托福tpo70阅读第3篇Functionalism题目解析-小站备考

In biology, different parts of an organism may be described by their functions,or the parts they play in maintaining the life of the whole organism. Functionalism in social science similarly looks for the role (function) some aspect of culture or social life plays in maintaining a system. Two quite different schools of functionalism arose in conjunction with two British anthropologists - Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown(1881-1955).

Malinowski's version of functionalism assumes that all cultural traits serve the needs of individuals in a society-that is, the function of a cultural trait is its ability to satisfy some basic or derived need of the members of the group. The basic needs include nutrition, reproduction, bodily comfort, safety, relaxation, movement, and growth. Some aspects of the culture satisfy these basic needs. In doing so they give rise to derived needs that must also be satisfied. For example, cultural traits that satisfy the basic need for food give rise to the secondary, or derived, need for cooperation in food collection or production. Societies will in turn develop forms of political organization and social control that guarantee the required cooperation. How did Malinowski explain such things as religion and magic? He suggested that since humans always live with a certain amount of uncertainty and anxiety, they need stability and continuity. Religion and magic are functional in that they serve those needs.

Unlike Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown felt that the various aspects of social behavior maintain a society's social structure rather than satisfying individual needs. By social structure he meant the total network of existing social relationships in a society. Since Radcliffe-Brown's version of functionalism emphasized the social structure as the system to be maintained through the development of supporting rules, practices, and customs, the term "structural functionalism" is often used to describe his approach.

An example of Radcliffe-Brown's structural-functionalist approach is his analysis of the ways in which different societies deal with the tensions that are likely to develop among people related through marriage. To reduce potential tension between in-laws, he suggested, societies do one of two things. They may develop strict rules forbidding the persons involved ever to interact face to face (as do the Navajos, for example, in requiring a man to avoid his mother-in-law), or they may allow mutual disrespect and teasing between the in-laws Radcliffe-Brown suggested that avoidance is likely to occur between in-laws of different generations, whereas disrespectful teasing is likely between in-laws of the same generation. Both avoidance and teasing, he suggested, are ways to avoid real conflict and help maintain the social structure.

The major objection to Malinowski's functionalism is that it cannot readily account for cultural variation. Most of the needs he identified-such as the need for food-are universal: all societies must deal with them if they are to survive. Thus,while the functionalist approach may tell us why all societies engage in food getting, it cannot tell why different societies have different food-getting practices. In other words, functionalism does not explain why certain specific cultural patterns arise to fulfill a need that might be fulfilled just as easily by any of a number of alternative possibilities.

A major problem of the structural-functionalist approach is that it is difficult to determine whether a particular custom is in fact functional in the sense of contributing to the maintenance of the social system. In biology the contribution an organ makes to the health or life of an animal can be assessed by removing it. But we cannot subtract a cultural trait from a society to see if the trait really does contribute to the maintenance of that group. It is conceivable that certain customs within the society may be neutral or even detrimental to its maintenance. We cannot assume that all of a society's customs are functional merely because the society is functioning at the moment. And even if we are able to assess whether a particular custom is functional, this theoretical orientation fails to deal with the question of why a particular society chooses to meet its structural needs in a particular way. A given problem does not necessarily have only one solution. We still must explain why one of several possible solutions is chosen.

托福official70阅读第3篇Functionalism题目解析

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