ABSTRACT

Sociology and Social Anthropology have been always seen to have an intricate relationship. Both the disciplines
have a rich historical background and have successfully established their autonomy. Many thinkers have often
claimed both the disciplines to be the same as the borders do seem porous, however their contributions and
interdependence does not entirely blur the boundaries, the two disciplines in many aspects are very different
from each other. One of the major schools in Sociology and Social anthropology alike is functionalism.
Positivists like Comte, Spencer and Durkheim have immensely influenced social anthropology and we can see
that in the works of Malinowski and Radcliffe Brown, two most revolutionary anthropologists. It is hard to
confine each of these disciplines to a particular kind of methodology and it would be an unnecessary task as it is
not unknown that almost all disciplines are interdependent in some sort of way. And thus, the scope of this paper
is to understand how Radcliffe Brown’s methodology not only sort of fits into the Durkheimian mould but also
causes a wave of debates within the discipline of social anthropology.

SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY: INFLUENCE OF DURKHEIM’S SOCIOLOGY ON

RADCLIFFE BROWN’S METHODOLOGY IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Sociology and Social Anthropology have been always seen to have an intricate relationship. Both the disciplines
have a rich historical background and have successfully established their autonomy. Many thinkers have often
claimed both the disciplines to be the same as the borders do seem porous, however their contributions and
interdependence does not entirely blur the boundaries, the two disciplines in many aspects are very different
from each other. One of the major schools in Sociology and Social anthropology alike is functionalism.
Positivists like Comte, Spencer and Durkheim have immensely influenced social anthropology and we can see
that in the works of Malinowski and Radcliffe Brown, two most revolutionary anthropologists. It is hard to
confine each of these disciplines to a particular kind of methodology and it would be an unnecessary task as it is
not unknown that almost all disciplines are interdependent in some sort of way. And thus, the scope of this paper
is to understand how Radcliffe Brown’s methodology not only sort of fits into the Durkheimian mould but also
causes a wave of debates within the discipline of social anthropology. The following text shall only look at
Brownian structural-functionalism with the motive to show how Brown used Durkheim’s theory and
accommodated and applied it in his anthropology, he was not in full agreement to all of Durkheim’s arguments
however some significant arguments made by Brown are essentially Durkheimian. Brown’s own unique
contribution to the study of society should be understood against the background of his inclination to positivism,
but one must not mistake it to be solely and wholly based on the functional theory.
Functionalism is a broad term that encompasses both functional theory and structural-functional theory.
Bronislaw Malinowski can be said to belong to the former whereas Radcliffe Brown can be said to belong to the
structural-functional school, however such distinction has never been rigid. Most of the followers of Brown use
the label of structural-functionalism to distinguish their works from those of Malinowski and his followers,
which is essentially, functional. Brown himself had contentions with being called a functionalist and insisted
upon his discipline to be called “comparative sociology” (Barnard, 2000). He also went so far to claim himself
an anti-functionalist if Malinowski was to be called a functionalist and always held his views in conflict with
Malinowski’s. According to him anthropology had two origins, one was around 1748 when Montesquieu
published his Spirit of Laws and the other around 1870 during evolutionist thinking, the prevailing sociological
tradition respected the perspective that society is structured and has systems that work together in harmony that
sustain the society’s existence. Brown was particularly inclined to Durkheimian school of sociology, so much so
that Brown is even known to have brought Durkheim in British anthropology. Brown strongly asserted for a
single social science and rejected the idea of a science for culture.
His productive years were dedicated to apply Durkheim’s theories to the findings of his ethnography (Kuper,
1983, p.37). In shifting to a new paradigm, Brown was actually a part of a larger movement in Britain and it was
clear that this rapid conversion indicated towards the need for a scientific method in social anthropology. The
new outlook towards societies required an in-depth analysis of societies and to see them as ordered, and for
Brown what was a major attraction in French Sociology was that “Durkheim’s sociology contained an
essentially optimistic vision of the possibility of man’s self-realization in a properly ordered society…” (Kuper,
1983, p.39) which Brown sought to use in his anthropological studies. By the accounts of close relatives and
colleagues one comes to the conclusion that Radcliffe Brown was in real life as formal as he was in his
theoretical stance. He was always concerned with rules and rituals and lacked the sympathies that a
Malinowskian position would require, but his clarity and objectivity gave social anthropology a new way of
building strong analyses that Malinowski clearly lacked.
Brown’s work can be seen to be an amalgamation of Durkheim’s sociology and the evolutionist tradition of
Spencer, according to him “Cultures (later societies) like organisms evolved in the direction of increasing
diversity and complexity. Evolution in this context was sharply distinguished from progress” (Kuper, 1983,
p.49) which involved a value judgment. Although he never insisted upon taking the functional argument
literally, societies are not literally like organisms because societies do not experience birth or death, what his
arguments insisted upon was the usage of similar methods that during that time were adopted by the natural
sciences in the study of societies. In Durkheim’s study of social facts he argues that a social fact is an objective
phenomena and one needs to understand social facts in relation to other social facts, in the same way, Brown
held the view that a custom or a ritual could not be understood in its own, in itself it had no significance and it
has to be understood in relation to other things. These customs and rituals cannot be reduced to other kinds of
reality like Malinowski did because their existence is independent of the individual, they exist before one’s birth
and continue to do so after one’s death. He also argued that anthropological theory must now move away from
