Durkheim’s Functionalism and AgencyIn this paper I want to examine the role of functionalism in Durkheim’s
thought to see how it shapes an anthropological approach to the study
of people in the early part of the 20th century. After
examining and critiquing his formulation, I want briefly to contextualize
his work in the understandings of functionalism of the other authors
we read this week. I also want to examine the wider implications of
Durkheim’s work as an anthropological expression of a kind of general
anthropological theory. What are its limitations and the implications
of these limitations? In the attempt to articulate a comprehensive
theory of the study of people, I want to suggest that functionalism
as an anthropological lens gives short shrift to both the concept
of agency[1]
- loosely defined as individual choice, the ability to choose, and
causal power - as well as the process of symbolization which may be
both functionally related and unrelated to the integration of the
group. Throughout his career, Durkheim suggested
that social phenomena are irreducible to the level of the individual
or individual psychology. Durkheim was reacting against the idea that
had long influenced thinkers - that individuals’ wills contributed
to social processes and that society “is no more nor less than what
man makes of it.”[2]
Inherent in this position is a reaction against the role of human
agency in shaping society, which, I think, is questionable. As Hatch
writes, “Durkheim maintained that for a science of society to exist
it must study its own subject matter, but also that this subject matter
must be resistant or irreducible to the human will.”[3] By arguing that the social sciences must address
a body of data governed by its own principles or causal forces, Durkheim’s
perspective seems to privilege the sociologist or anthropologist as
an interpreter or constructor of representations of social processes,
who thus might exercise choice in representing aspects of social processes.
Durkheim’s own subjectivity contributed to shaping his understanding
of the irreducibility of social phenomena. Ironically, while Durkheim argues against
the role of the individual influencing or shaping the collective ideas
of a group - “[t]he individual can no more create collective beliefs
and practices than he can a live oak tree”[4] – one could argue
that Durkheim, himself, created collective beliefs and practices concerning
the nature of social processes and the study of collective representations.
“According to Durkheim, cooperation and cohesion in society are brought
about because people are controlled by a system of beliefs and sentiments
– a collective consciousness – which contains their natural egoism.”[5]
Durkheim’s dualistic portrayal of the individual in contradistinction
to social processes and his adamant, negative understanding of the
role of individual will – he “was opposed to deriving social phenomena
of any kind from self-interest or personal expedience”[6] - in shaping collective
ideas of the group, at least among so-called ‘primitive’ peoples,
reflected his standpoint that social processes were irreducible in
any way. In so doing, however, he shaped a body of social scientific
thought and lenses that are often engaged today, in one way or another. Functionalism, for Durkheim, meant the contribution which a social fact makes to the needs
(besoins) of society (1893:49; 1895a:95). Expressed another
way, the function of a phenomenon is its role in the establishment
of general harmony in society (1895a:97).[7] Inherent in
this conception of Durkheim’s functionalism are at least three assumptions,
engendered by his conception that collective social processes are
distinct from the individual, which bear examination: 1) social facts
are products of subjective observers and are therefore quite difficult
to objectively ‘get at;’ 2) the interdependent link between a ‘social
fact’ and an integrative conception of ‘general harmony in society’
presumes that the anthropologist subjectively ‘perceives’ this ‘objective
social fact’ and 3) that societies have boundaries, among other things.
