CHAPTER IX ^1

                           ON THE CONCEPT OF FUNCTION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE


THE concept of function applied to human societies is based on an analogy between social life and
organic life. The recognition of the analogy and of some of its implications is not new. In the
nineteenth century the analogy, the concept of function, and the word itself appear frequently in
social philosophy and sociology. So far as I know the first systematic formulation of the concept
as applying to the strictly scientific study of society was that of Emile Durkheim in 1895. (
Règles de la Méthode Sociologique.)


Durkheim's definition is that the 'function' of a social institution is the correspondence between
it and the needs (besoins in French) of the social organism. This definition requires some
elaboration. In the first place, to avoid possible ambiguity and in particular the possibility of a
teleological interpretation, I would like to substitute for the term 'needs' the term 'necessary
conditions of existence', or, if the term 'need' is used, it is to be understood only in this
sense. It may be here noted, as a point to be returned to, that any attempt to apply this concept
of function in social science involves the assumption that there are necessary conditions of
existence for human societies just as there are for animal organisms, and that they can be
discovered by the proper kind of scientific enquiry.

For the further elucidation of the concept it is convenient to use the analogy between social life
and organic life. Like all analogies it has to be used with care. An animal organism is an
agglomeration of cells and interstitial fluids arranged in relation to one another not as an
aggregate but as an integrated living whole. For the biochemist, it is a complexly integrated
system of complex molecules. The system of relations by which these units are related is the
organic structure. As the terms are here used the organism is not itself the structure; it is a
collection of units (cells or molecules) arranged in a structure, i.e. in a set of relations; the
organism has a structure. Two mature animals of the same species and sex consist of similar units
combined in a similar structure. The structure is thus to be defined as a set of relations between
entities. (The structure of a cell is in the same way a set of relations between complex molecules,
and the structure of an atom is a set of relations between electrons and protons.) As long as it
lives the organism preserves a certain continuity of structure although it does not preserve the
complete identity of its constituent parts. It loses some of its constituent molecules by
respiration or excretion; it takes in others by respiration and alimentary absorption. Over a
period its constituent cells do not remain the same. But the structural arrangement of the
constituent units does remain similar. The process by which this structural continuity of the
organism is maintained is called life. The life-process consists of the activities and interactions
of the constituent units of the organism, the cells, and the organs into which the cells are
united.

As the word function is here being used the life of an organism is conceived as the functioning of
its structure. It is through and by the continuity of the functioning that the continuity of the
structure is preserved. If we consider any recurrent part of the life-process, such as respiration,
digestion, etc., its function is the part it plays in, the contribution it makes to, the life of
the organism as a whole. As the terms are here being used a cell or an organ has an activity and
that activity has a function. It is true that we commonly speak of the secretion of gastric fluid
as a 'function' of the stomach. As the words are here used we should say that this is an 'activity'
of the stomach, the 'function' of which is to change the proteins of food into a form in which
these are absorbed and distributed by the blood to the tissues. ^2We may note that the function of
a recurrent physiological process is thus a correspondence between it and the needs (i.e. necessary
conditions of existence) of the organism.

If we set out upon a systematic investigation of the nature of organisms and organic life there are
three sets of problems presented to us. (There are, in addition, certain other sets of problems
concerning aspects or characteristics of organic life with which we are not here concerned.) One is
that of morphology -what kinds of organic structures are there, what similarities and variations do
they show, and how can they be classified? Second are the problems of physiology -- how, in
general, do organic structures function, what, therefore, is the nature of the lifeprocess? Third
are the problems of evolution or development -how do new types of organisms come into existence?

To turn from organic life to social life, if we examine such a community as an African or
Australian tribe we can recognise the existence of a social structure. Individual human beings, the
essential units in this instance, are connected by a definite set of social relations into an
integrated whole. The continuity of the social structure, like that of an organic structure, is not
destroyed by changes in the units. Individuals may leave the society, by death or otherwise; others
may enter it. The continuity of structure is maintained by the process of social life, which
consists of the activities and interactions of the individual human beings and of the organised
groups into which they are united. The social life of the community is here defined as the
functioning of the social structure. The function of any recurrent activity, such as the punishment
of a crime, or a funeral ceremony, is the part it plays in the social life as a whole and therefore
the contribution it makes to the maintenance of the structural continuity.

The concept of function as here defined thus involves the notion of a structure consisting of a set
of relations amongst unit entities, the continuity of the structure being maintained by a
lifeprocess made up of the activities of the constituent units.

If, with these concepts in mind, we set out on a systematic investigation of the nature of human
society and of social life, we find presented to us three sets of problems. First, the problems of
social morphology -- what kinds of social structures are there, what are their similarities and
differences, how are they to be classified? Second, the problems of social physiology -- how do
social structures function? Third, the problems of development -how do new types of social
structure come into existence?

Two important points where the analogy between organism and society breaks down must be noted. In
an animal organism it is possible to observe the organic structure to some extent independently of
its functioning. It is therefore possible to make a morphology which is independent of physiology.
But in human society the social structure as a whole can only be observed in its functioning. Some
of the features of social structure, such as the geographical distribution of individuals and
groups can be directly observed, but most of the social relations which in their totality
constitute the structure, such as relations of father and son, buyer and seller, ruler and subject,
cannot be observed except in the social activities in which the relations are functioning. It
follows that a social morphology cannot be established independently of a social physiology.

The second point is that an animal organism does not, in the course of its life, change its
structural type. A pig does not become a hippopotamus. (The development of the animal from
germination to maturity is not a change of type since the process in all its stages is typical for
the species.) On the other hand a society in the course of its history can and does change its
structural type without any breach of continuity.

By the definition here offered 'function' is the contribution which a partial activity makes to the
total activity of which it is a part. The function of a particular social usage is the contribution
it makes to the total social life as the functioning of the total social system. Such a view
implies that a social system (the total social structure of a society together with the totality of
social usages in which that structure appears and on which it depends for its continued existence)
has a certain kind of unity, which we may speak of as a functional unity. We may define it as a
condition in which all parts of the social system work together with a sufficient degree of harmony
or internal consistency, i.e. without producing persistent conflicts which can neither be resolved
nor regulated. ^3

This idea of the functional unity of a social system is, of course, a hypothesis. But it is one
which, to the functionalist, it seems worth while to test by systematic examination of the facts.

There is another aspect of functional theory that should be briefly mentioned. To return to the
analogy of social life and organic life, we recognise that an organism may function more or less
efficiently and so we set up a special science of pathology to deal with all phenomena of
disfunction. We distinguish in an organism what we call health and disease. The Greeks of the fifth
century B.C. thought that one might apply the same notion to society, to the city-state,
distinguishing conditions of eunomia, good order, social health, from dysnomia, disorder, social
illhealth. In the nineteenth century Durkheim, in his application of the notion of function, sought
to lay the basis for a scientific social pathology, based on a morphology and a physiology. ^4 In
his works, particularly those on suicide and the division of labour, he attempted to find objective
criteria by which to judge whether a given society at a given time is normal or pathological,
eunomic or dysnomic. For example, he tried to show that the increase of the rate of suicide in many
countries during part of the nineteenth century is symptomatic of a dysnomic or, in his
terminology, anomic, social condition. Probably there is no sociologist who would hold that
Durkheim really succeeded in establishing an objective basis for a science of social pathology. ^5

In relation to organic structures we can find strictly objective criteria by which to distinguish
disease from health, pathological from normal, for disease is that which either threatens the
organism with death (the dissolution of its structure) or interferes with the activities which are
characteristic of the organic type. Societies do not die in the same sense that animals die and
therefore we cannot define dysnomia as that which leads, if unchecked, to the death of a society.
Further, a society differs from an organism in that it can change its structural type, or can be
absorbed as an integral part of a larger society. Therefore we cannot define dysnomia as a
disturbance of the usual activities of a social type (as Durkheim tried to do).

Let us return for a moment to the Greeks. They conceived the health of an organism and the eunomia
of a society as being in each instance a condition of the harmonious working together of its parts.
^6 Now this, where society is concerned, is the same thing as what was considered above as the
functional unity or inner consistency of a social system, and it is suggested that for the degree
of functional unity of a particular society it may be possible to establish a purely objective
criterion. Admittedly this cannot be done at present; but the science of human society is as yet in
its extreme infancy. So that it may be that we should say that, while an organism that is attacked
by a virulent disease will react thereto, and, if its reaction fails, will die, a society that is
thrown into a condition of functional disunity or inconsistency (for this we now provisionally
identify with dysnomia) will not die, except in such comparatively rare instances as an Australian
tribe overwhelmed by the white man's destructive force, but will continue to struggle toward some
sort of eunomia, some kind of social health, and may, in the course of this, change its structural
type. This process, it seems, the 'functionalist' has ample opportunities of observing at the
present day, in native peoples subjected to the domination of the civilised nations, and in those
nations themselves. ^7

Space will not allow a discussion here of another aspect of functional theory, viz. the question
whether change of social type is or is not dependent on function, i.e. on the laws of social
physiology. My own view is that there is such a dependence and that its nature can be studied in
the development of the legal and political institutions, the economic systems and the religions of
Europe through the last twenty-five centuries. For the preliterate societies with which
anthropology is concerned, it is not possible to study the details of long processes of change of
type. The one kind of change which the anthropologist can observe is the disintegration of social
structures. Yet even here we can observe and compare spontaneous movements towards reintegration.
We have, for instance, in Africa, in Oceania, and in America the appearance of new religions which
can be interpreted on a functional hypothesis as attempts to relieve a condition of social dysnomia
produced by the rapid modification of the social life through contact with white civilisation.

The concept of function as defined above constitutes a 'working hypothesis' by which a number of
problems are formulated for investigation. No scientific enquiry is possible without some such
formulation of working hypotheses. Two remarks are necessary here. One is that the hypothesis does
not require the dogmatic assertion that everything in the life of every community has a function.
It only requires the assumption that it may have one, and that we are justified in seeking to
discover it. The second is that what appears to be the same social usage in two societies may have
different functions in the two. Thus the practice of celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church of today
has very different functions from those of celibacy in the early Christian Church. In other words,
in order to define a social usage, and therefore in order to make valid comparisons between the
usages of different peoples or periods, it is necessary to consider not merely the form of the
usage but also its function. On this basis, for example, belief in a Supreme Being in a simple
society is something different from such a belief in a modern civilised community.

The acceptance of the functional hypothesis or point of view outlined above results in the
recognition of a vast number of problems for the solution of which there are required wide
comparative studies of societies of many diverse types and also intensive studies of as many single
societies as possible. In field studies of the simpler peoples it leads, first of all, to a direct
study of the social life of the community as the functioning of a social structure, and of this
there are several examples in recent literature. Since the function of a social activity is to be
found by examining its effects upon individuals, these are studied, either in the average
individual or in both average and exceptional individuals. Further, the hypothesis leads to
attempts to investigate directly the functional consistency or unity of a social system and to
determine as far as possible in each instance the nature of that unity. Such field studies will
obviously be different in many ways from studies carried out from other points of view, e.g. the
ethnological point of view that lays emphasis on diffusion. We do not have to say that one point of
view is better than another, but only that they are different, and any particular piece of work
should be judged in reference to what it aims to do.

If the view here outlined is taken as one form of 'functionalism', a few remarks on Dr. Lesser's
paper become permissible. He makes reference to a difference of 'content' in functional and
nonfunctional anthropology. From the point of view here presented the 'content' or subject-matter
of social anthropology is the whole social life of a people in all its aspects. For convenience of
handling it is often necessary to devote special attention to some particular part or aspect of the
social life, but if functionalism means anything at all it does mean the attempt to see the social
life of a people as a whole, as a functional unity.

