STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETY STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETY Essays and Addresses by A. R. RADCLIFFE-BROWN PROFESSOR ElOERITUS OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY With a Foreword by E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARD PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY, OXFORD UNIVERSITY and FRED EGGAN PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, CHICAGO UNIVERSITY THE FREE PRESS GLENCOE, ILLINOIS 1952 : Acknowledgment for permission to print the essays and addresses in this volume is hereby made to the following The South African Association for the Advancement of Science, the Iowa Law Review, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the International African Institute, the Fourth Pacific Science Congress, the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, the American Anthropological Association and the Macmillan Co., New York. COPYRIGHT PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS ABERDEEN FOREWORD PROFESSOR Radcliffe-Brown has never had much regard for what he calls ' the odd things that I have written ' from time to time ; his major interest has been in conveying ideas directly to students and colleagues by personal contacts. In this he has been eminently successful. He has taught social an- thropology at Cambridge, London, Birmingham, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Sydney, Yenching, Oxford, Sao Paulo, Alexandria and Grahamstown, and in each of these places he is remembered with affection and respect. The indebtedness of his students has been shown in two collections of essays—one American and one English—w-ritten in his honour. And there has hardly been a book or article on social anthropology published during the last quarter of a century which does not illustrate, directly or indirectly, his teaching. An examination of the essays in this volume will suggest that his writings have been just as influential as his personal contacts. He has not, considering that he has been engaged in teaching and research in social anthropology for almost fifty years, written as much as most persons of his academic eminence. What he has written, however, has been faultless. We do not mean by this that we necessarily accept his methods or conclusions in detail, but rather that the point of view he expresses could not have been better expressed. Each of the essays is perfect in conception and in expression, and they are tied together by a consistency and direction which is rare in modern anthropology. We believe that the publication of these essays will be of value for several reasons. In the first place, they show the development of the thought of a distinguished anthropologist for the last twenty-five years, and at the same time illustrate some of the more important changes in the orientation of social anthropology, with which Professor Radcliffe-Brown was so intimately associated during this period. These essays have also demonstrated their value in the training of graduate students in our major centres for social anthropology. ^The individual papers are widely spread in time and place, and frequently &74:0 -0 VI stkuctuul: and i-unction in primitive society difHcult to consult. We feci that in presenting this collection of essays we are not only showing our esteem for Professor RaciclifTc-Rrown, but arc also providing a book which will be valualilc to students of social anthropology for a long time to come. E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARD. FRED EGGAN. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE -^ '^ — Introduction i I The Mother's Brother in South Africa 15 ^^ZH II Patrilineal and Matrilineal Succession 32 ^35" III The Study of Kinship Systems 49 i<^^i IV On Joking Relationships 90 i<^^Q V A Further Note on Joking Relationships 105 \^M^ VI The Sociological Theory of Totemism 117 i1i9 VII Taboo 133 1^3^ VIII Religion and Society 153 i^^-J.r IX On the Concept of Function in Social Science 178 i35 X On Social Structure — 188 ' XI Social Sanctions 205 /?^3 :I Primitive Law 212 i^S3 INTRODUCTION THE papers reprinted here are occasional papers in the fullest sense of the term ; each of them was written for a particular occasion. They do, however, have some measure of unity as being written from a particular theoretical point of view. What is meant by a theory is a scheme of interpretation which is applied, or is thought to be applicable, to the under- standing of phenomena of a certain class. A theory consists of a set of analytical concepts, which should be clearly defined in their reference to concrete reality, and which should be logically connected. I propose, therefore, by way of introduction to these miscellaneous papers, to give definitions of certain concepts of which I make use for purposes of analysis of social phenomena. It must be remembered that there is very little agreement amongst anthropologists in the concepts and terms they use, so that this Introduction and the papers that follow are to be taken as an exposition of one particular theory, not of a commonly accepted theory. History and Theory