ABSTRACT
A social system has at least one characteristic in common with a biological system such as a living being: it is an organized whole made up of units that are themselves organized. The individual is in this respect analogous in the group to the cell in the body. As the body is not healthy unless its cells are healthy, so the converse is true: the cell does not prosper unless the body does. In the same way, sick individuals make a sick society, and a sick society, sick individuals. Classical and medieval social theory was shot through with the notion of social contract. A complicated example of contrast between the social contract theory and the social mold theory is provided by a controversy between two great anthropologists, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, the latter a disciple of Durkheim's. Radcliffe-Brown, an anthropologist as famous and important as Malinowski, levels his criticism, in a little pamphlet called Taboo, at the latter's theory of magic.
