FUNCTIONALISM

The roots of functionalism are found in the work of sociologists Herbert

Spencer and Émile Durkheim. Functionalism considers a culture as an
interrelated whole, not a collection of isolated traits. Like a human being
has various organs that are interconnected and necessary for the body to
function correctly, so society is a system of interconnected parts that make
the whole function efficiently. The Functionalists examined how a particular
cultural phase is interrelated with other aspects of the culture and how it
affects the whole system of the society; in other words, cause and effect.
The theory of Functionalism emerged in the 1920s and then declined after
World War II because of cultural changes caused by the war. Since the
theory did not emphasize social transformations, it was replaced by other
theories related to cultural changes. Even so, the basic idea of
Functionalism has become part of a common sense for cultural analysis in
anthropology. Anthropologists generally consider interconnections of
different cultural domains when they analyze cultures, e.g., the connections
between subsistence strategies and family organization or religion.

The method of functionalism was based on fieldwork and direct

observations of societies. Anthropologists were to describe various cultural
institutions that make up a society, explain their social function, and show
their contribution to the overall stability of a society. At the same time, this
functionalist approach was criticized for not considering cultural changes of
traditional societies.

Structural functionalism was a form of functionalism that arose in Great

Britain. British anthropologist, A.R Radcliffe-Brown, was its most
prominent advocate. In the structural functionalism approach, society, its
institutions and roles, was the appropriate thing to study. Cultural traits
supported or helped to preserve social structures. This approach had little
interest in the individual, which contrasts with the approach advocated for
by Bronislaw Malinowski.

Cultural materialism is a theoretical framework and research method for examining the
relationships between the physical and economic aspects of production and built society, social
organization and social relations, and the values, beliefs, and worldviews that predominate that
society. It is rooted in Marxist theory and is popular in anthropology, sociology, and the field of
cultural studies.
History and Overview
The theoretical perspective and research methods of cultural materialism emerged in the late
1960s and were developed more fully during the 1980s. Cultural materialism was first introduced
and popularized within the field of anthropology by Marvin Harris with his 1968 book The Rise
of Anthropological Theory. In this work, Harris built on Marx's theory of base and
superstructure to craft a theory of how culture and cultural products fit into the greater social
system. In Harris's adaptation of Marx's theory, the infrastructure of society (technology,
economic production, the built environment, etc.) influences both the structure of society (social
organization and relations) and the superstructure (the collection of ideas, values, beliefs, and
worldviews). He argued that one must take this whole system into account if one wants to
understand why cultures differ from place to place and group to group, why certain cultural
products like art and consumer goods (among others) are produced in a given place, and what
their meaning is to those who use them.

Later, Raymond Williams, a Welsh academic, further developed the theoretical paradigm and
research method, and in doing so, helped create the field of cultural studies in the 1980s.
Embracing the political nature of Marx's theory and his critical focus on power and the class
structure, Williams's cultural materialism took aim at how culture and cultural products relate to
a class-based system of domination and oppression. Williams built his theory of cultural
materialism using already existing theoretical critiques of the relationship between culture and
power, including the writings of Italian scholar Antonio Gramsci and the critical theory of the
Frankfurt School.

Williams asserted that culture itself is a productive process, meaning it is responsible for making
intangible things that exist in society, like ideas, assumptions, and social relations. The theory of
cultural materialism that he developed holds that culture as a productive process is part of the
larger process of how a class system is made and remade, and it is connected to the class-based
inequalities that pervade society. According to cultural materialism, culture and cultural products
play these roles through the promotion and justification of certain values, assumptions, and
worldviews within the mainstream and the marginalization of others that do not fit the
mainstream mold (consider the way rap music has been routinely vilified as violent by
mainstream critics, or how twerking is often framed as a sign that someone is sexually loose or
morally deficient, while ballroom dance is held up as "classy" and refined).

Many scholars who followed in Williams tradition expanded his theory of cultural materialism,
which was focused on class inequalities, to include the consideration of racial inequalities and
their connection to culture, as well as those of gender, sexuality, and nationality, among others.

