Structural function theory4/14/2024 ![]() ![]() According to Spencer as the structural parts of the human body like digestive system, muscles, and various other organs function independently to maintain the survival of organism, same way the social structures work together to maintain the society. ![]() He used an analogy between society and organism. His work Principles of Sociology is very famous. He is well known for applying the theory of natural selection in society. He is known as father of Positivism.Ģ.2.Herbert Spencer (1820-1903): He was a British Philosopher. Through social static‟s Comte maintained that units of investigation were the individual, family, society and the species. Through his notions of social statistics and social dynamics he established a direction for social research. He said that science relies upon empirical knowledge. August Comte (1798-1857): He was a French philosopher. Radcliffe-Brown was inspired by August Comte who was also a functionalist.Ģ.1. He looked at institutions as orderly sets of relationships whose function is to maintain the society as a system. While Radcliffe-Brown focused on social structure rather than biological needs. He talked about four basic “instrumental needs” (economics, social control, education, and political organization), that require institutional devices to get fulfilled. Malinowski suggested that individuals have physiological needs (reproduction, food, shelter) and these needs are fulfilled by the social institutions. Both were purely functionalists but their approach slightly differed as Malinowski is known as functionalist but Radcliffe-Brown is mainly known as Structural Functionalist. These parts are interrelated and interdependent.įunctionalism was mainly led by Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. These parts or the constituent elements of a society could be named as norms, traditions, customs, institutions like economy, kinship, religion etc. It describes the inter-relationship between several parts of any society. This approach of theoretical orientation looks at both social structure and social function. It is a framework that considers society as a system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. Functionalism arose as a reaction to evolutionism and diffusionism in early twentieth century.įunctionalism looks for the function or part that is played by several aspects of culture in order to maintain a social system. In social-cultural Anthropology we come across a historical sequence of theoretical approaches as follows:īut here our main concern is FUNCTIONALISM which has been considered one of the prominent schools of thoughts in order to understand various aspects of culture and society. Mostly the new orientation focuses upon those aspects of a problem which were not considered in the previous one. One theoretical orientation arises and grows in popularity but as another comes into action the popularity of the former might get either enhanced or hindered. In Anthropology or in any other discipline, there is always a continuous flow of ideas. 33. Milton Singer Mckim Marriott, Dumont.30. Science Technology and Society Studies.25. Practice Theory: Bourdieu Giddens, Ortner.22. Modernization and dependency/Theories in development Anthropology.19. Biological Theories of Culture and Sociobiology.18. Ecological theories: cultural ecology, system ecology and political ecology. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |