Abstract
I, Though the functional social theory of Malinowski consists in the analysis of those processes in which basic needs of human organism are satisfied, in its very nature, the derived need-satisfaction processes also form another part of his theoretical subjects, To him culture appears at once as a vast instrumental apparatus for needs-satisfaction, and as an organisation of community members, but both these aspects must be melted away into basic needs-satisfaction processes of individual organism, and this needs-satisfaction defines the concept of function. Therefore, it is, on the one hand, needs referring to in finite extents of culture and human nature, and the organisation of “institution” in his paradigma only roughly conceived on the other, which the criticism by the french school in social anthropology is directed to.
II, Radcliff-Brown standing for the french school, composes his own functional theory upon a series of sociological concepts, among which social system, social structure and social status are characteristic in contrast with those of Malinowski's culture, institution and human organism. The former refers the concept of function to the sociological level of approach, and defined it as a contribution done by some item of social process to the integrative maintenance of a social system, drawing down the function as “basic needs-satisfaction” from the front stage.
III, This contrast forms a polemic polarity in functional anthropology. But it must be modified to make a crucial conceptual means in sociology possessed with the complexity of object-realm and disciplinary tradition. So Merton elaborates the paradigma of functional categories, to which corresponds Parsons' sophisticated structural categories of the social system. Sociologising processes of the functionalism, however, are at the same time to be seen as a remoulding process of the latter to a sociology as a special social science. Parsons manage to deal with the social system starting from the voluntaristic aspect of social action to derive institutionalised value patters by means of combinating 5 pattern-variables, but he does not ask about the contents of those patterned value structure, and the concept of function, therefore, is defined only in accord with the continuum of conformity-deviance showed in mechanisms of socialisation and social control. This tendency to some normative patternism may be apparent in contrast with the concept of functional system in Maclver's sociology. Functional system as particular historical institutional complexes means a considerable modification of above reflected series of functional social theories.
