The Functionalism | Anthropology Optional for UPSC PDF Download

Functionalism
Underlying functionalist theory is the fundamental metaphor of the living organism, its several parts and organs, grouped and organized into a system, the function of the various of parts or organs being to sustain the organism to keep its essential processes going and enable it to reproduce. Similarly, members of a society can be thought of as cells, its institutions its organs, whose function is to sustain the life of the collectivity despite the frequent death of cells and the production of new ones. Functionalist analyses examine the social significance of phenomena, that is, the purpose they serve a particular society in maintaining the whole.
Functionalism as a school of thought in anthropology, emerged early in the 20th century Bronislaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown two prominent Anthropologists in Great Britain at that time had the greatest influence in this development. Functionalism sought to be corrective to the excesses of the evolutionary and diffusionist theories of the 19th century and the historicism of the early 20th century.
Two versions of functionalism developed between 1910 and 1930  Bio-cultural (or psychological) Functionalism, the approach advocated by Malinowski and  Structural Functionalism, the approach advanced by Radcliffe-Brown.
Malinowski suggested that individuals have physiological needs and that social institutions develop to meet these needs. There are also culturally derived needs and four basic instrumental needs (economics, social control, education and political organization), that require institutional devices. Each institution has personnel, a charter, a set of norms, activities, technology and a function. Malinowski believed that satisfaction of these needs transformed the cultural instrumental activity into an acquired drive through psychological reinforcement.
Radcliffe-Brown focused attention on social structure. He suggested that a society is system of relationships maintaining itself, through cybernetic feedback, while institutions are orderly set of relationships whose function is to maintain the society as a system. Radcliffe-Brown, following Auguste Comte, believed that the social structure constituted a separate ‘‘level" of reality distinct from those of biological forms and inorganic matter. He believed that the individuals were replaceable/ transient occupants of social roles. Unlike Malinowski's emphasis on individuals, Radcliffe-Brown considered individuals irrelevant.