
conform to patterns that could be statistically demonstrated
 e.g. changes in fashion show that cyclical patterns of change
have occurred beyond the influence or understanding of any
given individual. Kroeber showed that hem length, height, and
width tended to move up and down in regularcycles,
Alfred Kroeber
 Culture Areas
 Superorganic
 Deterministic
 First American Textbook
in anthropology (1923)
Culture and Personality
seeks to understand the growth and development
of personal or social identity as it relates to the
surrounding social environment
Ruth Benedict
Margaret Mead
1922 begins teaching at
Barnard College as assistant
to Franz Boas and meets
Margaret Mead
Ruth Fulton Benedict
1887-1948
Patterns of Culture 1934
Demonstrated the primacy of
culture over biology in
understanding the differences
between people
Contrasted the ways of life of
the Zuni, Natives of Dobu and
Kwakiutl
Zuni
– Wealth is a sign of
greediness.
– Individual fame is a sign
of selfishness
– Solutions
• Share all the wealth with
other members of the
tribe.
• Dare not to do anything
that brings them
individual fame.
– Extremely passive.
Dobuan
The Dobuan…is dour, and
passionate, consumed with
jealousy and suspicion and
resentment. Every moment of
prosperity he conceives himself
as having wrung from a
malicious world by a conflict in
which he has worsted his
opponent. The good man is one
which has many such conflicts
to his credit…
paranoiac and mean spirited
Kwakiutl
Overbearing
Vigorous
Zest for life
Strive for ecstasy
in ceremonies
self-aggrandizing
Megalomaniac
paranoid
Why are they so different?
 Can’t be “fixed human nature.”
 Why not?
 Suppose - Newborn Zuni baby is raised by Dobu
parents (or vice versa).
 How would this baby behave when he or she becomes
adult?
 Like their adopted parents.
Culture and Personality
A set of core values shapes larger cultural practices
resulting in a distinctive pattern of culture
cultural differences were multifaceted expressions
of a society’s most basic core values
cultural values relative
Societies have a dominating cultural personality
Culture is “Personality writ large”
The goal of anthropology was to document these
different patterns
Culture and Personality
“We have seen that any society selects some segment
of the arc of possible human behaviour”… and in so
far as it achieves integrations its institutions tend to
further the expression of its selected segment and
inhibit opposite expressions”.
Integrated
Holistic
Deterministic
Individual psychology is plastic, i.e. Is molded
principally by cultural experience
During World War II,
Benedict worked for the
Office of War Information,
applying anthropological
methods to the study of
contemporary cultures.
1946 The Chrysanthemum
and the Sword: Patterns of
Japanese Culture
Culture and Personality - Critique
Where’s the history?
How are culture & individual psychology related? For
example, does culture somehow 'cause' individual
personality?
Is individual behaviour patterned? How? What best
accounts for the observed patterns?
Circular -- Basic personality structure was inferred
from some aspects of behaviour then used to explain
other behaviour
linked anthropology with psychology
1922 Barnard College
under Boas, Meets Ruth
Benedict.
1925-26 8 months
Fieldwork in Samoa
Margaret Mead 1901-1978
Coming of Age in Samoa 1926
Is adolescence a
universally traumatic
and stressful time due
to biological factors or
is the experience of
adolescence dependent
on one's cultural
upbringing?
nature vs nurture
based on a detailed study of 68 girls between 8 and 20 in three
contiguous villages
Mead described sexual relations as frequent and usually without
consequence – or issue
The basic conclusion was
that adolescence in Samoa
was not a stressful period
for girls
Because, in general, Samoan
society lacked stresses
“This tale of another way of life is mainly
concerned with education with the process by
which the baby, arrived cultureless upon the
human scene, becomes a full-fledged adult
member of his or her society. The strongest
light will fall upon the ways in which Samoan
education, in its broadest sense, differs from
our own. And from this contrast we may be
able to turn, made newly and vividly selfconscious and self-critical, to judge anew and
perhaps fashion differently the education we
give our children (1928: 13)
1983 Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making
and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth
Mead did not spend enough time in Samoa
and lived in naval dispensary with an American
family rather than in a Samoan household
 was not familiar with the Samoan language
 ignored violence in Samoan life,
Derek Freeman
(1916-2001)
Failed to consider the influence of biology on
behavior
Mead had been lied to by two of her female informants and
thus came to erroneous conclusions about Samoan culture and
the sexual freedom of the girls
She also went to Samoa with preconceived intention of showing
that culture, not biology, determined human responses to life’s
situations.
Growing Up in New Guinea 1930
Mead wanted to study the
thought processes of children
in preliterate cultures and the
way they were shaped by adult
society.
developed psychological tests
to administer to the children of
Pere New Guniea
collected approximately
35,000 pieces of children's
artwork.
central idea: that
differences between
peoples are usually
cultural differences
imparted in
childhood
specific childrearing practices
shape personalities
that in turn give
specific societies their
essential natures
Sex and Temperament in Three
Primitive Societies (1935)
sought to discover extent
temperamental differences between
the sexes were culturally determined
rather than innate biological
 Mead found a different pattern of
male and female behavior in each of
the cultures she studied, all different
from gender role expectations in the
United States at that time.
The gentle mountain-dwelling Arapesh,
Arapesh child-rearing responsibilities
evenly divided among men and women
The fierce cannibalistic Mundugumor
a natural hostility exists between all members of
the same sex”. Mundugumor fathers and sons,
and mothers and daughters were adversaries.
The graceful headhunters of Tchambuli,
While men were preoccupied with art the
women had the real power, controlling fishing
and manufacturing
Mead's contribution in separating biologicallybased sex from socially-constructed gender was
groundbreaking, gender roles."
1942 And Keep Your Powder Dry,
a book on American national
character for War effort
National Character studies
•Small scale techniques applied
to large scale societies
•Culture at a distance
•guide government and military
policy
early 1960s a vocal commentator
on contemporary American life.
Characteristics of Mead’s anthropology
Relativism
Ahistorical
Holistic
Participant observation
Romanticism
Humans select their culture, choosing some
traits and ignoring others.