All of these assumptions raise questions about the ‘integrity’ of
social facts. Durkheim’s functionalism specifically
did not include questions of conscious intention in functional explanations
“for he felt that the issue of intention is too subjective for scientific
treatment.”[8] While recognizing
the limitations of the scientific study of intention, Durkheim’s positing
of a sharp distinction between collective representations and the
individual negates the possibility of the individual’s will as a useful,
functional element of social phenomena. Presumably, collective representations
are understood by the student of social phenomena (the social scientist)
because they are voiced by individual members of the group thus giving
expression to the collective beliefs. For Durkheim, the disjunction
between “the objective usefulness or role of a social phenomenon,
(not the purpose of that social fact as conceived by the members of
society)”[9]
– which is Durkheim’s understanding of the purpose of functional analysis
- and its articulators seems unexamined, a potential methodological
flaw. In addition, Durkheim seems to privilege an objectivism on the
part of the social scientist to be able to distinguish the ‘objective’
usefulness of social facts. In “Theories of Man and Culture,” Hatch rhetorically asks why Durkheim felt “compelled to assert that there are social needs and that social facts serve to satisfy them?”[10] and replies “Durkheim was determined to show that collective life has its own nature, a nature which is different from the individual’s.”[11] By somewhat arbitrarily delimiting the concept of collective life to include certain aspects of human practice and not others, and setting up the concept of collective life at the center of his conception of social processes, Durkheim creates a problematic lens. Durkheim’s emphasis on social processes as distinct from the individual led him to believe that “the value of collective life to man is apparently “spiritual” … and not material.”[12] Such a conclusion, for a social scientist, intent on showing social processes as irreducible, but on questionable premises, seems flawed. In this week’s readings, Radcliffe-Brown’s functionalism
emphasizes the way institutions interrelate with societies, but Radcliffe-Brown
departs from Durkheim’s idealist representation of the collective
beliefs as distinct from individual life, or substratum, by examining
the place of ‘on the ground” social structure, that is, of actually
existing, functioning, social relations (corresponding to Durkheim’s
social substratum) as part of social processes, ‘functionally’ analyzable.
In “Taboo,” Radcliffe-Brown, examines the way taboos function as a
“mechanism by which society maintains itself in existence by establishing
certain fundamental social values.”[13]
Gluckman, following Radcliffe-Brown, scrutinizes the role of gossip
and relates it to the functioning of the group in terms of social
structure. And Stocking takes an historical perspective on the development
of functionalism in the early 1900s, arguing that it coincided with
the shift from a diachronic to a synchronic perspective in the anthropological
analysis of societies. Durkheim’s work underpins all of these perspectives
through his focus on collective representations as an irreducible
entity. In the social scientific attempt to understand why people do what they
do, I want to suggest that Durkheim’s functionalism as an anthropological
lens gives short shrift to both the concept of agency as well as the
process of symbolization, which may be both functionally related and
unrelated to the integration of the group. Durkheim’s conception of
functionalism argued for the inclusion of some aspects of social life
– social facts and collective representations – while excluding others
– individual will. But his conception of functionalism, logically,
also suggests a potentially broader application than only ‘social
facts,’ because articulators of social facts, as well as the
choice of what is articulated, are also social phenomena themselves,
which functionalism in its broadest sense might take into consideration.
By eliminating certain aspects of social phenomena, Durkheim arbitrarily
frames functionalism in a way that contradicts what it might otherwise
entail. On the other hand, functionalism as a broad, encompassing
theory, explaining all aspects of social phenomena, objective and
subjective, has little utility, for it explains everything and nothing
at all. Anthropologists, exercising social scientific agency, have
subsequently made symbolic sense of it, but only by delimiting certain
aspects of functionalism. References Hatch,
Elvin. 1973. Theories of Man and Culture. N.Y., Columbia Gluckman,
Max. 1963.
“Gossip and Scandal” Current Anthropology Vol. 4 Honderich, Ted, ed. 1995. Oxford Companion to Philosophy.
Oxford: Oxford. Radcliffe-Brown,
A. R. 1965. “Taboo.” In William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, Reader
in Comparative Religion. N.Y., Harper & Row, pp. 112-23 Stocking,
George W., Jr. 1984. “Radcliffe-Brown and British Social Anthropology”
From George W. Stocking, ed., Functionalism Historicized:
Essays on British Social Anthropology History of Anthropology,
vol. 2 Madison: U of Wisconsin Press [1] Honderich, 1995. Agent – “person (or other being) who is the subject when there is action. A long history attaches to thinking of the property of being an agent as (i) possessing a capacity to choose between options and (ii) being able to do what one chooses. Agency is then treated as a causal power. Some such treatment is assumed when ‘agent-causation’ is given a prominent role to play in the elucidation of action.” [2] Hatch, p. 166 [3] Hatch, p. 167 [4] Hatch, p. 168 [5] Hatch, p. 169 [6] Hatch, p. 169 [7] Hatch, p. 198-199 [8] Hatch, p. 198 [9] Hatch, p. 198 [10] Hatch, p. 201 [11] Hatch, p. 201 [12] Hatch, pp. 201-202 |