Dr., Lesser speaks of the functionalist as stressing 'the psychological aspects of culture', I
presume that he here refers to the 'functionalist's recognition that the usages of a society work
or 'function' only through their effects in the life, i.e. in the thoughts, sentiments and actions
of individuals.

The 'functionalist' point of view here presented does therefore imply that we have to investigate
as thoroughly as possible all aspects of social life, considering them in relation to one another,
and that an essential part of the task is the investigation of the individual and of the way in
which he is moulded by or adjusted to the social life.

Turning from content to method Dr. Lesser seems to find some conflict between the functional point
of view and the historical. This is reminiscent of the attempts formerly made to see a conflict
between sociology and history. There need be no conflict, but there is a difference.

There is not, and cannot be, any conflict between the functional hypothesis and the view that any
culture, any social system, is the end-result of a unique series of historical accidents. The
process of development of the race-horse from its five-toed ancestor was a unique series of
historical accidents. This does not conflict with the view of the physiologist that the horse of
today and all the antecedent forms conform or conformed to physiological laws, i.e. to the
necessary conditions of organic existence. Palaeontology'and physiology are not in conflict. One
'explanation' of the race-horse is to be found in its history -- how it came to be just what it is
and where it is. Another and entirely independent 'explanation' is to show how the horse is a
special exemplification of physiological laws. Similarly one 'explanation' of a social system will
be its history, where we know it -- the detailed account of how it came to be what it is and where
it is. Another 'explanation' of the same system is obtained by showing (as the functionalist
attempts to do) that it is a special exemplification of laws of social physiology or social
functioning. The two kinds of explanation do not conflict, but supplement one another. ^8

The functional hypothesis is in conflict with two views that are held by some ethnologists, and it
is probably these, held as they often are without precise formulation, that are the cause of the
antagonism to that approach. One is the 'shreds and patches' theory of culture, the designation
being taken from a phrase of Professor Lowie ^9 when he speaks of 'that planless hodge-podge, that
thing of shreds and patches called civilisation'. The concentration of attention on what is called
the diffusion of culturetraits tends to produce a conception of culture as a collection of
disparate entities (the so-called traits) brought together by pure historical accident and having
only accidental relations to one another. The conception is rarely formulated and maintained with
any precision, but as a half-unconscious point of view it does seem to control the thinking of many
ethnologists. It is, of course, in direct conflict with the hypothesis of the functional unity of
social systems.

The second view which is in direct conflict with the functional hypothesis is the view that there
are no discoverable significant sociological laws such as the functionalist is seeking. I know that
some two or three ethnologists say that they hold this view, but I have found it impossible to know
what they mean, or on what sort of evidence (rational or empirical) they would base their
contention. Generalisations about any sort of subject matter are of two kinds: the generalisations
of common opinion, and generalisations that have been verified or demonstrated by a systematic
examination of evidence afforded by precise observations systematically made. Generalisations of
the latter kind are called scientific laws. Those who hold that there are no laws of human society
cannot hold that there are no generalisations about human society because they themselves hold such
generalisations and even make new ones of their own. They must therefore hold that in the field of
social phenomena, in contradistinction to physical and biological phenomena, any attempt at the
systematic testing of existing generalisations or towards the discovery and verification of new
ones, is, for some unexplained reason, futile, or, as Dr. Radin puts it, 'crying for the moon'.
Argument against such a contention is unprofitable or indeed impossible.


___________________

^1

This paper, which is based on comments that I made on a paper read by Dr. Lesser to the American
Anthropological Association, is reprinted from the American Anthropologist, Vol. XXXVII, p. 3,
1935, where it accompanied Dr. Lesser's paper.

^2

The insistence on this precise form of terminology is only for the sake of the analogy that is to
be drawn. I have no objection to the use of the term function in physiology to denote both the
activity of an organ and the results of that activity in maintaining life.

3

Opposition, i.e. organised and regulated antagonism, is, of course, an essential feature of every
social system.

____________________

^4

For what is here called dysnomia Durkheim used the term anomia (anomie in French). This is to my
mind inappropriate. Health and disease, eunomia and dysnomia, are essentially relative terms.

^5

I would personally agree in the main with the criticisms of Roger Lacombe ( La Méthode Sociologique
de Durkheim, 1926, ch. IV) on Durkheim's general theory of social pathology, and with the
criticisms of Durkheim's treatment of suicide presented by Halbwachs, Les Causes du Suicide.

^6

See, for example, the Fourth Book of Plato Republic.

^7

To avoid misunderstanding it is perhaps necessary to observe that this distinction of eunomic and
dysnomic social conditions does not give us any evaluation of these societies as 'good' or 'bad'. A
savage tribe practising polygamy, cannibalism, and sorcery can possibly show a higher degree of
functional unity or consistency than the United States of 1935. This objective judgment, for such
it must be if it is to be scientific, is something very different from any judgment as to which of
the two social systems is the better, the more to be desired or approved.

^8

I see no reason at all why the two kinds of study -- the historical and the functional -- should
not be carried on side by side in perfect harmony. In fact, for fourteen years I have been teaching
both the historical and geographical study of peoples under the name of ethnology in close
association with archaeology, and the functional study of social systems under the name of social
anthropology. I do think that there are many disadvantages in mixing the two subjects together and
confusing them. See "The Methods of Ethnology and Social Anthropology" ( South African Journal of
Science, 1923, pp. 124-47).

^9

Primitive Society, p. 441. A concise statement of this point of view is the following passage from
Dr. Ruth Benedict "The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America" ( Memoirs, American
Anthropological Association, 29, 1923), p. 84: 'It is, so far as we can see, an ultimate fact of
human nature that man builds up his culture out of disparate elements, combining and recombining
them; and until we have abandoned the superstition that the result is an organism functionally
interrelated, we shall be unable to see our cultural life objectively, or to control its
manifestations.' I think that probably neither Professor Lowie nor Dr. Benedict would, at the
present time, maintain this view of the nature of culture



                                           CHAPTER X ^1

                                        ON SOCIAL STRUCTURE


IT has been suggested to me by some of my friends that I should use this occasion to offer some
remarks about my own point of view in social anthropology; and since in my teaching, beginning at
Cambridge and at the London School of Economics thirty years ago, I have consistently emphasised
the importance of the study of social structure, the suggestion made to me was that I should say
something on that subject.

