ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we turn to the other major school that rejected the Boasian idea of culture as a hodgepodge of unrelated traits: functionalism, which dominated British anthropology from the 1930s to the late 1950s. During this time British social anthropology centered around two powerful and charismatic individuals: Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955; Figure 9.1) and Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942). They and their students were responsible for training almost all the professional anthropologists of Britain until about 1960. Much has been made of the dispute between them concerning their differing interpretations of functionalism (Malinowki’s “psychological” or “pure” functionalism versus Radcliffe-Brown’s “structural functionalism”). Today, we tend to view the differences between them as grossly exaggerated. At the time, the differences were phrased in theoretical terms, but the basic conflict between the two men was at least equally political; that is, they vied for control of British academic anthropology. Given the small resource base of students and funding in Britain at the time, and the enormous egos of the men, it’s not surprising that they were to struggle over differences that to us seem inconsequential. Indeed, the feud between Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski is an excellent illustration of Henry Kissinger’s memorable observation that “academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low.”
