Radcliffe-Brown: Compare And Contrast Essay

Anthropology (the study of man) has several important innovations that have taken it from an antiquarian hobby to disciplined sciences. Many scholars have brought different advances in anthropology to better explain culture in relation to man. Most anthropologists offered a point of view that influenced anthropology and helped it to grow into a more comprehensive science. Functionalism, a division of anthropology that claimed culture serves a purpose, came about in the 1920s. While scholars Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown are both regarded as functionalists with foundations in Emile Durkheim’s studies, they differ in the ways they approach functionalism and their contributions to anthropology. Malinowski’s specific brand of functionalism
In a nutshell, Malinowski sees society and culture as functioning for the achievement of individual needs; material (e.g. house, food, reproduction) and the psychological (e.g. as met through magic, ritual, or religion). Malinowski differs from Radcliffe-Brown in regard through his individualistic focus rather than casting individuals as instruments who more or less lack agency in a socio-cultural system or structure. In the article “The Group and the Individual in Functional Analysis,” Malinowski states that “functionalism is, in its essence, the theory of transformation of organic – that is, individual – needs into derived cultural necessities and imperatives. Society by the collective wielding of the conditioning apparatus molds the individual into a cultural personality. The individual, with his physiological needs and psychological process, is the ultimate source and aim of all tradition, activities, and organized behavior.” (pg.