Bronislaw Malinowski, 1939. "The Group and the Individual in Functional Analysis." The American Journal of Sociology 44(6): 938-64.

"Culture thus appears first and foremost as a vast instrumental reality... [C]ulture is also a vast conditioning apparatus" (946).

"The empirical corollary to our analysis of basic needs has been that, under conditions of culture, the satisfaction of every organic need is achieved in an indirect, complicated, roundabout manner. It is this vast instrumentalism of human culture which has allowed man to master the environment in a manner incomparably more effective than any animal adaptation" (948).

"It is clear that the use of tools and implements, and the fact that man uses and destroys in the use -- that is, consumes -- such goods as food produced and prepared, clothing, building materials, and means of transportation, implies the necessity of a constant 'renewal of the cultural apparatus'" (949).

"Symbolism must make its appearance with the earliest appearance of human culture. It is in essence that modification of the human organism which allows it to transform the physiological drive into a culture value" (955).

"The recognition of value means that a deferred and indirect mechanism for the satisfaction of an urge becomes the object of emotional response" (955-6).

"The individual, with his physiological needs and psychological processes, is the ultimate source and aim of all tradition, activities, and organized behavior" (962).

"Here, once more, we see that every institution contributes, on the one hand, toward the integral working of the community as a whole, but it also satisfies the derived and basic needs of the individual" (962).

"The individual, both in social theory and in the reality of cultural life, is the starting-point and the end" (964).

"But in all this the ultimate modifying power, the creative inspiration, and all impulse and invention come from the individual" (964).

"Culture remains sound and capable of further development only in so far as a definite balance between individual interest and social control can be maintained. If this balance be upset or wrongly poised, we have at one end anarchy, and at the other brutal dictatorship" (964).

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940. The Nuer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"Cattle are their dearest possession and they gladly risk their lives to defend their herds or to pillage those of their neighbours. Most of their social activities concern cattle and cherchez la vache is the best advice that can be given to those who desire to understand Nuer behavior" (16).

"I have already indicated that this obsession -- for such it seems to an outsider -- is due not only to the great economic value of cattle but also to the fact that they are links in numerous social relationships. Nuer tend to define all social processes and relationships in terms of cattle. Their social idiom is a bovine idiom" (19).

"Nuer cattle husbandry could not in any important particular be improved in their present oecological relations; that, consequently, more knowledge than they possess would in no way assist them; and that, as will be shown, were it not for their unceasing vigilance and care the cattle would not survive the harsh conditions of their environment" (36).

"I wish to emphasize, in conclusion, the following points: (1) that Nuer cultivate only enough grain for it to be one element in their food-supply and not enough to live on it alone; (2) that with their present climate and technology considerable increase in horticulture would be unprofitable; and (3) that the dominance of the pastoral value over horticultural interests is in accord with oecological relations which favour cattle husbandry at the expense of horticulture. Nuer values and oecological relations, therefore, combine to maintain the bias towards cattle husbandry, in spite of rinderpest having rendered it a more precarious occupation than hitherto" (81).

"Thus people not only create their material culture and attach themselves to it, but also build up their relationships through it and see them in terms of it" (89).

"Thus, on the one hand, environmental conditions and pastoral pursuits cause modes of distribution and concentration that provide the lines of political cleavage and are antagonistic to political cohesion and development; but, on the other hand, they necessitate extensive tribal areas within which there is a sense of community and a preparedness to co-operate" (119).

"The smaller the tribal segment the more compact its territory, the more contiguous its members, the more varied and more intimate their general social ties, and the stronger therefore its sentiment of unity... Political cohesion thus not only varies with variations of political distance but is also a function of structural distance of other kinds" (142).

"Corporate life is incompatible with a state of feud" (156).

"Feuds are settled with comparative ease in a restricted social milieu where the structural distance between the participants is narrow" (157).

"A feud has little significance unless there are social relations of some kind which can be broken off and resumed, and, at the same time, these relations necessitate eventual settlement if there is not to be complete cleavage. The function of the feud, viewed in this way, is, therefore, to maintain the structural equilibrium between opposed tribal segments which are, nevertheless, politically fused in relation to larger units" (159).

"We regard chiefs as a category of ritual experts and do not consider that they comprise in any way a class or rank. We believe their social function to be a mechanism by which the equilibrium of the political system is maintained through the institution of the feud" (174).

"Thus the kinship system bridges the gaps in political structure by a chain of links which unite members of opposed segments. They are like elastic bands which enable the political segments to fall apart and be in opposition and yet keep them together" (226).

"We found that the complementary tendencies towards fission and fusion, which we have called the segmentary principle, is a very evident characteristic of Nuer political structure. The lines of political cleavage are determined chiefly by oecology and culture. Harsh environment together with dominant pastoral interests cause low density and wide gaps in the distribution of local communities. Cultural differences between the Nuer and their neighbours also cause varying degrees of political distance. Oecological and cultural relations often combine to produce fission. In Nuerland itself culture is homogeneous, and it is oecological relations that chiefly determine the size and distribution of segments" (263).