Social Anthropology Foundations and Pioneers

Summary:

This Social Anthropology Foundations and Pioneers note briefly describes the significant points given by

#A.R. RADCLIFFE BROWN
1. Process of Social Life
2. Concepts of Social Structure, Structural Form, and Social Functions.

#Bronislaw K Malinowski
1. Malinowski’s Biological Functionalism
2. Theory of Culture: Needs-Institutions-Culture Scheme.

#Claude Lévi-Strauss
1. Distinctive features & fundamentals of Levi -Strauss Structuralism.
2. Social Structure
3. Social Structure as Models
4. Types of models
5. Analysis of Kinship systems

Excerpt:

Social Anthropology Foundations and Pioneers

A.R. RADCLIFFE BROWN
(1881-1955)
• Influence of Durkheim
• Social facts
• Objective study
• Functional analysis
• Organic solidarity
• SOCIAL STRUCTURE

 “Structure refers to an arrangement of parts or components related to one another in some sort of larger unity.” In social structure, the basic elements are human beings or persons involved in social life. The arrangement of persons in relation to each other is the social structure. For RCBrown, the structure is not an abstraction but an empirical reality. It is an empirically observable reality of the arrangement or relationships of the members of society.

 A most important structural feature is the arrangement of people into dyadic relationships or person-to-person relationships. A social structure becomes apparent during inter-group interactions and interpersonal interactions. Institutions “define for a person how he or she is expected to behave, and also how he or she may expect others to behave”. Therefore, the social structure has to be described in terms of the institutions that regulate the relationship between persons or groups. “The structural features of a social life of a particular region consist of all those continuing arrangements of persons in institutional relationships, which are exhibited in the actions and interactions that in their totality make up the social life”.

SOCIAL LIFE. “The empirical reality with which social anthropology has to deal, by description, by analysis and in comparative studies is the process of the social life of a certain limited region during a certain period of time.” The process of social life consists of various actions of human beings, particularly joint actions and interactions.