I hope you will pardon me if I begin with a note of personal explanation. I have been described on
more than one occasion as belonging to something called the ' Functional School of Social
Anthropology' and even as being its leader, or one of its leaders. This Functional School does not
really exist; it is a myth invented by Professor Malinowski. He has explained how, to quote his own
words, 'the magnificent title of the Functional School of Anthropology has been bestowed by myself,
in a way on myself, and to a large extent out of my own sense of irresponsibility'. Professor
Malinowski's irresponsibility has had unfortunate results, since it has spread over anthropology a
dense fog of discussion about 'functionalism'. Professor Lowie has announced that the leading,
though not the only, exponent of functionalism in the nineteenth century was Professor Franz Boas.
I do not think that there is any sense, other than the purely chronological one, in which I can be
said to be either the follower of Professor Boas or the predecessor of Professor Malinowski. The
statement that I am a 'functionalist' would seem to me to convey no definite meaning.

There is no place in natural science for 'schools' in this sense, and I regard social anthropology
as a branch of natural science. Each scientist starts from the work of his predecessors, finds
problems which he believes to be significant, and by observation and reasoning endeavours to make
some contribution to a growing body of theory. Co-operation amongst scientists results from the
fact that they are working on the same or related problems. Such co-operation does not result in
the formation of schools, in the sense in which there are schools of philosophy or of painting.
There is no place for orthodoxies and heterodoxies in science. Nothing is more pernicious in
science than attempts to establish adherence to doctrines. All that a teacher can do is to assist
the student in learning to understand and use the scientific method. It is not his business to make
disciples.

I conceive of social anthropology as the theoretical natural science of human society, that is, the
investigation of social phenomena by methods essentially similar to those used in the physical and
biological sciences. I am quite willing to call the subject 'comparative sociology', if anyone so
wishes. It is the subject itself, and not the name, that is important. As you know, there are some
ethnologists or anthropologists who hold that it is not possible, or at least not profitable, to
apply to social phenomena the theoretical methods of natural science. For these persons social
anthropology, as I have defined it, is something that does not, and never will, exist. For them, of
course, my remarks will have no meaning, or at least not the meaning I intend them to have.

While I have defined social anthropology as the study of human society, there are some who define
it as the study of culture. It might perhaps be thought that this difference of definition is of
minor importance. Actually it leads to two different kinds of study, between which it is hardly
possible to obtain agreement in the formulation of problems.

For a preliminary definition of social phenomena it seems sufficiently clear that what we have to
deal with are relations of association between individual organisms. In a hive of bees there are
the relations of association of the queen, the workers and the drones. There is the association of
animals in a herd, of a mother-cat and her kittens. These are social phenomena; I do not suppose
that anyone will call them cultural phenomena. In anthropology, of course, we are only concerned
with human beings, and in social anthropology, as I define it, what we have to investigate are the
forms of association to be found amongst human beings.

Let us consider what are the concrete, observable facts with which the social anthropologist is
concerned. If we set out to study, for example, the aboriginal inhabitants of a part of Australia,
we find a certain number of individual human beings in a certain natural environment. We can
observe the acts of behaviour of these individuals, including, of course, their acts of speech, and
the material products of past actions. We do not observe a 'culture', since that word denotes, not
any concrete reality, but an abstraction, and as it is commonly used a vague abstraction. But
direct observation does reveal to us that these human beings are connected by a complex network of
social relations. I use the term 'social structure' to denote this network of actually existing
relations. It is this that I regard it as my business to study if I am working, not as an
ethnologist or psychologist, but as a social anthropologist. I do not mean that the study of social
structure is the whole of social anthropology, but I do regard it as being in a very important
sense the most fundamental part of the science.

My view of natural science is that it is the systematic investigation of the structure of the
universe as it is revealed to us through our senses. There are certain important separate branches
of science, each of which deals with a certain class or kind of structures, the aim being to
discover the characteristics of all structures of that kind. So atomic physics deals with the
structure of atoms, chemistry with the structure of molecules, crystallography and colloidal
chemistry with the structure of crystals and colloids, and anatomy and physiology with the
structures of organisms. There is, therefore, I suggest, place for a branch of natural science
which will have for its task the discovery of the general characteristics of those social
structures of which the component units are human beings.

Social phenomena constitute a distinct class of natural phenomena. They are all, in one way or
another, connected with the existence of social structures, either being implied in or resulting
from them. Social structures are just as real as are individual organisms. A complex organism is a
collection of living cells and interstitial fluids arranged in a certain structure; and a living
cell is similarly a structural arrangement of complex molecules. The physiological and
psychological phenomena that we observe in the lives of organisms are not simply the result of the
nature of the constituent molecules or atoms of which the organism is built up, but are the result
of the structure in which they are united. So also the social phenomena which we observe in any
human society are not the immediate result of the nature of individual human beings, but are the
result of the social structure by which they are united.


It should be noted that to say we are studying social structures is not exactly the same thing as
saying that we study, social relations, which is how some sociologists define their subject. A
particular social relation between two persons (unless they be Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden)
exists only as part of a wide network of social relations, involving many other persons, and it is
this network which I regard as the object of our investigations.

I am aware, of course, that the term 'social structure' is used in a number of different senses,
some of them very vague. This is unfortunately true of many other terms commonly used by
anthropologists. The choice of terms and their definitions is a matter of scientific convenience,
but one of the characteristics of a science as soon as it has passed the first formative period is
the existence of technical terms which are used in the same precise meaning by all the students of
that science. By this test, I regret to say, social anthropology reveals itself as not yet a formed
science. One has therefore to select for oneself, for certain terms, definitions which seem to be
the most convenient for the purpose of scientific analysis.

