Functionalism in Anthropology

The social anthropologists took a different tack from the existing theoretical structure in the 1920s. Anthropologists at the time considered certain elements to be characteristic indicators of primitive societies, such as strange kinship practices, magic, and witchcraft. The debate was never clear-cut and developed over many years. Earlier anthropologists such as Sir James George Frazer in his Golden Bough saw the contrast between primitive and civilized as resting on a presumed difference in the mental type of the individual, while the new sociological thinkers saw the difference in the type of society into which the individual happened to be born (Leach, 1982, p. 22).

Between 1926 and 1945 the labels "social anthropology" and "functionalist anthropology" w

. . .
1948, p. 10). Kluckhohn (1943) refers to Malinowski's method in a cogent way as "the well-documented anecdote set firmly in a ramified context" (p. 214). Radcliffe-Brown, on the other hand, took a different approach. He also was concerned with the nature of social integration, and he looked at this issue from the outside and emphasized what he saw as a diversity of types of integration, each of which finds expression in a distinctive, yet coherent, system of belief and ceremonial practice. Radcliffe-Brown saw society as a thing in itself, as a self-sustaining organism or system which already exists when the individual is born into it and which constrains the freedom of the individual through a complex structure of rules and sanctions implicit in the traditional mythology and ceremonial of the people (Leach, 1982, p. 31). Both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown had a great influence on American anthropology. Both men had their intellectual base in England, and both were in revolt against a particularism that would divide the living organism of a culture into small separate bits as a way of tracing their distribution over space and time: In place of the enumeration of customs and the attempt to create a "conjectural" history base
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Melvin Spiro, AR Radcliffe-Brown, Religion Malinowski, Walter Goldschmidt, Malinowski Radcliffe-Brown, Golden Bough, Andaman Islanders, , American Folklore, Honigmann J, leach 1982, social system, honigmann 1976, redfield 1948, leach 1982 28, wolf 1974, science religion, university press, radcliffe-brown 1933, coherent system, malinowski ar, magic science religion, malinowski ar radcliffe-brown, society honigmann 1976,
Approximate Word count = 1467
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Functionalism in Anthropology