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chronological order. Then there came the matriarchal society and the last form of family
is the patriarchal one where men took the charge of economy and politics (Scupin and
Shrichakradhar.com
DeCorse, 2012).
Even after these criticisms, evolutionists can be credited for introducing systematic
thinking in the field of anthropology and these thinking helped the next generation
anthropologists to get advanced in their endeavors.

Q2. Explain the classical theoriesof social anthropology.

Ans. Emile Durkheim was a well-known sociologist famous for his views on the
structure of society and the father of functionalism began his career as an evolutionist
and his analysis of the religion of the Australian Aborigines was to look for an original
religion that could be seen as the beginning of religions of human society.According to
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them Functionalism emphasizes a societal equilibrium. If something happens to disrupt
the order and the flow of the system, society must adjust to achieve a stable state.
According to Durkheim, society should be analyzed and described in terms of functions.
Society is a system of interrelated parts where no one part can function without the
other. These parts make up the whole of society. If one-part changes, it has an impact on
society as a whole. For example, the state provides public education for children. The
family of the children pays taxes, which the state uses for public education. The children
who learn from public education go on to become law-abiding and working citizens, who
pay taxes to support the state.
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown postulated his theory of social structure as an interconnected web
of social relationships, and each component playing its own role in maintaining a state
of equilibrium. Most anthropologists belonging to this school, engaged in showing how
customs and rituals considered strange or exotic were in fact perfectly rational solutions
to problems of actual or potential tensions in the structure of relationships that makes
up society. Thus, a very important contribution of this school was the concept of cultural
relativism, or the idea that nothing is irrational, everything makes sense in the relevant
context. For example, Radcliffe-Brown himself explained the role of customs such as
‘joking relationships’ in maintaining social harmony. Others like Evans-Pritchard
demonstrated the functions of witchcraft, or initiation rituals or other practices in
society. Thus, cultures were no longer seen as ‘high’ or ‘low’ but different and making
sense in particular contexts.
Malinowski revolutionized anthropological methods and fieldwork by instituting the
idea of functionalism and participant observation. His anthropological goal was to
"grasp the natives point of view."/To understand how all societies work. During the First
World War, he was engaged in in-depth collection of data from the people of this island.
He wrote the classic book, Argonauts of the Western Pacific about theTrobriand people.
Till today Malinowski’s method of fieldwork is taken as the prototype for
anthropological data collection. In his view functionalism was a research tool, “the
prerequisite for field-work and for the comparative analysis of phenomena in various

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