Evans-Pritchard’s analysis proves that in the culture of the Azande’s witchcraft is rational according to their personal culture. This book was an analyzed overview on witchcraft within Azande society in East Africa. In 1937 he published his first book called Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Evans-Pritchard studied primarily in Africa. Evans-Pritchard believed anthropologists should analyze societies based off the local communities view points rather then preexisting ideas. This physiological explanation works for structural-functionalist theory because customs, practices, social roles, and behavior are used to work together to help the social systems. Radcliffe-Brown saw social systems almost like an organism where the different parts of a living being do their functions in order to keep the whole working. Primarily, this theory is based upon social structures and their positive/negative effects upon a culture with customs as the tool used to preserve these social structures. Evans-Pritchard contributing major field work and analysis. The Structural-Functionalist theory was founded by Radcliffe-Brown with E.E. Pointing to his idea that individuals were irrelevant and replaceable, they were occupants of social roles.

Radcliffe-Brown argued that social phenomena had to be constructed within the social level. The premier concern with structural functionalism from the viewpoint of Radcliffe-Brown was to focus primarily on social structure rather than biological needs, which is the main concern of Maliowski’s functionalism. Structural functionalism was a theoretical school in Great Britain originally formulated to move away from evolutionism and diffusion. A Critique of Structural-Functionalism and Radcliff-Brown by E.E.Merton: An American sociologist, Merton’s idea of functionalism had to do with standardized social/cultural beliefs that were functional for both society and the individual. Émile Durkheim: A French sociologist, Durkheim has several well-known works, which include The Rules of Sociological Method, The Division of Labour in Society and Suicide.So if lung cancer rates skyrocket due to smoking, society will, eventually, look at that and go “holy cow, we need to make sure fewer people smoke!” and that’s what will cause social change.įunctionalism is a MACRO view of society, meaning that it takes society as a whole and analyzes it from a distance, rather than on an individual basis. All of society’s institutions and structures are interdependent and when one of them has a problem, the rest compensate to continue to allow society to function smoothly.įunctionalism can be viewed as a sort of “let things handle themselves” way of looking at society, as the belief can be summed up as “things will work themselves out”.

You can think of a functionalist’s view of society as one would look at the different systems of the body.

In FUNCTIONALISM, society is viewed as a collection of social structures, all of which depend on and affect each other. These various ways are also called THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS. FUNCTIONALISM, also called STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM, is a way of approaching a problem or scenario.

Theory of structural functionalism