searching the origins of societies and instead must look at their “‘contemporary origin’, function of an institution
must be found in its present use” (Kuper, 1983, p.50). Thus Brown was most interested in the running theme of
Durkheim’s Division of Labour in Society (Durkheim, 1893) which was social relationships.
A Natural Science of Society (Brown, 1957) is a text that is essentially, notes taken down day by day by a
secretary of Radcliffe Brown’s lectures and seminars and offers an illuminating insight into his theoretical
position. He in response to claims of being called a functionalist clears out in his lectures and his essay On the
Concept of Function (Brown, 1935) how he defines function. He argues that when the concept of function is
used in social science it involves the assumption that “there are necessary conditions of existence for human
societies just as there are for animal organisms, and that they can be discovered by the proper kind of scientific
enquiry” (Brown,1935, p.394) , these necessary conditions are fulfilled by the constituent elements of a society
who form the structure of the particular society, thus social structure is not an abstraction but “the sum total of
all social relationships of all individuals at a given moment of time” (Kuper, 1983, p.53). Just as in an organism
the continuity of its functioning preserves its structure, the same is observable in human societies and just as
changes in the constituent elements of an organism like elimination or addition of cells does not change the
structure of the organism, changes in the constituent elements of a human society does not affect its structure.
Some members may leave the social structure, a few may join yet the structure remains the same and continues
to exist. He takes up the example of Australian tribes that change their structural type because of the
overwhelming presence of white people’s calamitous forces. Just as the “life process” functions to preserve the
organism’s structure, the social life functions to preserve the social structure (Brown, 1935, p.396). But as far as
the organic analogy is concerned, unlike animal organisms social structure can only be observed in its
functioning, so the first point is, he argues, that social morphology cannot be investigated independent of social
physiology. The second point is that unlike animal organisms, human societies can and do change their
structural types. A deer does not become a horse, but human societies over the course of time change their
structural type.
To understand this facet of Brownian structuralist-functionalism and clearly trace its roots in French sociology
one only needs to look at his kinship terminology. According to him to understand societies two methods could
be used, conjectural history and structural analysis. Conjectural history sought to find out origins of societies
and its elements, and by looking at Brown’s works one can tell he wasn’t all fond of this particular method, he
argues that his contention is not with history but with the fact that it is conjectural. For instance while presenting
his argument on kinship terminology and individual behaviour he holds that the importance of terminology can
be seen in existing social facts, he also argued that the origin of customs cannot be rediscovered because the
origins of almost everything is lost in prehistory, and so their meaning based on their history is not fruitful.
Their meaning then can only be derived by looking at them in the present scenario. According to him kinship
systems have to be sociologically analysed as systems because within it we see “complex relation of
interdependence” (Brown, 1941, p.3), this is the structural analysis. As mentioned before like an animal
organism even societies have certain basic needs which Brown terms ‘coaptation’ (Brown) , which means
mutual adjustment of interests, now this necessarily involves “standardization of behaviour” (Kuper, 1983, p.
55) and this is carried out by culture. His notion of the function of culture can be seen to run parallel with
Durkheim’s notion of collective conscience. And just like the latter, the former too cannot be established
independently of the society. For him culture was synonymous to socialization and cannot be seen as a mere
feature of a social system.
In light of the afore mentioned passages, one may now ask how and where exactly does one see Brown’s
inclination to Durkheim’s sociology and the latter’s effect on the former’s methodology, or atleast for a more
condensed argument, that would convey clearly the points where we see Durkheim’s sociology in Brown’s
social anthropology, in response of which it can be said that like Durkheim, Brown sought to understand
systems and institutions and their meanings in their existence. And in understanding the meaning of their
existence he turned towards figuring out its functions for sustaining itself in the society. Durkheim’s organic
analogy held that society has different parts which are indispensable to each other and perform certain functions
to sustain the society, to maintain solidarity, along similar lines, Brown argued that coaptation ensures that
solidarity within a society is maintained. For his time, holding such a view was revolutionary because
anthropology was essentially historical before this or at the least, it was the dominant approach. Rivers, under
whom Brown did his field study in Andaman too followed a historical method and Brown frequently found
himself in disagreement with his teacher. Older social anthropology relied on psychology whereas Brown’s
approach relies on sociology. According to him studying culture and individuals with a background of
psychology cannot be fruitful because culture is essentially in every individual and has been passed on from
generation to generation, such a study requires a sociological analysis not psychological, as one’s persona is not
his but what has been imposed on him. There is hardly any theory or text that goes unscrutinised, infact there
aren’t any and Brown’s was not an exception. It undoubtedly changed the face of British Anthropology but also
faced a significant amount of criticism. Nonetheless, British Anthropology and Social Anthropology in general
is in debt to Brown’s anthropology,for his contribution is a cornerstone in the development of the discipline, an
endeavour that cannot be forgotten.
REFERENCES
Barnard, Alan (2000). History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge University Press.
Kuper, Adam (1983). Anthropology and anthropologists: The modern British School (2 nd ed.). Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Radcliffe-Brown, A. (1935). On the Concept of Function in Social Science. American Anthropologist, 37(3),
new series, 394-402. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/661962
Segal, R. A. (2002). Durkheim in Britain: the work of Radcliffe-Brown.