ABSTRACT
The diversity of cultures can be endlessly documented. A field of human behaviour may be ignored in some societies until it barely exists; it may even be in some cases unimagined. It is a corollary of this that standards, no matter in what aspect of behaviour, range in different cultures from the positive to the negative pole. Some cultures, like some periods of art, fail of such integration, and about many others we know too little to understand the motives that actuate them. But cultures at every level of complexity, even the simplest, have achieved it. Studies of culture like The Golden Bough and the usual comparative ethnological volumes are analytical discussions of traits and ignore all the aspects of cultural integration. The necessity for functional studies of culture has been stressed over and over again by Malinowski. He criticizes the usual diffusion studies as post-mortem dissections of organisms we might rather study in their living and functioning vitality.
