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?

FRANZ BOAS 1858-1942

Boas en route to Baffin Island 1883 and Central Inuit; to study of reflectivity of sea-water

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

Analyst seeks to understand phenomena by grasping how they make sense within the framework of the subject’s thought-world i.e relatively

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

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

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

Three pillars explain cultural customs

1. Cultures can only be understood with reference to their particular historical development. Therefore each culture is unique

2. Environmental conditions

3. Individual psychological factors

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

CULTURAL/HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM

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.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL

LINGUISTICS

ARCHAEOLOGY

PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

ANTHROPOLOGY

Four Field Approach

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

Cultural/historical particularism

“race, language, and culture” as independent variables

Relativism

superorganic

Cultural Determinism

Data Collection “without” theory

Emphasis on Fieldwork

4-field approach

FRANZ BOAS

Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960)

1897 enrolled in a course in American Indian languages at Columbia University offered by Franz Boas

“ 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.

SUBARCTIC

ARCTIC

PLATEAU

NORTHWESTCOAST

CALIFORNIA

EASTERN WOODLANDS

BASIN

BAJACALIFORNIA

N-EMEXICOSOUTHWEST

PRAIRIE

PLAINS

MESOAMERICANATIVE NORTH AMERICA: CULTURE AREAS

Cultural and natural areas of Native North America (1939)

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 culture’s 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,

Alfred Kroeber Culture Areas

Superorganic

Deterministic

First American Textbook in anthropology (1923)

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

Ruth Benedict

Margaret Mead

Ruth Fulton Benedict

1887-1948

1922 begins teaching at Barnard College as assistant to Franz Boas and meets Margaret Mead

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

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.

Dobuan

The Dobuan…is 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

Kwakiutl

Overbearing

Vigorous

Zest for life

Strive for ecstasy in ceremonies

self-aggrandizing

Megalomaniac paranoid

Why are they so different? Can’t 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.

A set of core values shapes larger cultural practices resulting in a distinctive pattern of culture

cultural differences were multifaceted expressions of a society’s 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

Culture and Personality

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

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

Where’s 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

Culture and Personality - Critique

Margaret Mead 1901-1978

1922 Barnard College under Boas, Meets Ruth Benedict.

1925-26 8 months Fieldwork in Samoa

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

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 periodfor girls

Because, in general, Samoan society lacked stresses

“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)

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)

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

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

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.

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

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.

The gentle mountain-dwelling Arapesh, Arapesh child-rearing responsibilities evenly divided among men and women

The fierce cannibalistic Mundugumora 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."

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.

Characteristics of Mead’s anthropology

Relativism

Ahistorical

Holistic

Participant observation

Romanticism

Humans select their culture, choosing some traits and ignoring others.