The difference between the historical study of social institutions and the theoretical study can be easily seen by comparing economic history and theoretical economics, or by comparing the history of law with theoretical jurisprudence. In anthropology, however, there has been and still is a great deal of confusion which is main- tained by discussions in which terms such as 'history' and 'science' or 'theory' are used by disputants in very different meanings. These confusions could be to a considerable extent avoided by using the recognised terms of logic and methodology and dis- tinguishing between tdto^raphic_an.d nomothetic enquiries. • In an idiographic enquiry the purpose is to establish as acceptable certain particular or factual propositions or statements. A nomothetic enquiry, on the contrary, has for its purpose to arrive at acceptable general propositions] We define the nature of an enquiry by the kind of conclusionstnat are aimed at. I 2 STRIKTURI- AND FUNCTION IN PKIMITIVE SOCIITY Ajjstory, as usually understood, is the study of records and monuments for the purpose of providing knowledge about con- ditions and events of the past, including those investigations that are concerned with the quite recent past. It is clear that history consists primarily of idiographic enquiriesi In the last century there was a dispute, the famous Methodenstreit, as to whether historians should admit theoretical considerations in their work or deal in generalisations. A great many historians have taken the view that nomothetic enquiries should not be included in historical studies, which should be confined to telling us what happened and how it happened. Theoretical or nomothetic enquiries should be left to sociology. But there are some writers who think that a historian may, or even should, include theoretical interpretations in his account of the past. Controversy on this subject, and on the relation between history and sociology, still continues after sixty years. Certainly there are writings by his- torians which are to be valued not solely as idiographic accounts of the facts of the past but as containing theoretical (nomothetic) interpretations of those facts. The tradition in French historical studies of Fustel de Coulanges and his followers, such as Gustave Glotz, illustrates this kind of combination. Some modern writers referJ4? it as sociological history or historical sociolog)'. |n_anthropology, meaning by that the study of what are called the primitive or backward peoples, the term ethnography applies to what is specifically a mode of idiographic enquiry, the aim of which is-to-^ive acceptable accounts of such peoples and their social lifei(Ethnography differs from history in that the ethnographer derives his knowledge, or some major part of it, from direct observation of or contact with the people about whom he writes, and not, like the historian, from written records.] Prehistoric archaeology, which is another branch of anthropology, is clearly an idiographic study, aimed at giving us factual know- ledge about the prehistoric past. The theoretical study of social institutions in general is usually referred to as sociology, but as this name can be loosely used for many different kinds of writings about society we can speak more specifically of theoretical or comparative sociology. When Frazer gave his Inaugural Lecture as the first Professor of Social Anthropology in 1908 he defined social anthropology as that branch of sociology that deals with primitive societies. INTRODUCTION 3 Certain confusions amongst anthropologists result from the failure to distinguish between historical explanation of institutions and theoretical understanding. If we ask why it is that a certain institution exists in a particular society the appropriate answer is a historical statement as to its origin. To explain why the United States has a political constitution with a President, two Houses of Congress, a Cabinet, a Supreme Court, we refer to the history of North America. This is historical explanation in the proper sense of the term. The existence of an institution is explained by reference to a complex sequence of events forming a causal chain of which it is a result. The acceptability of a historical explanation depends on the fullness and reliability of the historical record. In the primitive societies that are studied by social anthropology there are no historical records. We have no knowledge of the development of social institutions among the Australian aborigines for example. Anthropologists, thinking of their study as a kind of historical study, fall back on conjecture and imagination, and invent 'pseudo-historical' or 'pseudo-causal' explanations. We have had, for example, innumerable and sometimes conflicting pseudo- historical accounts of the origin and development of the totemic institutions of the Australian aborigines. In the papers of this volume mention is made of certain pseudo-historical speculations. The view taken here is that such speculations are not merely useless but are worse than useless. This does not in any way imply the rejection of historical explanation but quite the contrary.