From Unilineal Cultural Evolution to Functionalism
Several anthropological theories emerged during the early twentieth century. Arguably, the most important of these was Functionalism. Bronislaw Malinowski was a prominent anthropologist in Britain during that time and had great influence on the development of this theory. Malinowski suggested that individuals have certain physiological needs and that cultures develop to meet those needs. Malinowski saw those needs as being nutrition, reproduction, shelter, and protection from enemies. He also proposed that there were other basic, culturally derived needs and he saw these as being economics, social control, education, and political organization Malinowski proposed that the culture of any people could be explained by the functions it performed. The functions of a culture were performed to meet the basic physiological and culturally derived needs of its individual constituents.
A. R. Radcliff-Brown was a contemporary of Malinowski’s in Britain who also belonged to the Functionalist school of thought. Radcliff-Brown differed from Malinowski quite markedly though, in his approach to Functionalism. Malinowski’s emphasis was on the individuals within a culture and how their needs shaped that culture. Radcliff-Brown thought individuals unimportant, in anthropological study. He thought that the various aspects of a culture existed to keep that culture in a stable and constant state.
Radcliff-Brown focused attention on social structure. He suggested that a society is a system of relationships maintaining itself through cybernetic feedback, while institutions are orderly sets of relationships whose function is to maintain the society as a system. Goldschmidt (1996): 510
At the same time as the theory of Functionalism was developing in Britain; the theory of Culture and Personality was being developed in America. The study of culture and personality seeks to understand the growth and development of personal or social identity as it relates to the surrounding social environment. Barnouw (1963): 5. In other words, the personality or psychology of individuals can be studied and conclusions can be drawn about the Culture of those individuals. This school of thought owes much to Freud for its emphasis on psychology (personality) and to an aversion to the racist theories that were popular within A...
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...ture’, and as he reveals elsewhere, his conception of a social structure concentrates on ‘the political institutions, the economic institutions, the kinship organization, and the ritual life. Carrithers (1992): 12-33. However, Carrithers thought that Radcliff-Brown “displayed an orientation to diversity which in important respects is fundamentally similar to Benedict’s”. Carrithers (1992): 12-33. They both ‘took the natural sciences as a model of knowledge’ and thought that such knowledge could be applied to a culture occurring any place or any time in history. Carrithers goes on to note that Benedict, representing the school of Culture and Personality and Radcliff-Brown representing the Functionalists had their work criticized, and built upon by later generations of anthropologists. Eric Wolf’s criticisms of the functionalist approach can be seen as building upon the body of knowledge accumulated up to that time.
References
Anthropology 103 Text. 2000. Unpublished: University of Otago, Dunedin.
Abbink, Jan & Hans Vermeulen eds. 1982 History and Culture: Essays on the Work of Eric R. Wolf. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.
Barnouw, Victor (1963) Culture and Personality.
The field of anthropology looks at culture more analytically than any other social science. Cultural anthropologists are concerned with describing and analyzing societies and cultures as life ways. In attempting to study the life way of the Center members anthropologically, Myerhoff is beginning with the preconceived notion that there actually is a culture that exists among the individuals. It seems that she begins her research with certain assumptions about this culture. However, as her studies progressed, it is clear that she realized that her research would need to be much more intense than she had planned in order to fully unders...
Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) is a virus that leads to infection of the liver. Infection of the HBV can be acute or lifelong (chronic). Humans are the only known host for HBV (CSC, 2017). This virus can survive on environmental surfaces for up to seven days (WHO, 2017).
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on Tuesday 19th of May 1925 in the town of Omaha, Nebraska. His parents were called Earl and Louise. Earl, was a follower of Marcus Garvey and was a Baptist minister, he died when Malcolm was only six years old, likely murdered by the Black Legion a sub-section of the KKK. As a result his mother, became the lone carer of nine children, and was later commended to an institution for the insane, consequently of a mental breakdown linked to Earl’s death. Malcolm went to a school in East Lansing, Michigan, flunked out at the eighth grade, and then relocated to live with an older sister in the Roxbury part of Boston. There he became caught up in petty illegal activities. As an out of work street hustler and the front-runner of a multiracial crew of robbers in Roxbury, and shortly in Harlem, he was well-known as "Detroit Red" for the reddish tinge of his hair. In the course of his prison years, he undertook the first of his two conversion occurrences; he embraced the Nation of Islam headed by Elijah Muhammad. Following the tradition of the Nation of Islam, he replaced his surname with an X, embodying what he had been and what he had become: "Ex-smoker. Ex-drinker. Ex-Christian. Ex-slave.” Islam is a religious system centred upon the experiences of Mohammed, who said he was selected by Allah (god) to perform as his divinely inspired demonstrative on Earth. The Nation of Islam is an Islamic sect, an organization with particular beliefs or values that functions within a larger group. The Nation of Islam asserted that most African slaves brought to the Americas were Muslims.
