Radcliffe brown's concept of social structure and social function
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Radcliffe-Brown, a British social anthropologist, gave the concept of social structure a central place in his approach and connected it to the concept of function. ... His comparative studies of preliterate societies demonstrated that the interdependence of institutions regulated much of social and individual life.
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According to Radcliffe-Brown, the basic requirement of any science is a body of coherent concepts. These concepts are to be denoted by technical terms that are accepted and used in the same sense by all the students of the subject. For instance, physicists use terms like ‘atom’, ‘molecule’, ‘combustion’ etc. Social Structure and Social Organisation As Radcliffe-Brown (1958: 168) puts it, “the concept of structure refers to an arrangement of parts or components related to one another in some sort of larger unity.” Thus, the structure of the human body at first appears as an arrangement of various tissues and organs. If we go deeper, it is ultimately an arrangement of cells and fluids.In social structure, the basic elements are human beings or persons involved in social life. The arrangement of persons in relation to each other is the social structure. For instance, persons in our country are arranged into castes. Thus caste is a structural feature of Indian social life. The structure of a family is the relation of parents, children, grandparents etc. with each other. Hence, for Radcliffe-Brown, structure is not an abstraction but empirical reality itself. It must be noted that Radcliffe-Brown’s conception of social structure differs from that of other social anthropologists. This is organisation at the individual level. Social organisation is for Radcliffe-Brown (1958: 169) “the arrangement of activities of two or more persons adjusted to give a united combined activity”. For instance, a cricket team consists of bowlers, bat-persons, field- persons and a wicket-keeper whose combined activities make the game possible.Radcliffe-Brown illustrates the concepts of structure and organisation with reference to a modern army. To begin with, the structure consists of arrangement of persons into groups: divisions, regiments, companies etc. These groups have an internal arrangement of their own, namely ranks. Thus we have corporals, majors, colonels, brigadiers etc.