There are some anthropologists who use the term social structure to refer only to persistent social
groups, such as nations, tribes and clans, which retain their continuity, their identity as
individual groups, in spite of changes in their membership. Dr. Evans-Pritchard, in his recent
admirable book on the Nuer, prefers to use the term social structure in this sense. Certainly the
existence of such persistent social groups is an exceedingly important aspect of structure. But I
find it more useful to include under the term social structure a good deal more than this.

In the first place, I regard as a part of the social structure all social relations of person to
person. For example, the kinship structure of any society consists of a number of such dyadic
relations, as between a father and son, or a mother's brother and his sister's son. In an
Australian tribe the whole social structure is based on a network of such relations of person to
person, established through genealogical connections.

Secondly, I include under social structure the differentiation of individuals and of classes by
their social role. The differential social positions of men and women, of chiefs and commoners, of
employers and employees, are just as much determinants of social relations as belonging to
different clans or different nations.

In the study of social structure the concrete reality with which we are concerned is the set of
actually existing relations, at a given moment of time, which link together certain human beings.
It is on this that we can make direct observations. But it is not this that we attempt to describe
in its particularity. Science (as distinguished from history or biography) is not concerned with
the particular, the unique, but only with the general, with kinds, with events which recur. The
actual relations of Tom, Dick and Harry or the behaviour of Jack and Jill may go down in our field
note-books and may provide illustrations for a general description. But what we need for scientific
purposes is an account of the form of the structure. For example, if in an Australian tribe I
observe in a number of instances the behaviour towards one another of persons who stand in the
relation of mother's brother and sister's son, it is in order that I may be able to record as
precisely as possible the general or normal form of this relationship, abstracted from the
variations of particular instances, though taking account of those variations.

This important distinction, between structure as an actually existing concrete reality, to be
directly observed, and structural form, as what the field-worker describes, may be made clearer
perhaps by a consideration of the continuity of social structure through time, a continuity which
is not static like that of a building, but a dynamic continuity, like that of the organic structure
of a living body. Throughout the life of an organism its structure is being constantly renewed; and
similarly the social life constantly renews the social structure. Thus the actual relations of
persons and groups of persons change from year to year, or even from day to day. New members come
into a community by birth or immigration; others go out of it by death or emigration. There are
marriages and divorces. Friends may become enemies, or enemies may make peace and become friends.
But while the actual structure changes in this way, the general structural form may remain
relatively constant over a longer or shorter period of time. Thus if I visit a relatively stable
community and revisit it after an interval of ten years, I shall find that many of its members have
died and others have been born; the members who still survive are now ten years older and their
relations to one another may have changed in many ways. Yet I may find that the kinds of relations
that I can observe are very little different from those observed ten years before. The structural
form has changed little.

But, on the other hand, the structural form may change, sometimes gradually, sometimes with
relative suddenness, as in revolutions and military conquests. But even in the most revolutionary
changes some continuity of structure is maintained.

I must say a few words about the spatial aspect of social structure. It is rarely that we find a
community that is absolutely isolated, having no outside contact. At the present moment of history,
the network of social relations spreads over the whole world, without any absolute solution of
continuity anywhere. This gives rise to a difficulty which I do not think that sociologists have
really faced, the difficulty of defining what is meant by the term 'a society'. They do commonly
talk of societies as if they were distinguishable, discrete entities, as, for example, when we are
told that a society is an organism. Is the British Empire a society or a collection of societies?
Is a Chinese village a society, or is it merely a fragment of the Republic of China?

If we say that our subject is the study and comparison of human societies, we ought to be able to
say what are the unit entities with which we are concerned.

If we take any convenient locality of a suitable size, we can study the structural system as it
appears in and from that region, i.e. the network of relations connecting the inhabitants amongst
themselves and with the people of other regions. We can thus observe, describe, and compare the
systems of social structure of as many localities as we wish. To illustrate what I mean, I may
refer to two recent studies from the University of Chicago, one of a Japanese village, Suye Mura,
by Dr. John Embree, and the other of a French Canadian community, St. Denis, by Dr. Horace Miner.

Closely connected with this conception of social structure is the conception of 'social
personality' as the position occupied by a human being in a social structure, the complex formed by
all his social relations with others. Every human being living in society is two things: he is an
individual and also a person. As an individual, he is a biological organism, a collection of a vast
number of molecules organised in a complex structure, within which, as long as it persists, there
occur physiological and psychological actions and reactions, processes and changes. Human beings as
individuals are objects of study for physiologists and psychologists. The human being as a person
is a complex of social relationships. He is a citizen of England, a husband and a father, a
bricklayer, a member of a particular Methodist congregation, a voter in a certain constituency, a
member of his trade union, an adherent of the Labour Party, and so on. Note that each of these
descriptions refers to a social relationship, or to a place in a social structure. Note also that a
social personality is something that changes during the course of the life of the person. As a
person, the human being is the object of study for the social anthropologist. We cannot study
persons except in terms of social structure, nor can we study social structure except in terms of
the persons who are the units of which it is composed.

If you tell me that an individual and a person are after all really the same thing, I would remind
you of the Christian creed. God is three persons, but to say that He is three individuals is to be
guilty of a heresy for which men have been put to death. Yet the failure to distinguish individual
and person is not merely a heresy in religion; it is worse than that; it is a source of confusion
in science.

I have now sufficiently defined, I hope, the subject-matter of what I regard as an extremely
important branch of social anthropology. The method to be adopted follows immediately from this
definition. It must combine with the intensive study of single societies (i.e. of the structural
systems observable in particular communities) the systematic comparison of many societies (or
structural systems of different types). The use of comparison is indispensable. The study of a
single society may provide materials for comparative study, or it may afford occasion for
hypotheses, which then need to be tested by reference to other societies; it cannot give
demonstrated results.

