ABSTRACT
In Europe, and more particularly in England, social anthropology became on the whole the study of social relations in primitive societies, and later in more complex ones, and in this respect is hardly distinguishable from general sociology. In America, the study of cultures persisted, that is to say anthropologists studied the entire body of custom in a society, much attention being paid to the history of cultures. This chapter reviews the salient features of the development of both social and cultural anthropology with the intention of showing the ways in which they have been able to exert this influence. Functionalism is a dominant movement in social anthropology and one which has had a great effect on sociology generally. In social anthropology this came to be seen as a study of social institutions, and in cultural anthropology as a study of culture traits; but later attention was directed to the patterning of traits.
