ABSTRACT
Viewed against the backdrop of nineteenth-century anthropology, the functional approach of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski constitutes a radical break with the past. Neither Malinowski nor Radcliffe-Brown was content to analyze interdependence of parts within particular societies. Individuals, in Malinowski's view, were not automatons programmed by society, but rather were actively engaged in manipulating rules. In a perceptive review of Malinowski's and Radcliffe-Brown's functionalism, Maurice Mandelbaum has argued that the error they shared was in their "later functionalism," which attempted to construct "global laws" that held for all societies. The inadequacy of assuming that functions go with entire societies rather than with ways of life can be seen in Talcott Parsons's analysis of organizations. In Parsons's scheme, organizations that regulate relations between members of a society, such as parties, courts, and hospitals, are deemed integrative organizations. It might be suggested that Parsons's approach to analyzing organizations is inherent in functional analysis.
