Page 110 - Prathima Volume 12

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4.1. Critiques of Functionalism and Structural-Functionalism in
Anthropology

First of all, I would like to point out that many earlier studies of culture and society
were examined through the theories of functionalism and structural-functionalism in
anthropology. Both theories looked at society and culture through the elementary
forms of structure, biological nature, linguistic category and binary oppositions
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assumed by 19 century social theorists (Durkheim, 2013; Radcliffe-Brown, 2013;
Levi-Strauss, 2018). Later, anthropologists identified a number of issues that were
found with the functionalistic and structural-functionalistic perspectives in the study
of culture and society in terms of representations, ethnocentrism, and stereotypes.

Most of the functionalists and structural-functionalists studied only the primitive
society and primitive culture, but then, they were trying to apply a similar model to the
entire human society and culture. But this is precisely the distinction that even they
began to question. Thus, this distinction between “primitive” and “modern” culture
and society was the outcome of their assumption. For instance, structuralism in British
Social Anthropology is the application of structural linguistic to social anthropology.
However, it depends on what kind of structuralism people were talking about. For
instance, Radcliffe-Brown (1952) described the society in its internal structure as a
social process. Radcliffe-Brown's style of structuralism really went on to inspire the
formation of British Social Anthropology. Radcliffe-Brown (1952) created structural-
functionalism (the theoretical paradigm of British Social Anthropology till the late
1960s), which was just a more formal version of this idea applied to small scale
societies. These Radcliffe-Brown viewed as not yet having or being involved in
history in the European sense. As such he saw such societies (the Andaman islanders,
the Australian aboriginal "tribes") as fixed in ahistorical structures; fragile balanced
structures easily destroyed by any change whatsoever. Hence, about them, Radcliffe-
Brown believed the "function" of any action (and hence its scientific meaning) was
what it did to support social structures. Hence, marriage ceremonies for him were
about giving value to and emphasizing the social tie or structure) between the two
families brought together (as "in-laws") by marriage. This is all structuralism in the
sociological sense: that is, about the maintenance of "structures" in the sense of named,
regulated, ties between people -- e.g., brother-sister, husband-wife, teacher-student,
boss-employees and so forth.

Levi-Strauss and, after him Leach (who was trying to break out of the structural
functionalist paradigm) were looking, instead, at how knowledge and things like myth
were organized. Levi-Strauss was inspired by discussions of language structure by
linguists such as de Saussure. That is, how language was structures both in terms of its

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