Category:Structural Functionalism

A school of thought in early British Anthropology that combined elements of functionalism (the idea that all parts of a society must serve a function in the society’s survival) with structuralism (the idea that societies are established in part through arbitrary connections between disparate elements). All were influenced by French structuralism, but tended to favour a more empirical and descriptive approach to research, pioneered in Britain by Bronislaw Malinowski, and were more sceptical of the abstract portrait created by French theorists.