Structuralism and Functionalism

Functionalism: the basics The idea that the way a culture works or functions is set up to meet the needs of the individuals within that culture All social or cultural institutions and behaviours have a function or reason for happening in that particular culture These institutions are interdependent – culture is like a system that needs all of its parts in working order Functionalists look at how institutions in society work and how they affect individuals The family – function of socializing children Education – function of preparing young people for adult society Religion – function of uniting society through shared beliefs

Functionalism: the basics Government, economy, media, family, education, religion Example: Government  education  family Government provides education for children Family pays taxes to keep itself running Family dependent on school to help kids grow and have good jobs so that can support family Children support state when grow up by paying taxes If all goes well, parts of society produce order, stability and productivity If doesn’t go well (deviant behaviour), parts of society must adapt to produce new forms of order, stability and productive

Functionalism: the basics Looked at how society was structured Analogy of a living organism: Organism is able to live, reproduce and function through organized system of parts and organs within its body Like this – society able to thrive and exist because of ways different parts interact together (Social organism) Institutions such as religion, kinship and economy are organs; individuals are the cells Functionalists assert that the ultimately serves a FUNCTION – serves particular society in maintaining the whole

2 Strands of Functionalism 20th C Reaction to evolutionism in 19th C and historicism of early 20th C Bronislaw Malinowski: Biocultural or psychological functionalism A.R. Radcliff-Brown: Structural functionalism

Malinowski: Biocultural Functionalism Suggested that individuals have 7 physiological needs (metabolism, reproduction, bodily comfort, safety, movement, growht, health) Culture everywhere has same aspect – material, economic, legal, religious, political, aesthetic and linguistic Social institutions exist to meet those needs There are culturally derived needs and four basic “instrumental needs” – economics, social control, education, and political organization – that require institutional devices Each institution has staff, charter, set of norms or rules, activities, technology, and function Argued that uniform psychological responses are correlates of physiological needs Argued that satisfaction of needs transformed cultural instrumental activity into drive through psychological reinforcement

Malinowski: Biocultural Functionalism Emphasized importance of studying social behavior and relations through participant-observation Crucial to see the observable differences between norms and actions – between what people say they do and what they actually do Bronislaw Malinowski studied the Trobriand Islanders (Argonauts of the Western Pacific) Every year there was a ceremonial exchange of a necklace and an arm band between two men on each island in the South Pacific (at some risk to the men travelling between islands) It seemed to be purely ceremonial, but he discovered that this exchange had very real economic, social, and political functions or importance Discovered that the jewelry travelled the entire circle of the islands in two different directions in what called the “Kula Ring” Universality of rational decision making Question – why would men risk their life to travel acorss the ocean to give away what seems to be something worthless?

Malinowski: Biocultural Functionalism Starting point of Malinowski’s theories: 1) understanding behaviour based on motivation of individuals including the rational (‘scientifically’ validated behaviour’) and irrational (‘ritual, magic, or religious behaviour’) 2) recognizing interconnectedness of different items which constituted a ‘culture’ to form some kind of system 3) understanding a specific item by identifying function in the operation of that culture

Malinowski: Biocultural Functionalism Treated culture as everything touching human life and action (but can’t be part of human organism as a physiological system) Treated it as “direct manifestation of biologically inherited patterns of behaviour” Culture is that aspect of behaviour that is learned by the individual and can be shared Transmitted to other individuals along with physical objects associated with it

Malinowski: Biocultural Functionalism Malinowski’s definition of culture as stated in The Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays” Culture is essentially an instrumental apparatus by which man is put in a position to better cope with the concrete, specific problems that face him in his environment in the course of the satisfaction of his needs. It is a system of objects, activities, and attitudes in which every part exists as a means to an end. It is an integral in which the various elements are interdependent. Such activities, attitudes and objects are organized around important and vital tasks into institutions such as family, the clan, the local community, the tribe, and the organized teams of economic cooperation, political, legal, and educational activity. From the dynamic point of view, that is, as regards the type of activity, culture can be analyzed into a number of aspects such as education, social control, economics, systems of knowledge, belief, and morality, and also modes of creative and artistic expression" (1944:150).

Malinowski: Biocultural Functionalism "It is clear, I think, that any theory of culture has to start from the organic needs of man, and if it succeeds in relating (to them) the more complex, indirect, but perhaps fully imperative needs of the type which we call spiritual or economic or social, it will supply us with a set of general laws such as we need in sound scientific theory" (Malinowski 1944:72-73). Believed institutions served basic human needs (Brown – social institutions function to society as a whole) Institutions function for continuing life and the ‘normality of an organism’ Concept of function – serve biological needs of individual organism

Bridged the gap between biological basic needs and culturally organized behaviour Classification system: Basic needs  Cultural response  Institutions

Radcliffe-Brown: Structural Functionalism Focused on social structure and not biological needs Suggests that society is system of relationships maintaining itself through communication Institutions are orderly sets of relationships whose function is to maintain the society as a system There is a separate ‘level’ of reality distinct from those of biological forms and inorganic manner

Radcliffe-Brown: Structural Functionalism Believed that individuals were replaceable, transient occupants of social roles If biological organisms live, preserves continuity of structure but not the unity of parts So – over a period of time, while the parts (cells) don’t remain the same, the structural arrangement is similar Humans beings are connected by set of social relations in the whole The social structure is not destroyed by “changes in the units” Although individuals may leave the society or die, other individuals may enter Continuity is maintained by process of social life Malinowski – emphasis on the individual; Radcliffe-Brown – the individual is irrelevant

Sources Wikipedia http://anthropology.ua.edu/cultures/cultures.php?culture= Functionalism https://www.thoughtco.com/functionalist-perspective- 3026625 https://ibsca.wikispaces.com/file/view/Malinowski+and+Fu nctionalism.pdf https://stosowana.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/chapter2.p df