Cultural Materialism as a Research Method

By using cultural materialism as a research method we can produce a critical
understanding of the values, beliefs, and worldviews of a period through close
study of cultural products, and we can discern how they connect to the greater
social structure, social trends, and social problems. Per the framework that
Williams laid out, to do so one must do three things:

Consider the historical context in which the cultural product was made.

Conduct a close analysis of the messages and meanings communicated by the

product itself.

Consider how the product fits within the greater social structure, its inequalities,
and the political power and movements within it.

Beyoncé's Formation video is a great example of how we can use cultural

materialism to understand cultural products and society. When it debuted, many
criticized it for its imagery that appears critical of police practices. The video
features images of militarized police and ends with the iconic image of Beyoncé
laying atop a sinking New Orleans Police Department car. Some read this as
insulting to police, and even as a threat to police, echoing a common mainstream
critique of rap music.

But apply cultural materialism as a theoretical lens and a research method and one
sees the video in a different light. Considered in a historical context of hundreds of
years of systemic racism and inequality, and the recent pandemic of police killings
of black people, one instead sees Formation as a celebration of blackness in
response to the hate, abuse, and violence routinely heaped upon black people. One
can also see it as a completely valid and appropriate critique of police practices
that desperately need to be changed if equality is ever to be possible. Cultural
materialism is an illuminating theory.

Neoevolutionism

The theory of Neoevolutionism explained how culture develops by giving

general principles of its evolutionary process. The theory of cultural evolution
was originally established in the 19th century. However, this Nineteenth-
century Evolutionism was dismissed by the Historical Particularists as
unscientific in the early 20th century. Therefore, the topic of cultural
evolution had been avoided by many anthropologists until Neoevolutionism
emerged in the 1930s. In other words, it was the Neoevolutionary thinkers
who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to
contemporary anthropology.

The main difference between Neoevolutionism and Nineteenth-century

Evolutionism is whether they are empirical or not. While Nineteenth-century
evolutionism used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data,
the new one relied on measurable information for analyzing the process of
cultural evolution. The Neoevolutionary thoughts also gave some kind of
common ground for cross-cultural analysis. Largely through their efforts,
evolutionary theory was again generally accepted among anthropologists by
the late 1960s.

Julian Steward (The United States, 1902-1972)

Julian Steward is an Neoevolutionist who focused on relationships between

cultures and the natural environment. Although Steward learned Historical
Particularism when he was a graduate student of anthropology, his interests
later turned to environmental influences on cultures and cultural evolution.
He argued that different cultures do have similar features in their evolution
and that these features could be explained as parallel adaptations to similar
natural environments.

Steward began his ethnographic career among the Shoshone, a Native

American tribe in the Great Basin in the West of the United States. Through
studying the Shoshone society in the dry harsh environment, he produced a
theory that explained social systems in terms of their adaptation to
environmental and technological circumstances. Steward’s evolutionary
theory, cultural ecology, is based on the idea that a social system is
determined by its environmental resources. Steward outlined three basic
steps for a cultural-ecological investigation. First, the relationship between
subsistence strategies and natural resources must be analyzed. Second, the
behavior patterns involved in a particular subsistence strategy must be
analyzed. For example, certain game is best hunted by individuals while
other game can be captured in communal hunts. These patterns of activities
reveal that different social behaviors are involved in the utilization of
different resources. The third step is to determine how these behavior
patterns affect other aspects of the society. This strategy showed that
environment determines the forms of labor in a society, which affects the
entire culture of the group.
The principal concern of cultural ecology is to determine whether cultural
adaptations toward the natural environment initiate social transformations of
evolutionary change.
Although Steward did not believe in one universal path of cultural evolution,
he argued that different societies can independently develop parallel
features. By applying cultural ecology, he identified several common
features of cultural evolution which are seen in different societies in similar
environments. He avoided sweeping statements about culture in general;
instead, he dealt with parallels in limited numbers of cultures and gave
specific explanations for the causes of such parallels. Steward’s evolutionary
theory is called multilinear evolution because the theory is based on the idea
that there are several different patterns of progress toward cultural
complexity. In other words, Steward did not assume universal evolutionary
stages that apply to all societies. For example, he traced the evolutionary
similarities in five ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China,
Mesoamerica, and the Andes. These cultures shared parallels in development
of form and function because all of them developed in arid and semi-arid
environments where the economic basis was irrigation and flood-water
agriculture. He argued that these similarities stem not from universal stages
of cultural development or from the diffusion of civilization between these
regions, but from the similar natural environments.

