CRITIQUE OF FUNCTIONALISM

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CRITIQUE OF FUNCTIONALISM
What is the Functionalist view of Human
Nature? What is the Relationship between the
individual and the society? How do Functionalists
account for change? How do functionalists deal
with conflict? How is the function of a given
institution determined? Must all institutions
have a function?
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FRANZ BOAS 1858-1942
Boas en route to Baffin Island 1883 and Central
Inuit to study of reflectivity of sea-water
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• CENTRAL ESKIMO (IGULIK) STUDY
• Inuit can perceive and name hundreds of colors
  and qualities of sea-water and surfaces unknown
  in European languages
• distinctions which can be described
  scientifically in physics and optics
• and which are of adaptive value to a sea-mammal
  hunting culture
• Boas study earliest anthropological attempt to
  describe a non-European ethno-science in
  phenomenological terms
  

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Analyst seeks to understand phenomena by grasping
how they make sense within the framework of the
subjects thought-world i.e relatively
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1885 First expedition to Northwest Coast (Bella
Coola) 1886 First collecting trip for American
Museum of Natural History (New York City) to
Nootka and Kwakiutl massive documentation of
Northwest Coast culture
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Anti-Evolutionist

• Evolutionism assumes what it is trying to prove
• Order of cultural traits is arbitrary, eg
  representative and geometric art forms
• positioning individual cultures on the
  savagery-barbarism-civilization ladder discounts
  their particularity and integrity
• sidesteps the important task of reconstructing
  unwritten histories for non-Western peoples
• Rational psychological explanation is misleading
  i.e. people did not reason themselves out of
  their primitive state because one of the
  fundamental characteristics of people is that
  they act automatically and unconsciously

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• Anti-Diffusionist
• Claims for historical contact for enormously
  large areas unlikely
• Improbable that cultural traits remained
  unchanged for thousands of years
• traits are arbitrarily selected only to prove
  the theory
• No attempt to demonstrate whether similar
  cultural traits are due to independent invention
  eg. Marriage patterns
• Uninterested in how cultures change

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CULTURAL/HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM

• Three pillars explain cultural customs
• Cultures can only be understood with reference to
  their particular historical development.
  Therefore each culture is unique
• Environmental conditions
• Individual psychological factors

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CULTURAL/HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM

• idea was not to make a preconceived hypothesis,
• but to collect as much data about a particular
  culture without any theory
• general theories of human Behaviour would arise
  once enough data had been collected
• We refrain from the attempt to solve the
  fundamental problem of the general development of
  civilization until we have been able to unravel
  the processes that are going on under our eyes
• Hallmark of historical particularism became the
  intensive study of specific cultures through long
  periods of fieldwork

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• BOASIAN CONCEPT OF CULTURE
• superorganic the product of collective or group
  life but the individual has an influence
• unconscious a filter through which reality is
  perceived, but which is not itself the object of
  attention
• adaptive culture ultimately helps indivudlas
  adapt to their environment.

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Four Field Approach
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• Influential generation of anthropologists trained
  under Boas at Columbia University and established
  Boasian doctrines in North American universities
  
• Alfred A. Kroeber
• Ruth Benedict
• Margaret Mead
• Rhoda Métraux
• Robert Lowie
• Edward Sapir
• Paul Radin
• Alexander A. Goldenweiser
• Clark Wissler

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FRANZ BOAS

• Cultural/historical particularism
• race, language, and culture as independent
  variables
• Relativism
• superorganic
• Cultural Determinism
• Data Collection without theory
• Emphasis on Fieldwork
• 4-field approach

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Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960)
1897 enrolled in a course in American Indian
languages at Columbia University offered by Franz
Boas
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no culture is wholly intelligible without
reference to the noncultural or so-called
environmental factors with which it in relation
and which condition it" (Kroeber, 1939 205).
cultures occur in nature as wholes and these
wholes can never be entirely formulated through
consideration of their elements.
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Cultural and natural areas of Native North
America (1939)
ARCTIC
NORTHWESTCOAST
SUBARCTIC
PLAINS
PLATEAU
BASIN
EASTERN WOODLANDS
PRAIRIE
CALIFORNIA
BAJACALIFORNIA
N-EMEXICO
SOUTHWEST
NATIVE NORTH AMERICA CULTURE AREAS
MESOAMERICA
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• The Superorganic
• The superorganic or superspsychic or
  super-individual that we call civilization
  appears to have an existence, an order, and a
  causality as objective and as determinable as
  those of the subpsychic or inorganic
• individuals have very little if any impact on a
  cultures development and change
• Culture plays a determining role in individual
  human behaviour.
• Culture has an existence outside of us and
  compelled us to conform to patterns that could be
  statistically demonstrated
• e.g. changes in fashion show that cyclical
  patterns of change have occurred beyond the
  influence or understanding of any given
  individual. Kroeber showed that hem length,
  height, and width tended to move up and down in
  regularcycles,

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• Alfred Kroeber
• Culture Areas
• Superorganic
• Deterministic
• First American Textbook in anthropology (1923)

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• Culture and Personality
• seeks to understand the growth and development of
  personal or social identity as it relates to the
  surrounding social environment

• Ruth Benedict
• Margaret Mead

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1922 begins teaching at Barnard College as
assistant to Franz Boas and meets Margaret Mead
Ruth Fulton Benedict 1887-1948
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Patterns of Culture 1934 Demonstrated the primacy
of culture over biology in understanding the
differences between people Contrasted the ways
of life of the Zuni, Natives of Dobu and Kwakiutl
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• Zuni
• Wealth is a sign of greediness.
• Individual fame is a sign of selfishness
• Solutions
• Share all the wealth with other members of the
  tribe.
• Dare not to do anything that brings them
  individual fame.
• Extremely passive.

