Julian Steward was one of the first Americans to adopt an explicitly materialist view of human behavior and enhanced an awareness of the role played by ecological factors in shaping prehistoric sociocultural systems. Much of Steward’s work sits in a transition period during which there was a substantial amount of change in American anthropology when concepts of culture were diminishing and ecological variables were being considered. Steward had a considerable part of this shift in his later work in which it provided a bridge between traditional concepts of culture and contemporary attitudes that began to consider an ecological perspective (Helms 1978). During this time, he had the greatest respect for archaeological data and the greatest awareness of their potential value for studying problems of human behavior over long periods. Steward teamed up with Clark to promote awareness of the importance of the ecological approach.
He was also a major driving force in the development of settlement archaeology with the help of Gordon Willey and his report of Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Viru Valley, Peru. Steward persuaded Willey to conduct a settlement pattern survey as part of the Viru Valley project. Aerial photos located prehistoric settlements and traces of irrigation systems. Willey’s interpretation ended up taking on a more functionalist view than Steward’s ecological approach. Steward thought that the settlement patterns were evidence of relations between human groups and the natural environment. Willey viewed he settlement patterns as a strategic starting point for the functional interpretation of archaeological cultures. This viewpoint came from his training in culture-history and familiarity with functional processual trends. He posited that the settlement patterns reflected the natural environment, technological abilities of the builders and social interaction and control the culture maintained. He treated settlement patterns as a source of information about many aspects of human behavior (Trigger 2006).
An advantage of using settlement patterns over artifacts is that artifacts are found not where they were used, but where they had been disposed. Remains of buildings, where they survive provide evidence concerning the settings in which human activities were carried out. Willey’s studies revealed that population growth had been associated with the development of more intensive forms of food production, changing distributions of population and more complex forms of social and political organization. He was explaining changes in the archaeological record in terms of internal transformations rather than attributing them to diffusion and migration. Of all the functionalist approaches, settlement archaeology is the closest related to Durkheimian social anthropology because of its focus on inferring patterns of social behavior and its rejection of ecological determinism. Settlement archaeology encouraged archaeologists to study human behavior instead of culture and ethnicity (CITE).
Functionalism reached its peak of influence during the 1940s and 1950s as it declined into the 1960s and 1970s, new movements of phenomenologically inspired approaches, critical theory, structuralism and hermeneutics began. By the 1970s, functionalism had almost fully declined in popularity and utilization among archaeologists and sociologists alike. They were criticized a lot because of their lack of attention towards change and historical process and paid too much attention to structure, harmony and stability (overview).
Functionalism has been critiqued by many by calling it an exceedingly flawed system, since it does not allow for much social mobility and considers that societies remain static. It could not account for social change and conflict as well as ignores inequalities of race, gender, class which cause tension and conflict. A common criticism is that functionalism does not consider agency in that individuals only fulfill the role of society’s needs and do not have their own desires and actions. Holmwood believes that functionalist thought is based on a highly developed concept of action and Parsons based much of his study on individuals and their actions. He did not attempt to explain how these actors exercised their agency in opposition to the socialization of accepted norms, but he certainly had considered agency in some light. Merton’s theory of deviance is another example of attempts to consider agency in functionalist thought. Its downfall is that it does not explain why individuals choose to accept or reject accepted norms and in what circumstances do they exercise their agency. Although functionalist theory is seen to consider some agenic principles, it has considerable limitations in its agency practice (WIKI).
However, its contributions continued to influence anthropologists during that time and even today. The functionalist paradigm had a major influence on disciplines like sociology and anthropology. As a new paradigm, functionalism was presented as a reaction against what was believed to be outdated ideologies. It was an attempt to move away from the evolutionism and diffusionism that dominated American and British anthropology and characterized by culture historians. A shift in focus of the speculative histories and concerns of how customs have developed over time to the ahistorical concerns of how culture existed at one point in time and the social institutions within a functioning society (Langness 1987).
Functional methods gave value to social institutions in that they considered them as active and integrated parts of a social system rather than as innate and custom as ethnologists thought. Both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown may have differed in their interpretation of functionalist thought, but they both contributed to this shift in assumptions made by ethnologists to a better interpretation of social life (Winthrop 1991). Functionalism has also contributed to the concept that traditional customs of culture have been shaped by humans needing to live together harmoniously. This means that interpersonal relationships are a causative force in culture (Goldschmidt 1967). Despite much of the criticisms of functionalism, it has also made significant methodological contributions in which it provided in-depth studies of societies and emphasized detailed and intensive fieldwork. Functionalist fieldwork attempted to refute ideas of prehistoric groups as savages or simple-minded, prehistoric customs are superstitious, and prehistoric societies are not organized and chaotic.
Functionalism also gave inspiration to Binford and his new Archaeology, also called Processualism, which was seen as a break from the past and a better way to do archaeology. It was seen as the antithesis of culture history which sought to begin explaining the archaeological record and no longer creating cultural chronologies, which was grounded in functionalist trends. Binford’s goal was to explain the full range of similarities and differences in cultural behavior by relating human behavior to functionally integrated cultural systems. Culture historians believed processualism to be a continuation of functionalism, while processualists saw it as a new way to present archaeological data. Processualists were essentially asking the same questions of functionalists, but doing the methodology different (Trigger 2006). It also took functionalist’s deductivism, generalizations, and quantitative scientific objectivity and expanded on it. Conclude by giving quick overview of people and their beliefs.
In fact, what came to be identified as sociological functionalism, did not develop in the way proposed by Merton, but as a single, all embracing theoretical system as set out by Talcott Parsons. Although, as we shall see, Merton’s argument about middle-range theory can be read as a criticism of Parsons, there is a crucial ambiguity in his own position. It is not simply that he suggests that middle-range theory may converge with an all-embracing scheme. The further elaboration of his critique of anthropological functionalism led him directly onto the terrain occupied by Parsons, that of the relationship between the intentions of actors and the objective consequences of their actions (Holmwood 2005).
Further criticisms have been levelled at functionalism by proponents of other social theories, particularly conflict theorists, Marxists, and feminists.