Our first task, of course, is to learn as much as we can about the varieties, or diversities, of
structural systems. This requires field research. Many writers of ethnographical descriptions do
not attempt to give us any systematic account of the social structure. But a few social
anthropologists, here and in America, do recognise the importance of such data and their work is
providing us with a steadily growing body of material for our study. Moreover, their researches are
no longer confined to what are called 'primitive' societies, but extend to communities in such
regions as Sicily, Ireland, Japan, Canada and the United States.

If we are to have a real comparative morphology of societies, however, we must aim at building up
some sort of classification of types of structural systems. That is a complex and difficult task,
to which I have myself devoted attention for thirty years. It is the kind of task that needs the
co-operation of a number of students and I think I can number on my fingers those who are actively
interested in it at the present time. Nevertheless, I believe some progress is being made. Such
work, however, does not produce spectacular results and a book on the subject would certainly not
be an anthropological best-seller.

We should remember that chemistry and biology did not become fully formed sciences until
considerable progress had been made with the systematic classification of the things they were
dealing with, substances in the one instance and plants and animals in the other.

Besides this morphological study, consisting in the definition, comparison and classification of
diverse structural systems, there is a physiological study. The problem here is: How do structural
systems persist? What are the mechanisms which maintain a network of social relations in existence,
and how do they work? In using the terms morphology and physiology, I may seem to be returning to
the analogy between society and organism which was so, popular with medieval philosophers, was
taken over and often misused by nineteenth century sociologists, and is completely rejected by many
modern writers. But analogies, properly used, are important aids to scientific thinking and there
is a real and significant analogy between organic structure and social structure.

In what I am thus calling social physiology we are concerned not only with social structure, but
with every kind of social phenomenon. Morals, law, etiquette, religion, government, and education
are all parts of the complex mechanism by which a social structure exists and persists. If we take
up the structural point of view, we study these things, not in abstraction or isolation, but in
their direct and indirect relations to social structure, i.e. with reference to the way in which
they depend upon, or affect, the social relations between persons and groups of persons. I cannot
do more here than offer a few brief illustrations of what this means. Let us first consider the
study of language. A language is a connected set of speech usages observed within a defined
speechcommunity. The existence of speech-communities and their sizes are features of social
structure. There is, therefore, a certain very general relation between social structure and
language. But if we consider the special characteristics of a particular language-its phonology,
its morphology and even to a great extent its vocabulary -- there is no direct connection of either
one-sided or mutual determination between these and the special characteristics of the social
structure of the community within which the language is spoken. We can easily conceive that two
societies might have very similar forms of social structure and very different kinds of language,
or vice versa. The coincidence of a particular form of social structure and a particular language
in a given community is always the result of historical accident. There may, of course, be certain
indirect, remote interactions between social structure and language, but these would seem to be of
minor importance. Thus the general comparative study of languages can be profitably carried out as
a relatively independent branch of science, in which the language is considered in abstraction from
the social structure of the community in which it is spoken.

But, on the other hand, there are certain features of linguistic history which are specifically
connected with social structure. As structural phenomena may be instanced the process by which
Latin, from being the language of the small region of Latium, became the language of a considerable
part of Europe, displacing the other Italic languages, Etruscan, and many Celtic languages; and the
subsequent reverse process by which Latin split up into a number of diverse local forms of speech,
which ultimately became the various Romance languages of today.

Thus the spread of language, the unification of a number of separate communities into a single
speech-community, and the reverse process of subdivision into different speech-communities, are
phenomena of social structure. So also are those instances in which, in societies having a class
structure, there are differences of speech usage in different classes.

I have considered language first, because linguistics is, I think, the branch of social
anthropology which can be most profitably studied without reference to social structure. There is a
reason for this. The set of speech usages which constitute a language does form a system, and
systems of this kind can be compared in order to discover their common general, or abstract,
characters, the determination of which can give us laws, which will be specifically laws of
linguistics.

Let us consider very briefly certain other branches of social anthropology and their relation to
the study of social structure. If we take the social life of a local community over a period, let
us say a year, we can observe a certain sum total of activities carried out by the persons who
compose it. We can also observe a certain apportionment of these activities, one person doing
certain things, another doing others. This apportionment of activities, equivalent to what is
sometimes called the social division of labour, is an important feature of the social structure.
Now activities are carried out because they provide some sort of 'gratification', as I propose to
call it, and the characteristic feature of social life is that activities of certain persons
provide gratifications for other persons. In a simple instance, when an Australian blackfellow goes
hunting, he provides meat, not only for himself, but for his wife and children and also for other
relatives to whom it is his duty to give meat when he has it. Thus in any society there is not only
an apportionment of activities, but also an apportionment of the gratifications resulting
therefrom, and some sort of social machinery, relatively simple or, sometimes, highly complex, by
which the system works.

It is this machinery, or certain aspects of it, that constitutes the special subject-matter studied
by the economists. They concern themselves with what kinds and quantities of goods are produced,
how they are distributed (i.e. their flow from person to person, or region to region), and the way
in which they are disposed of. Thus what are called economic institutions are extensively studied
in more or less complete abstraction from the rest of the social system. This method does
undoubtedly provide useful results, particularly in the study of complex modern societies. Its
weaknesses become apparent as soon as we attempt to apply it to the exchange of goods in what are
called primitive societies.

The economic machinery of a society appears in quite a new light if it is studied in relation to
the social structure. The exchange of goods and services is dependent upon, is the result of, and
at the same time is a means of maintaining a certain structure, a network of relations between
persons and collections of persons. For the economists and politicians of Canada the potlatch of
the Indians of the north-west of America was simply wasteful foolishness and it was therefore
forbidden. For the anthropologist it was the machinery for maintaining a social structure of
lineages, clans and moieties, with which was combined an arrangement of rank defined by privileges.

