I. Fieldwork models

A. Kondo versus Malinowski.
B. Anthropologists today: orienting questions

 

II. Functionalism: From fieldwork to ethnography

A. Ethnography: literally, to write a people.
B. Malinowski's theory of functionalism:
"The functional view of culture lays down the essential principle that in every kind of civilization every custom, material object, idea, and belief fulfills some vital function, has some task to accomplish, and represents an indispensable part of the working whole."
C. Cultures as integrated wholes
D. Links to cultural and moral relativism
E. Rappaport: Functional approach to ritual among the Tsembaga in New Guinea: "ritually regulated ecosystem" (402)

1. Maintain biotic communities
2. Redistribute land, spread people evenly over land
3. Limits fighting
4. Mobilizes allies
5. Redistributes pork, ensures adequate protein

F. Culture helps to sustain a population by fulfilling specific functions

 

III. The Roots of Functionalism

A. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

1. Division of Labor in Society (1893)
2. Two types of solidarity

a. mechanical solidarity
b. organic solidarity

 

IV. Malinowski and biological needs

A. Culture as adaptive organism
B. Culture is non-biological response to the seven basic needs of the individual:

1. Nutrition
2. Reproduction
3. Bodily Comforts
4. Safety
5. Relaxation
6. Movement
7. Growth

C. Example: safety, defense, and magic in the kula among Trobriand Islanders
D. Example: Tsembaga and pigs during times of stress
E. Issue of motivation: Rappaport says that Tsembaga don't perceive and aren't motivated by the nutritional, population and environment sustaining functions of their rituals

 

V. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) and Structural Functionalism

A. Focuses on social institutions: "social phenomena constitute a domain ... of reality that is independent of psychological and biological facts."
B. Society as organism, social structures perpetuate the social order
C. Cross-cultural comparison ==> general laws of human behavior
D. Similarities between Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown

1. maintenance of social structures
2. what keeps a society together?
3. attack armchair anthropology

E. Difference between Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown

1. Mal = how society fulfills individual needs
2. R-B = how individual actions perpetuate society

 

VI. Functionalism's Advantages and Disadvantages

A. Advantages

1. Cultures have inherent logic and dignity
2. No speculative history, no evolutionary stages
3. Less ethnocentric
4. Overarching question and methodology for research: what makes a given society tick?

B. Disadvantages

1. Lack of history

a. Trobriand Islanders, Tsembaga as timeless
b. Little analysis of colonialism

2. Circular reasoning to explain basic needs which social institutions fulfill
3. Cultures as isolates, self-sustaining organisms
4. Problem of moral relativism: is culture always good? Power relations, inequality

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