Functionalism

Functionalism was the predominant underlying theory in both British Social and U.S./American cultural anthropology from the beginning of the20th century up through the early post–World War II era. Deriving largely from French sociologist Émile Durkheim's work, this school of thought saw societies largely through the lens of an organic metaphor, so that societies were believed to be parallel to living organisms, institutions parallel to bodily organs, and individuals parallel to cells. Like any organism, societies must sustain themselves over time, repair any damaged or diseased parts, and reproduce themselves. The functionalist imperative was to study, through proper scientific observation or fieldwork, the different ways that societies and cultures fulfill these necessary functions.

As a result of their reliance on this organic metaphor, functionalists came to their work with a variety of assumptions. The first functionalist assumption is that all healthy societies and cultures are well integrated and in a state of homeostasis. This meant that most functionalists assumed that societies and cultures, if left alone, would not change significantly. Instead, change was driven by outside interference. As a result of this assumption, functionalism as a theoretical paradigm was left without any method for studying change, other than to show the ways that a society regains homeostasis after “damage” is incurred from outside influences.

The second assumption is that societies or cultures are best studied synchronically, in one time period, rather than diachronically, or over time. Instead of relying on comparative work or grand theorizing, functionalism demanded of its practitioners that they engage in long-term participant observation to experience life in the society or culture firsthand. The resulting ethnographic writing produced by most functionalists took a “snapshot” view of the society or culture, primarily written in the present tense, the so-called anthropological present, to illustrate the assumed timelessness of what is being presented.

The third functionalist assumption was that the constituent parts of every society, from individuals to the largest political and social institutions, must be seen as interrelated and from a holistic point of view. While variations on this assumption divided British anthropologists from their U.S./American colleagues (see below), the important methodological ramification of this assumption, holism, remained true on both sides of the Atlantic. In other words, all constituent parts of a society must be seen as interacting with and influencing all others. As a result, it was impossible to study, for example, kinship in this paradigm without also looking at religion, politics, subsistence, and all other aspects of society.

Finally, as the name implies, the primary quest for understanding among functionalists was the search for the biosocial or social structural function of any given institution for maintaining the integrity of society. Functionalists assumed that all social institutions or cultural traits, no matter how obscure or seemingly maladaptive, were somehow integral to maintaining the society or culture within the ecological and social contexts in which it existed. Methodologically, this contributed to the development and refinement of anthropological relativism, the belief that all cultures and societies, as well as their constituent traits and institutions, must be looked at in their own context rather than judged by the values and norms of the anthropologist.

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