The functionalist paradigm focuses on the integration of society, and how society how its own groups which has their own functions to help improve the peoples lives. Functionalist paradigm fits in the category of macro-sociology, because it focuses on the patterns that shape an entire society. Functionalists believe that society is maintained through the thought of trust and consensus on moral values for ideal behavior. Working together will result in a stable social environment that will create equality. Conflicts or dysfunctions will be view as a disease in the social system. Social conflict paradigm believes that society is divided into many groups that have their own goals, and that certain parts of the world have the luck of benefiting economic dominan...
historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; Culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action.”
Hepatitis A is caused by a virus that infected the liver cells which spread when people eat and drink something contaminated with feces. According to Mayo Clinic, the virus can spread by eating food when someone with the virus does not thoroughly wash their hands after using the restroom, drinking water that has been infected with feces, eating raw shellfish from water polluted with sewage, being in close contact with someone who is infected even if the person has no symptoms, and having sexual partners who have the virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control, a hep A vaccine is recommended for homosexual men, laboratory workers, people who use illegal drugs, people with chronic liver disease, and people who travel the world. Cases of hepatitis A are not distinct from other types of acute viral hepatitis. According to WHO, specific diagnosis are made by the detection of Hepatitis A Virus (HAV)-specific Immunoglobulin G (IgM) antibodies in the blood. Additional tests include reverse
Amongst them all, James cannot be ignored because he was the key founder of the functionalism school of psychology. On the other hand, Spencer was vocal to further promote this theory to higher levels. He claimed that the structural changes cannot be take place without the impacts of the functional changes. He viewed society as an organism, where the diverse institutions are comparable with those organs in an organism that have like functions. An example would be the government being considered as analogous with a brain and that roads were paralleled with veins. This metaphor has been popular among later social scientists and led to a line of thought called functionalism. James McKeen Cattell and Stanley Hall were also key functionalists with the latter having presented an analysis of how education was fundamental in the lives of young children and many people in the society in general. It is worth mentioning that in as much as the concepts of structuralism and functionalism were sidelined over time, there impact to the field of psychology cannot be ignored. This is because they opened up a platform for further research work on comparable
Hepatitis A is caused by the Hepatitis A virus (HAV). (Kahn & Higuera, 2017) Consumption of faecal matter, even in minute quantities, Close contact with an infected individual, sexual intercourse with an infected person, and consumption of contaminated food or drink. (Prevention, 2017) Hepatitis B is commonly contracted through contact with infected blood, semen or any form of contact with any form of bodily fluid which is transmitted through sexual intercourse, needle sharing or the sharing of any injection instrument or during childbirth, in this case, transmitted from infected mother to her baby. (“Hepatitis | NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” 2015) The transmission of hepatitis C is caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV). It is transmitted through direct
...ctive, 2nd ed. (1971). The unique capacity for symboling that distinguishes humans from primates is discussed by Leslie A. White, "The Symbol: The Origin and Basis of Human Behavior," in his Science of Culture, 2nd ed., pp. 22-39 (1969); Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (1944, reprinted 1974); and Terence Dixon and Martin Lucas, The Human Race (1982). The many conceptions of culture are discussed in A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (1952, reprinted 1978). See also Leslie A. White and Beth Dillingham, The Concept of Culture (1973); and Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (1973, reissued 1975). The history of theory and method in social and cultural anthropology is traced in Fred W. Voget, A History of Ethnology (1975).
Welsch, Robert L, and Kirk M Endicott. “Should Cultural Anthropology Model itself on the Natural Science.” Taking sides clashing views on controversial issues in cultural anthropology. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
Schultz, E.A. & Lavenda, R.H. Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition, Sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005.
Write an essay in which you discuss what anthropologists mean by “culture.” In addition to clearly discussing what is meant by the term, discuss at least three characteristics of culture, such as “culture is learned.” For each of these characteristics, provide an example that helps illustrate what is meant by the characteristic.
Culture and society, while important terms to the field of anthropology, are often misunderstood or misused by new students. They are frequently used in daily life, but with a somewhat different context and meaning than those used in anthropological discussions, hence the misunderstanding. They refer to concepts which act as foundations of this field, and it is difficult to make sense of both old and new studies or ideas without them.
Suicide is the act of killing yourself because you do not want to continue living. It is done voluntarily and intentionally. It’s becoming a major global public health issue with almost 1 million people committing suicide each year (Suicide Data, 2010a). Suicide is a serious mental health problem affecting the lives of young adults. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 24. During the past few decades, the number of adolescent deaths from suicide in the United States has increased significantly. “In 1997, there were 4186 suicides among people 15 to 24 years old, 1802 suicides among those 15 to 19 years old, and 2384 among those 20 to 24 years
W. Goldschmidt, ‘Functionalism,’ In Encycolpedia of cultural Anthropology, Vol. 2, David Levison and Melvin Ember, Eds. Henry Holt and company, New York, 1996.