R-B was interested in the functioning of the social structure, and instead of putting emphasis on fieldwork, his main interests remained in generalisation and theory. R-B believed that it is only the social system that matters, and the individual members of the society are irrelevant. He argued that social life and biological organisms operate in the same way. In biology cells form organs and these organs function together to keep the whole living creature alive. He saw individual human beings forming institutions in the same way as cells form organs and these institutions form and maintain the whole society. Human beings, as essential units, are connected by a set of social relations into an integrated whole, and these individuals are controlled by norms and patterns. In the same way as cells can be replaced by other cells without any change to the functioning of the whole biological organism, individuals, also, may leave the society or die, and be replaced by other individuals without change to the functioning of the social system.
Structural-Functionalists saw society or culture as a separate entity that exists on its own outside the individual members of the culture. Thus, culture was like a language that one can analyse on its own. Consequently, individuals were of no account and there was no interest in looking at symbols, meaning, or people’s personal experiences.
In 1950s and 1960s anthropologists focused on looking at social structure, which is how people organise into groups. Anthropologists believed that by looking at kinship and marriage systems, they could reveal what was most significant and most relevant about the society studied. They looked at how different kin groups interacted in order to find systematic patterns of rules of behaviour. The aim was to form categories, for example a category of mother instead of looking at a mother called Sandra.
Research methods:
What do structural-functionalists ask?
- Are they patrilineal, matrilineal, inheritage etc.?
- What is the social layout of people?
- One may write down every incidence of a particular phenomenon and trace back their relationship to each other: is this pattern related to social structure?
Looking at kinship and lineage systems became a model for how one can approach and understand tribal societies.
Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973)
After 1950s, R-Bs influence was dramatically reduced and he lost his professorship to his previous student E-P at Oxford University.
E-P had studied with Malinowski. He had also deeply disliked him. EP, nevertheless, got from M the ideas of p-o, and of holistic analysis.
E-P studied the Azande & Nuer in the 1920s and 1930s.
The answer to this question lies in the concept of segmentary lineages, which is probably the most well known finding of EP’s Nuer ethnohgraphy. (And our aim today is to hopefully try to explain to you – and to me - what EP meant by segmentary lineages.)
When studying the Nuer E-P used structural functional analysis, but his views were radically different from R-B. EP thinks that the meaning of anthropological fieldwork is to learn to understand the language and values of the studied people and translate these into scientific terms.
From an outsider’s point of view, lineage is not a separate group of people in the same way as village or a family is. Lineage is an abstract category. All members of a lineage are the descendants of a common ancestor. Even though, lineage is a symbolical abstraction, its membership has got concrete consequences. However, already E-P knew that the Nuer did not always think of themselves as members of a particular lineage. Their social identity was more tied into the local community, the village where they lived, than to their lineage and its common ancestor.
Lineage theory allowed anthropologists to study societies also as a symbolic system, without abandoning the idea that society is a group of social relations.
There are no equivalent words for the terms tribe and clan in Nuer language.
Nuer themselves see or understand clan as a family that expands over generations.
Lineage is referred to with the word buth, which means patrilineal descent. The Nuer word mar refers to relatives, and EP translates this to mean blood relations.
EP was not satisfied with just describing what the Nuer themselves said about lineages, but he felt the need to add things, of which the Nuer were not conscious of. In this way, EP thinks that anthropologist must do more than just cultural dictionaries. The ultimate aim of research is to make a foreign culture sociologically understandable. Sociological knowledge touches areas that the people studied are not normally aware of or able to explain to outsiders – that is the society’s underlying principal structure.
When EP discovered the system of segmentary lineages, he was able to explain how this stateless society was able to come together by thousands of people to accomplish collective purposes, especially warfare.
When the principle of segmentation was found in many African societies, an organised system emerged from something that first seemed like a social chaos. Many anthropologists have considered segmentation as a form of political organisation, which serves the same functions among ‘tribal people’ as government, church, court system, and army in our society.
References:
Edwards & Neutzling (2003). Functionalism. Department of Anthropology, The University of Alabama:
Moffat, Michael (1999). Introduction to Cultural Anthropology: The Nuer and the Azande: http://icarus.ubetc,buffalo.edu/users/apy106/cultures/azande.html
Nisula, Tapio (1994) Nakoaloja kulttuureihin. Antropologian historiaa ja nykysuuntauksia: Gaudeamus.
Evans-Pritchard: The Nuer
