2. Structural- Functionalism
Focus: The organization of society
and the relationships between broad
social units, such as Institutions.
The group is the unit of analysis.
A group could be a
crowd of people in a
movie theater, or the
members of a family
sitting around the
dinner table, what
some call “small
groups”
Abstraction:
4. Structural- Functionalism
Background and History
The early
functionalists
were
anthropologists
(i.e., Levi-
Strauss,
Radcliff-Brown,
Malinowski, and
others).
Claude Levi-Strauss
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
Bronislaw Malinowski
5. Structural-Functionalism
They were seminal thinkers of the middle
1800s who made direct observations of
primitive cultures, theorizing about the
organization of these folk in relation to
Western society. Their theories were
often quite simple and required only a
few assumptions. The point they were
making was this: Individual and group
behavior, more often than not, serves a
FUNCTION for the larger society.