ABSTRACT
The years between 1955 and 1960 witnessed great experimentation in British social anthropology, a period which saw the abandonment of functionalism. By the early 1950s, some anthropologists were trying to accommodate some role for social conflict into functionalist theory. For other anthropologists during this time, accounting for social change meant a shift from the abstraction of social structure to the actual behavior of individuals. During the period of decolonization, as the empire gave way to newly independent countries, a remarkably rapid change took place in social anthropology. Transactionalism considers social behavior as a series of exchanges between individuals who are pursuing their self-interest, a view of behavior in stark contrast with that of structural-functionalism. In developing A Theory of Practice, Pierre Bourdieu denies that behavior is simply an acting out of cultural rules. The ultimate inspiration for this view of social behavior as self-interested exchange was the classical economic theory of the Scottish social philosopher and economist Adam Smith.
