S3) The Essentials of the Kula

by Bronislaw Malinowski

the role of social institutions in a functionalist perspective?

• social institutions serve the function of maintaining the stability of a society by serving to meet basic biological and psychological human needs

• functionalism: society as a system of interrelated parts that operate interdependently (cause-and-effect-relation)

• skeleton of a culture (laws, rules, social institutions) → flesh and blood of a culture (lived reality, unexpected influences on actual life) → ghost/soul of a culture (opinions, world-views)

• emic NOT ETIC perspective

  • functionalism was created during colonial times and served to give colonial regimes more insight on the socities in order to control them more easily

psychological functionalism (Malinowski)

• cultural institutions’ purpose is to meet the basic physical and psychological needs of people in a society

  • seven basic needs: nutrition, reproduction, bodily comforts, safety, relaxation, movement and growth

• research through in-depth fieldwork (Boas did fieldwork before Malinowski, long-term fieldwork more by accident)

• how individuals pursue their own ends within the constraints of their culture → focus on individuals’ actions in their cultural contexts

• system cannot fully be comprehended from “the inside” (problematic!)

structural functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown)

• cultural institutions maintain the equilibrium and cohesion of a society

• study of the underlying structure of societies and the social laws that governs them

• social laws are derived from the comparative study of different cultures → Radcliffe-Brown was an armchair anthropologist!

• focus on contextless and abstract social structures

• social process = social activity (synchronous, permanently parallel)

• function = impact of activity on structure

• structure= organised interaction of all seperate parts

• social equilibrium as result

what functions does the Kula fulfill? (according to Malinowski)

• psychological function: individuals were able to achieve prestige through their participation

• set up a network of trading partners and allies → provide an increased level of physical security for the participants

• weld together a considerable number of tribes → to from one organic whole/maintain the stability of society

• exchange of wealth & utilities, expression of rank/prestige

• partnership between trade partners → safety in unknown/dangerous environment

• magical ceremonies of Kule → psychological function: reassure individuals in unpredictable situations

Malinowski’s understanding of the individual

• individuals pursue their own self-fulfillment within the limits of their own culture

• individuals seek to fulfill their basic needs

• individuals need is translated into cultural behaviour through the use of symbols, these serve to mold individual behaviour to group standards (interdependent relation)

• the individual cannot objectively analyse the society in which they participate

  • they are aware of their own individual actions and motives but are unable to see their entire system

• the individual is very important within a culture

Malinowski’s understanding of culture/society

• society as a system of interrelated features to meet the seven basic human needs

• cultural beliefs + practices → smooth functioning of society → providing individual biological and psychological benefits

• universal character of culture

• culture = system of objects, actions and mentalities

• interrelatedness of small and big aspects of cultures (e.g. reproduction → kinship order; safety need → political organization, religion; health → hygienic norms)

importance of history to Malinowksi’s way of study vs. BOAS

• history/historical reconstruction only of little importance

• he believed that since the societies they/he studied lacked writing, historical reconstructions were not possible

  • oral history was not seen as a legitimate medium of transmission/tradition/historical accounts

• examind societies as if they were timeless and thus was able to account for social change

vs. BOAS:

• high value of history to determine the cause for changes → investigation of the origins of cultural phenomena from a historical perspective

• current state of a society can only be understood through the study of it’s history

psychoanalytical thinking

• foundation of explaining social structures

• enables us to compare certain aspects to other cultures

importance of ethnography (according to Malinowski)

• the studied societies’ members are unable to see their institutions as big, organized social constructions as well as their sociological functions and implications

  • interview are only partially valuable since their accounts are heavily subjective and focused on personal experiences

• ethnographer has to filter constant, relevant events and accidential, inessential events to find out the laws and rules of the observed structures → importance of immersing oneself in a society for a longer period of time

• important to understand how natives perceive the world

critique on functionalism

• opinion, that people on the “inside” of a culture can’t have an abstract understanding of it is very problematic

• dehistorical approach

• existence of elements that counteract the basic needs but still exist (out of habit)

critique on structural functionalism

• goal was an anthropology as a natural science with provable and predictable rules

• evolutionist approach was maintained

• historical developments were ignored

• individual not of importance, only through it’s position in the whole/in relation to the whole present

• analytical focus on maintaining of the structure seems harmonizing, social conflict is ignored/implicated that it doesn’t happen

  • doesn’t allow the view on conflict to be productive/something that can result in positive change

    • very conservative view

functionalism (Le`vi-Strauss)

• cultural phenomenons can be lead back to universal, often binary mental structures that underlie the human thinking

• universal principles of thought and binary opposition pairs (chaos - order, good - bad)

• identification of comparable structures of (re-)combination

• cultural diversity but also basic structures of mankind (universality of people/mankind)