Any full understanding of the economic institutions of human societies requires that they should be
studied from two angles. From one of these the economic system is viewed as the mechanism by which
goods of various kinds and in various quantities are produced, transported and transferred, and
utilised. From the other the economic system is a set of relations between persons and groups which
maintains, and is maintained by, this exchange or circulation of goods and services. From the
latter point of view, the study of the economic life of societies takes its place as part of the
general study of social structure.

Social relations are only observed, and can only be described, by reference to the reciprocal
behaviour of the persons related. The form of a social structure has therefore to be described by
the patterns of behaviour to which individuals and groups conform in their dealings with one
another. These patterns are partially formulated in rules which, in our own society, we distinguish
as rules of etiquette, of morals and of law. Rules, of course, only exist in their recognition by
the members of the society; either in their verbal recognition, when they are stated as rules, or
in their observance in behaviour. These two modes of recognition, as every field-worker knows, are
not the same thing and both have to be taken into account.

If I say that in any society the rules of etiquette, morals and law are part of the mechanism by
which a certain set of social relations is maintained in existence, this statement will, I suppose,
be greeted as a truism. But it is one of those truisms which many writers on human society verbally
accept and yet ignore in theoretical discussions, or in their descriptive analyses. The point is
not that rules exist in every society, but that what we need to know for a scientific understanding
is just how these things work in general and in particular instances.

Let us consider, for example, the study of law. If you examine the literature on jurisprudence you
will find that legal institutions are studied for the most part in more or less complete
abstraction from the rest of the social system of which they are a part. This is doubtless the most
convenient method for lawyers in their professional studies. But for any scientific investigation
of the nature of law it is insufficient. The data with which a scientist must deal are events which
occur and can be observed. In the field of law, the events which the social scientist can observe
and thus take as his data are the proceedings that take place in courts of justice. These are the
reality, and for the social anthropologist, they are the mechanism or process by which certain
definable social relations between persons and groups are restored, maintained or modified. Law is
a part of the machinery by which a certain social structure is maintained. The system of laws of a
particular society can only be fully understood if it is studied in relation to the social
structure, and inversely the understanding of the social structure requires, amongst other things,
a systematic study of the legal institutions.

I have talked about social relations, but I have not so far offered you a precise definition. A
social relation exists between two or more individual organisms when there is some adjustment of
their respective interests, by convergence of interest, or by limitation of conflicts that might
arise from divergence of interests. I use the term 'interest' here in the widest possible sense, to
refer to all behaviour that we regard as purposive. To speak of an interest implies a subject and
an object and a relation between them. Whenever we say that a subject has a certain interest in an
object we can state the same thing by saying that the object has a certain value for the subject.
Interest and value are correlative terms, which refer to the two sides of an asymmetrical relation.

Thus the study of social structure leads immediately to the study of interests or values as the
determinants of social relations. A social relation does not result from similarity of interests,
but rests either on the mutual interest of persons in one another, or on one or more common
interests, or on a combination of both of these. The simplest form of social solidarity is where
two persons are both interested in bringing about a certain result and co-operate to that end. When
two or more persons have a common interest in an object, that object can be said to have a social
value for the persons thus associated. If, then, practically all the members of a society have an
interest in the observance of the laws, we can say that the law has a social value. The study of
social values in this sense is therefore a part of the study of social structure.

It was from this point of view that in an early work I approached the study of what can
conveniently be called ritual values, i.e. the values expressed in rites and myths. It is perhaps
again a truism to say that religion is the cement which holds society together. But for a
scientific understanding we need to know just how it does this, and that is a subject for lengthy
investigations in many different forms of society.


As a last example let me mention the study of magic and witchcraft, on which there is an extensive
anthropological literature. I would point to Dr. Evans-Pritchard's work on the Zande as an
illuminating example of what can be done when these things are systematically investigated in terms
of the part they play in the social relations of the members of a community.

From the point of view that I have attempted briefly to describe, social institutions, in the sense
of standardised modes of behaviour, constitute the machinery by which a social structure, a network
of social relations, maintains its existence and its continuity. I hesitate to use the term
'function', which in recent years has been so much used and misused in a multitude of meanings,
many of them very vague. Instead of being used, as scientific terms ought to be, to assist in
making distinctions, it is now used to confuse things that ought to be distinguished. For it is
often employed in place of the more ordinary words 'use' 'purpose', and 'meaning'. It seems to me
more convenient and sensible, as well as more scholarly, to speak of the use or uses of an axe or
digging stick, the meaning of a word or symbol, the purpose of an act of legislation, rather than
to use the word function for these various things. 'Function' has been a very useful technical term
in physiology and by analogy with its use in that science it would be a very convenient means of
expressing an important concept in social science. As I have been accustomed to use the word,
following Durkheim and others, I would define the social function of a socially standardised mode
of activity, or mode of thought, as its relation to the social structure to the existence and
continuity of which it makes some contribution. Analogously, in a living organism, the
physiological function of the beating of the heart, or the secretion of gastric juices, is its
relation to the organic structure to the existence or continuity of which it makes its
contribution. It is in this sense that I am interested in such things as the social function of the
punishment of crime, or the social function of the totemic rites of Australian tribes, or of the
funeral rites of the Andaman Islanders. But this is not what either Professor Malinowski or
Professor Lowie means by functional anthropology.

Besides these two divisions of the study of social structure, which I have called social morphology
and social physiology, there is a third, the investigation of the processes by which social
structures change, of how new forms of structures come into existence. Studies of social change in
the non-literate societies have necessarily been almost entirely confined to one special kind of
process of change, the modification of the social life under the influence or domination of
European invaders or conquerors.

It has recently become the fashion amongst some anthropologists, to treat changes of this kind in
terms of what is called 'culture contact'. By that term we can understand the one-sided or
two-sided effects of interaction between two societies, groups, classes or regions having different
forms of social life, different institutions, usages and ideas. Thus in the eighteenth century
there was an important exchange of ideas between France and Great Britain, and in the nineteenth
century there was a marked influence of German thought on both. France and England. Such
interactions are, of course, a constant feature of social life, but they need not necessarily
involve any marked change of social structure.