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Dobuan The Dobuanis dour, and passionate,
consumed with jealousy and suspicion and
resentment. Every moment of prosperity he
conceives himself as having wrung from a
malicious world by a conflict in which he has
worsted his opponent. The good man is one which
has many such conflicts to his credit paranoiac
and mean spirited
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• Kwakiutl
• Overbearing
• Vigorous
• Zest for life
• Strive for ecstasy in ceremonies
• self-aggrandizing
• Megalomaniac paranoid

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• Why are they so different?
• Cant be fixed human nature.
• Why not?
• Suppose - Newborn Zuni baby is raised by Dobu
  parents (or vice versa).
• How would this baby behave when he or she becomes
  adult?
• Like their adopted parents.

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Culture and Personality

• A set of core values shapes larger cultural
  practices resulting in a distinctive pattern of
  culture
• cultural differences were multifaceted
  expressions of a societys most basic core values
  
• cultural values relative
• Societies have a dominating cultural personality
• Culture is Personality writ large
• The goal of anthropology was to document these
  different patterns

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Culture and Personality
We have seen that any society selects some
segment of the arc of possible human behaviour
and in so far as it achieves integrations its
institutions tend to further the expression of
its selected segment and inhibit opposite
expressions.

• Integrated
• Holistic
• Deterministic
• Individual psychology is plastic, i.e. Is molded
  principally by cultural experience

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• During World War II, Benedict worked for the
  Office of War Information, applying
  anthropological methods to the study of
  contemporary cultures.
• 1946 The Chrysanthemum and the Sword Patterns of
  Japanese Culture

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Culture and Personality - Critique

• Wheres the history?
• How are culture individual psychology related?
  For example, does culture somehow 'cause'
  individual personality?
• Is individual behaviour patterned? How? What best
  accounts for the observed patterns?
• Circular -- Basic personality structure was
  inferred from some aspects of behaviour then used
  to explain other behaviour
• linked anthropology with psychology

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• 1922 Barnard College under Boas, Meets Ruth
  Benedict.
• 1925-26 8 months Fieldwork in Samoa

Margaret Mead 1901-1978
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Coming of Age in Samoa 1926

• Is adolescence a universally traumatic and
  stressful time due to biological factors or is
  the experience of adolescence dependent on one's
  cultural upbringing?
• nature vs nurture

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• based on a detailed study of 68 girls between 8
  and 20 in three contiguous villages
• Mead described sexual relations as frequent and
  usually without consequence or issue
• The basic conclusion was
• that adolescence in Samoa
• was not a stressful period
• for girls
• Because, in general, Samoan
• society lacked stresses

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This tale of another way of life is mainly
concerned with education with the process by
which the baby, arrived cultureless upon the
human scene, becomes a full-fledged adult member
of his or her society. The strongest light will
fall upon the ways in which Samoan education, in
its broadest sense, differs from our own. And
from this contrast we may be able to turn, made
newly and vividly self-conscious and
self-critical, to judge anew and perhaps fashion
differently the education we give our children
(1928 13)
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• 1983 Margaret Mead and Samoa The Making and
  Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth
• Mead did not spend enough time in Samoa and lived
  in naval dispensary with an American family
  rather than in a Samoan household
• was not familiar with the Samoan language
• ignored violence in Samoan life,
• Failed to consider the influence of biology on
  behavior

Derek Freeman (1916-2001)

• Mead had been lied to by two of her female
  informants and thus came to erroneous conclusions
  about Samoan culture and the sexual freedom of
  the girls

• She also went to Samoa with preconceived
  intention of showing that culture, not biology,
  determined human responses to lifes situations.

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Growing Up in New Guinea 1930

• Mead wanted to study the thought processes of
  children in preliterate cultures and the way they
  were shaped by adult society.
• developed psychological tests to administer to
  the children of Pere New Guniea
• collected approximately 35,000 pieces of
  children's artwork.

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• central idea that differences between peoples
  are usually cultural differences imparted in
  childhood
• specific child-rearing practices shape
  personalities that in turn give specific
  societies their essential natures

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• Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
  (1935)
• sought to discover extent temperamental
  differences between the sexes were culturally
  determined rather than innate biological
• Mead found a different pattern of male and
  female behavior in each of the cultures she
  studied, all different from gender role
  expectations in the United States at that time.

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The gentle mountain-dwelling Arapesh,

• Arapesh child-rearing responsibilities evenly
  divided among men and women

The fierce cannibalistic Mundugumor

• a natural hostility exists between all members of
  the same sex. Mundugumor fathers and sons, and
  mothers and daughters were adversaries.

The graceful headhunters of Tchambuli,

• While men were preoccupied with art the women had
  the real power, controlling fishing and
  manufacturing

• Mead's contribution in separating
  biologically-based sex from socially-constructed
  gender was groundbreaking, gender roles."

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• 1942 And Keep Your Powder Dry, a book on American
  national character for War effort
• National Character studies
• Small scale techniques applied to large scale
  societies
• Culture at a distance
• guide government and military policy
• early 1960s a vocal commentator on contemporary
  American life.

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• Characteristics of Meads anthropology
• Relativism
• Ahistorical
• Holistic
• Participant observation
• Romanticism
• Humans select their culture, choosing some traits
  and ignoring others.