Malinowski vs. Radcliffe-Brown
The most important difference between Malinowski’s brand of functionalism and that of Radcliffe-Brown was that while Malinowski focused on the role of the individual within society, Radcliffe-Brown was more concerned with society as a whole. He believed that it was impossible to study one person’s behavior in a society because an individual was the sum of his relationships with others in society. If one takes a person out of his cultural context, there is no behavior left to study because behavior is interpersonal relationships, the reactions of an individual in society. Malinowski believed that society existed to serve the needs of the individual, or as he phrased it in his Scientific Theory of Culture, culture is a “vast apparatus. . . by which man is able to cope with the. . . problems that face him.” (pg 36). Without individuals, society would not exist. Radcliffe-Brown’s theory was almost the opposite, and yet put together they create the type of circular arguement one frequently sees in anthropological theory: did the individual create society or did society create the individual (the ‘self’)?
Malinowski’s opinion was that the individual created society in order to serve his own needs, primarily basic, but later psychological and sociological needs. His key word, as he stressed, was organization. It was necessary, he said, for human beings to organize themselves “in order to achieve any goal, reach any end” (Malinowski, pg 39). He believed that culture itself was the total of coordinated human organization. While Malinowski was studying the ways and reasons why humans organize themselves into social structures, Radcliffe-Brown was studying the actual organizations, such as kinship systems. Radcliffe-Brown’s idea of function was the “contribution which an activity made to the social life as a whole”, while Malinowski believed function was a “response. . . to biological needs” (Ellen, pgs 16-17). His opinion was that Malinowski was so blinded by the individual that he couldn’t see the bigger picture: people die but social structures go on, therefore it is pointless and futile to study the role of a single person in society.
Both men began their anthropology careers along the same theoretical track, and Malinowski even called Radcliffe-Brown his “brother-in-functionalism” (Ellen, pg 16). Both believed that society was a system of interdependent social institutions which contributed to the cohesion and stability of the society, creating solidarity. Both were also concerned with cross-cultural social laws, the nomothetic laws which the early evolutionists sought. But since Radcliffe-Brown was so heavily influenced by Émile Durkheim and others, he eventually split away from his initial agreement with Malinowski’s theories to focus less on the individual and more on society as a whole.
Radcliffe-Brown, in his essay on the mother’s brother in South Africa, demonstrates how the relationship between a sister’s son and a mother’s brother contributes to the overall equilibrium in society. A father must be feared, and so also must the paternal side of the family be feared, but a mother is “the one from whom may be expected tenderness and indulgence” (McGee, pg 176), and so it follows that the mother’s brother will have a similar type of relationship. And so the society provides for a loving male figure in the boy’s life (and also I presume in a girl’s, but Radcliffe-Brown ignores the role of women almost completely) while also providing a male authority figure. Later in the same essay Radcliffe-Brown states that “the social values current in a primitive society are maintained by being expressed in ceremonial or ritual customs” (pg 181). It follows logically that the relationship between a mother’s brother and a sister’s son should also find its expression in ritual terms: the set relationships. A father cannot be expected to trade his position of command with his brother-in-law’s allowance and indulgence, and so the relationship remains stable.
Malinowski, in his essay on the essentials of the Kula ring, demonstrates how the Kula trade and exchange network provides for the basic needs of the individual while simultaneously producing a cohesive social institution. Of course the basic needs of the individual are served through the secondary, utilitarian trade involved with the Kula: food, blankets, etc. But the Kula items themselves provide for the derived needs (wealth, status, power). They are sought after “for the sake of possession itself, and the ownership of them with the ensuing renown is the main source of their value” (pg 162). All the rules of the Kula, set partner relationships, geographical rules, and the like, must be followed by everyone in the Kula (pg 163-164), and so it becomes an institution within which the individual pursues his own needs.
Works cited:
Anthropological Theory, R. John McGee and Richard L. Warms, Mayfield Publishing, 1996.
Bronislaw Malinowski, Roy Ellen et al, editor, Cambridge, 1988.
A Scientific Theory of Culture, Bronislaw Malinowski.