ABSTRACT
By the 1950s, functionalism had been the dominant theory in British anthropology for nearly 30 years, but increasingly many anthropologists recognized that it was unable to provide a plausible account of society. The years between 1955 and 1960 entailed great experimentation in British social anthropology, a period which saw the abandonment of functionalism. This rapid demise was due in large part to the changing political circumstances in which ethnographic research was conducted. As suggested by the anecdote above, British anthropologists were heavily associated with colonialism in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Many worked in conjunction with colonial administration in societies that had experienced devastating changes from colonialism. Yet, as we saw in our discussion of African Political Systems, structural functionalism treated these cultures as if they were unchanging and as if they were isolated entities, having little or no connection to the surrounding colonial societies of which they were a part.