The changes that are taking place in the non-literate peoples of Africa are of a very different
kind. Let us consider an African colony or possession of a European nation. There is a region that
was formerly inhabited by Africans with their own social structure. Europeans, by peaceful or
forceful means, establish control over the region, under what we call a 'colonial' régime. A new
social structure comes into existence and then undergoes development. The population now includes a
certain number of Europeans -- government officials, missionaries, traders and in some instances
settlers. The social life of the region is no longer simply a process depending on the relations
and interactions of the native peoples. There grows up a new political and economic structure in
which the Europeans, even though few in numbers, exercise dominating influence. Europeans and
Africans constitute different classes within the new structure, with different languages, different
customs and modes of life, and different sets of ideas and values. A convenient term for societies
of this kind would be 'composite' societies; the term 'plural' societies has also been suggested. A
complex example of a composite society is provided by the Union of South Africa with its single
political and economic structure and a population including English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking
peoples of European descent, the so-called 'coloured people' of the Cape Province, progeny of Dutch
and Hottentots, the remaining Hottentots, the 'Malays' of Cape Town, descendants of persons from
the Malay Archipelago, Hindus and Mohammedans from India and their descendants, and a number of
Bantu tribes who constitute the majority of the population of the Union taken as a whole.

The study of composite societies, the description and analysis of the processes of change in them,
is a complex and difficult task. The attempt to simplify it by considering the process as being one
in which two or more 'cultures' interact, which is the method suggested by Malinowski in his
Introduction to Memorandum XV of the International Institute of African Language and Culture on
'Methods of Study of Culture Contact in Africa' ( 1938), is simply a way of avoiding the reality.
For what is happening in South Africa, for example, is not the interaction of British culture,
Afrikander (or Boer) culture, Hottentot culture, various Bantu cultures and Indian culture, but the
interaction of individuals and groups within an established social structure which is itself in
process of change. What is happening in a Transkeian tribe, for example, can only be described by
recognising that the tribe has been incorporated into a wide political and economic structural
system.

For the scientific study of primitive societies in conditions in which they are free from the
domination by more advanced societies which result in these composite societies, we have
unfortunately an almost complete lack of authentic historical data. We cannot study, but can only
speculate about, the processes of change that took place in the past of which we have no record.
Anthropologists speculate about former changes in the societies of the Australian aborigines, or
the inhabitants of Melanesia, but such speculations are not history and can be of no use in
science. For the study of social change in societies other than the composite societies to which
reference has been made we have to, rely on the work of historians dealing with authentic records.


You are aware that in certain anthropological circles the term 'evolutionary anthropologist' is
almost a term of abuse. It is applied, however, without much discrimination. Thus Lewis Morgan is
called an evolutionist, although he rejected the theory of organic evolution and in relation to
society believed, not in evolution, but in progress, which he conceived as the steady material and
moral improvement of mankind from crude stone implements and sexual promiscuity to the steam
engines and monogamous marriage of Rochester, N.Y. But even such antievolutionists as Boas believe
in progress.

It is convenient, I think, to use the term 'progress' for the process by which human beings attain
to greater control over the physical environment through the increase of knowledge and improvement
of technique by inventions and discoveries. The way in which we are now able to destroy
considerable portions of cities from the air is one of the latest striking results of progress.
Progress is not the same thing as social evolution, but it is very closely connected with it.

Evolution, as I understand the term, refers specifically to a process of emergence of new forms of
structure. Organic evolution has two important features: (1) in the course of it a small number of
kinds of organisms have given rise to a very much larger number of kinds; (2) more complex forms of
organic structure have come into existence by development out of simpler forms. While I am unable
to attach any definite meaning to such phrases as the evolution of culture or the evolution of
language, I think that social evolution is a reality which the social anthropologist should
recognise and study. Like organic evolution, it can be defined by two features. There has been a
process by which, ,from a small number of forms of social structure, many different forms have
arisen in the course of history; that is, there has been a process of diversification. Secondly,
throughout this process more complex forms of social structures have developed out of, or replaced,
simpler forms.

Just how structural systems are to be classified with reference to their greater or less complexity
is a problem requiring investigation. But there is evidence of a fairly close correlation between
complexity and another feature of structural systems, namely, the extent of the field of social
relations. In a structural system with a narrow total social field, an average or typical person is
brought into direct and indirect social relations with only a small number of other persons. In
systems of this type we may find that the linguistic community -- the body of persons who speak one
language -- numbers from 250 to 500, while the political community is even smaller, and economic
relations by the exchange of goods and services extend only over a very narrow range. Apart from
the differentiation by sex and age, there is very little differentiation of social role between
persons or classes. We can contrast with this the systems of social structure that we observe today
in England or the United States. Thus the process of human history to which I think the term social
evolution may be appropriately applied might be defined as the process by which wide-range systems
of social structure have grown out of, or replaced, narrow-range systems. Whether this view is
acceptable or not, I suggest that the concept of social evolution is one which requires to be
defined in terms of social structure.

There is no time on this occasion to discuss the relation of the study of social structure to the
study of culture. For an interesting attempt to bring the two kinds of study together I would refer
you to Mr. Gregory Bateson book Naven. I have made no attempt to deal with social anthropology as a
whole and with all its various branches and divisions. I have endeavoured only to give you a very
general idea of the kind of study to which I have found it scientifically profitable to devote a
considerable and steadily increasing proportion of my time and energy. The only reward that I have
sought I think I have in some measure found -- something of the kind of insight into the nature of
the world of which we are part that only the patient pursuit of the method of natural science can
afford.



___________________

                                                                                                 ^1

Presidential Address to the Royal Anthropological Institute. Reprinted from the Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. LXX, 1940.