2.3 Structural Functionalism

Claim: society is a system of institutions whose parts function to maintain the whole — like an organism; the question of any custom is what does it do for the social structure?Exponents:• Malinowski (functionalism, individualist version): institutions exist to satisfy human needs (biological and derived) — culture as humanity's tool-kit; the Trobriand ethnographies (Argonauts of the Western Pacific — the kula ring: economy as embedded obligation — Unit 5.4's source).• Radcliffe-Brown (structural-functionalism proper): the analogy to anatomy — social structure (positions and relations) persists because practices maintain it; comparative sociology of institutions; "social function" as the concept.• Evans-Pritchard (the master-applier): Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande — belief as a coherent, rational system doing social work (misfortune's attribution, hierarchy's support); The Nuer — segmentary lineage organisation: order without rulers — the lineage system itself as the stateless state ("ordered anarchy" — the legal-anthropology classic that shows Jurisprudence Unit 2's question "what is law?" answered without a legislator); Fortes (Tallensi), and the Manchester school's extended-case method (Gluckman — ritual of rebellion; the judicial process of the Barotse — African law's great functional study). Nepal application: the classic functionalist readings of Newar guthi (temple-service, land and kinship as one maintenance system — Sociology Unit 6.3), of caste as an interdependent occupational division (the jajmani-type village symbiosis), of badghar headmanship among Tharus…