Leslie White (The United States, 1900-1975)

Leslie White developed the theory of cultural evolution, which was ignored
by most anthropologists at that time. White’s attempts to restore the
evolutionary topic started in the 1920s, when he was impressed by Morgan’s
model and logic of his evolutionary theory. White decided that whatever
problems the theory had, it could not be dismissed. His main contribution
was that he provided scientific insights to the evolution of culture. He
created a formula that measures the degree of cultural development.

First, White divided culture into three components: technological,

sociological and ideological, and argued that the technological aspect is the
basis of cultural evolution. The technological aspect is composed of material,
mechanical, physical and chemical instruments, as well as the way people
use these techniques. White’s argument on the importance of technology
goes as follows:

1. Technology is an attempt to solve the problems of survival.

2. This attempt ultimately means capturing enough energy and diverting

it for human needs.
 3. Societies that capture more energy and use it more efficiently have an
advantage over other societies.

4. Therefore, these different societies are more advanced in an

evolutionary sense.

Based on the logics above, White expressed the degree of cultural

development by the formula: E x T = C. In this method, E is the amount of
energy harnessed per capita per year, T shows the efficiency of the tools
used for exploiting the energy, and C represents the degree of cultural
development. Presenting this measurement, White asserted that developing
effective control over energy is the prime cause of cultural evolution.

As shown in his theory of cultural evolution, White believed that culture has
general laws of its own. Based on these universal principles, culture evolves
by itself. Therefore, an anthropologist’s task is to discover those principles
and explain the particular phenomena of culture. He called this approach
culturology, which attempts to define and predict cultural phenomena by
understanding general patterns of culture.

School that originated in French and U.S. American philosophy

in the late 1970's, and had a profound influence on various
branches of art and esthetics (architecture, cinema, literature
etc.). In France, postmodernism entered the social sciences
particularly through the work of post-structuralist authors
such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida,
and represented a reaction against the long hegemony
that structuralism, and later, neo-marxism had exerted in
French thinking. In the United States, postmodernism was
instrumental in the formation of so-called Cultural Studies,
and also influenced anthropology heavily. In anthropology, it
was closely associated with the "linguistic (and literary) turn"
in the discipline. The American tradition focused in particular
on problems of anthropological texts (a common source of
inspiration was the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin),
and reflexivity in fieldwork (see for example Rabinow).
American postmodernism is often associated with the cultural
relativism of Boas and the hermeneutic approach championed
by Geertz. Another common inspiration (in the U.S. and
elsewhere) was the German philosopher of language, Ludwig
Wittgenstein.

Postmodernism is often described as an orientation within the

philosophy of science, which denies the possibility of acquiring
"true" knowledge about the world. What we "know" about
society is our own "construction", which we must
"deconstruct". The "great narratives" (development, science,
freedom, romanticism, truth) are heroic myths that
give legitimacy to the existing social order. In anthropology,
such thoughts have in particular influenced our understanding
of reflexivity and our critique of Western hegemonic ideas.

The definition of postmodernism is elastic. A theoretician such

as Fredrik Barth has, for example, claimed that his "process-
analytical" approach (a form of methodological individualism)
was an early form of postmodernism.

Postmodernism has at least two meanings: (a) as a descriptive

label for a specific historical era, characterized by
fragmentation of dominant Western myths and collage-like
assemblages of meaning (in this sense, postmodernism is
related to such terms as "late capitalism" and "post-industrial
society"), and (b) as a term for the above-mentioned academic
and artistic schools, which consider fragmentation and collage
as esthetic or intellectual ideals. It is thus possible to agree
that a postmodern historical era has arrived, without
subscribing to postmodernism as a model of academic inquiry.