FUNZIONALISMO (IN ARTE): V. RAZIONALISMO.
FUNCTIONALISM. — B. Malinowski is regarded as the founder of this ethnological school, originally English; his disciples include R. Firth, A. F.
Richards, R. F. Fortune and M. Mead. For a certain period A. Radcliffe-Brown was considered, together with Malinowski, one of its leaders. In Germany functionalism found a convinced adherent in W. Mühlmann, who was also its best systematizer; Fr. Krause, with his “theory of structure,” may be regarded as an ideal precursor. S. M. Shirokogoroff, S. R. Steinmetz, R. Thurnwald and D. Westermann were linked by Mühlmann to functionalism, but in reality they do not belong to it; indeed, Shirokogoroff attacked Malinowski and his disciples because, in his view, they had reduced ethnological science to practical questions that did not concern it; Mühlmann himself, moreover, acknowledges that they belong to it only to a certain extent.
Functionalism arose as anti-historical, but later also felt the need for the historical school. Malinowski and his disciples remained at the first stage of functionalism; Radcliffe-Brown, on the other hand, went beyond II. Indeed, speaking of the concept of function in social life, he says that between the two schools, historical and functional, “there need not be a conflict, but only a difference. There is not, and there cannot be, a conflict between functional theory and the view that every culture, every social system, is the final result of a unique series of historical events... The two kinds of explanation do not oppose one another, but complement one another. I see no reason why the two kinds of studies, historical and functional, should not be conducted alongside one another in perfect harmony.” Mühlmann and A. Lasser hold the same view. The first stage of functionalism is easily understood if one reflects that it arose from consideration of the phenomena produced among Oriental and primitive peoples by the contact of their civilization with Western European-American civilization, especially in the colonial lands of Africa and Oceania—phenomena involving orientation toward new forms of civilization and adaptation. Mühlmann later attached such importance to these phenomena that he wished to judge by them all the countless contacts that have so far occurred throughout the earth between different peoples and their various civilizations, seeing in them an experiment that makes it possible to grasp both the characteristics and the whole of civilization. This constitutes “the search for the model,” as will be seen, in Mühlmann’s functionalist methodology, and it inspires his very definition of ethnology: the science of the forms and processes by which peoples and their human beings, orienting themselves toward a new form of civilization, adapt to their geographical, social and cultural environment, according to diffusion in space and depth in time.
The functionalist conception of civilization was developed especially by Malinowski, who regards civilization as a whole, in which the parts are related to the whole and determined by II. The manner in which the relations between part and whole are indicated, and the qualities of function or structure, differ in each civilization. This civilization and its individual systems or elements are known in their essence according to the method of the reciprocal illumination of the part by the whole. Mühlmann distinguishes three environments in relation to man: the natural or geographical environment, the social environment and the cultural environment. Man and the environment are not, in relation to one another, two invariable quantities, but variable ones; they stand in a specific functional dependence. Here “functional” is taken in the strict sense: a variation in one of the two quantities entails a variation in the other quantity (it is clear how false this principle is in the relationship between the natural environment and man, except when it concerns shepherds with their herds of livestock). Since the term “function” has many meanings, Mühlmann proposes abolishing it in ethnology; he often uses the term “structure,” or both terms together.
Mühlmann divides all ethnological facts into two groups: intentional and functional. Intentional facts are those that indicate historical life as consciousness;
functional facts are those that understand it as activity; thus, according to the interpretation of Fr. Schmidt, intentional facts would be the conceptions that the indigenous peoples have of their own civilization, while functional facts would be the facts of that same civilization as they actually exist in the external world. He presents two criteria for making this classification: the criterion of historical value for intentional data and the criterion of recurrence for functional data.
For Mühlmann civilization is life itself; therefore he does not want one to speak of “cultural elements” or “cultural monuments,” as Ratzel had already expressed it, preserved in our museums. The monuments and the cultural material of our museums are not symbols of something dead, but indices of processes and regular forms of life, whose qualities carry one far beyond the objects themselves and introduce one into the whole civilization to which they belong. It is understandable that functionalism should attach the greatest importance to psychology in all its branches, especially the psychology of the person, and to sociology, so much so that Mühlmann goes so far as to say that the study of society is logically, though not practically, distinct from the study of culture.
