Malinowski vs. Radcliffe-Brown: Funtionalism

Malinowski vs. Radcliffe-Brown: Functionalism

Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown head functionalist schools of thought. While Radcliffe-Brown abhors being associated with the “Functionalist School of Anthropology” (On Social Structure 1), his arguments indeed contain functionalist origins. Whereas Malinowski adamantly protested the title of “Durkheimian”, his views of functionalism and society most certainly spun from Durkheim’s work in the effort to establish sociology as a scientific field.

To begin to understand Malinowski’s functionalism and in turn Radcliffe-Brown’s structural functionalism we must first look to Durkheim, whom is credited as being the modern origin of the functionalist perspective. For Durkheim, sociology was based upon the social facts of the particular societies being studied. He was quick to draw a line between the basic facts of human behavior that are necessary for society (i.e. eating and sleeping) and those that he considered “social” facts. He states that, by the thought that all phenomena that occur within society, no matter how insignificant their social interest, then sociology would be unnecessary as it “would have no subject matter exclusively its own” and would in turn be confused with other natural sciences. He goes on to proclaim, “in every society a certain group of phenomena [can] be differentiated” and this phenomenon is the fulfillment of the obligations and contracts of one’s social role which is defined by the law and the customs of that particular society (The Rules of Sociological Method 1). While the individual who is executing the social contract may do so out of his or her own sentiment, the fact of the matter is that he or she did not create the role, only inheriting it through education.

He points out that “the system of signs [we] use to express [our thought], the system of currency [we] employ to pay [our] debts, … etc. function independently of [our] own use of them. And these statements can be...