Functionalism recognizes, as has been said, the necessity of historical ethnology. It admits that there is a development in civilization, which occurs in time and therefore belongs to history. “Both aspects,” writes Mühlmann, “that of development and that of history, the functional and the historical, are equally necessary, because the former shows us only the logical possibility, but not its realization, while the latter shows the realization, but not the logical possibility.” According to him, every cultural contact is an essentially historical experimental fact. It differs from the experimental fact of the natural sciences because, in social and cultural human life, there is not only determination but also indeterminacy, not only necessity, but also the participation of the freedom of the human will. Mühlmann therefore places ethnology between history and biology. He points out that there is not only tradition or cultural borrowing between one people and another, but also, within the same people, between one person and another, between one social stratum and another, and from one generation to the next. Thus, up to a certain point, two orders of factors must be distinguished in the history of civilization: internal and external ones. In this cultural tradition from one generation to another or from one people to another, cultural selection takes place, whereby only what is suitable is accepted. Every cultural phenomenon has a temporal course, which is transformation and change. This is normal; what poses a problem, however, is the persistence, with little or no variation, of a cultural phenomenon over a longer period of time; that is, the question arises of the rhythm of time and the manner in which transformation occurs. Comparative study, in fact, of the individual cultural units of a civilization shows their different stages of development; for example, technology, law, and social organization may have reached different stages of development. This, moreover, is irreversible, according to Mühlmann himself. The value of variations must be judged according to the criterion of social, cultural, and historical importance, which presupposes the historical investigation of individual phenomena, followed by research into their historical course in order to arrive at the type. The rhythm of transformation can be established in three ways: 1) by means of written documents; 2) through the connection of archaeological material with ethnographic material in a given place where cultural contact and exchange have occurred; 3) through the traditions of the indigenous people themselves, insofar as they contain memories of the historical events of the people. This is generally the most important means, because it makes it possible to approach more closely the ascertainment of the actual process of cultural transformation. For the comparison of two or more civilizations—a comparison undertaken to discover the concordant features that indicate a common origin and cultural borrowing among the civilizations in question—Mühlmann gives six rules, which cannot be analyzed here. Although he affirms that the search for causality is a profound need of our spirit, which places the cause before the effect in temporal order, he nevertheless rejects, in the name of certain modern scientists, e.g., Heisenberg, the ordinary concept of causality. He wishes to replace historical-cultural certainty with that of statistical correlation, whose results lie between certainty and probability and are obtained through the search for the model or type, as stated above. This theory of Mühlmann’s was rightly judged by Fr. Schmidt to be a ridiculous conception.
In criticizing ethnological theories, Mühlmann makes some very pertinent observations that reveal his uncommon perspicacity. Particularly pertinent is his remark concerning history: that it will subsequently be greatly influenced by ethnology and anthropology, and especially by the functionalist method in the evaluation of historical facts; it will no longer be possible to write a world history without taking into consideration the so-called primitive peoples.
Functionalism in its original form was rejected by Radcliffe-Brown at the solemn meeting of the Royal Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1940. He deplored having been considered a member, and indeed the head or one of the heads, of the functionalist school, which, in his view, does not really exist except as a myth in Malinowski’s mind, whose activity did nothing but cause so many useless discussions in ethnology.
Fr. Schmidt made a profound criticism of functionalism according to the latter’s extensive systematization by Mühlmann, demonstrating its insufficiency and its manifold inaccuracies, particularly the groundlessness and irrationality of his attacks, oversimplifications, and misunderstandings concerning the historical-cultural method. At the same time, however, he acknowledged Mühlmann’s merit in having discovered certain weak points in the other systems and theories and in having introduced some valuable new points of view. In summary, Fr. Schmidt’s judgment is that expressed at the conclusion of his criticism of Krause’s theory of structure in the following two points: 1) the historical-cultural method is right to make use of structural or functionalist theory both for preparatory ethnological work and for establishing certain relations in the coexistence of civilizations in space; 2) structural theory, however, must turn to the historical-cultural method for the solution of the principal question of ethnology, namely, to attain greater depths of time, going back to the origins, and therefore deeper causal sequences.