ANTH 3690 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Max Gluckman, Patrilineality, Alliance Theory
Document Summary
Explained social institutions and cultural practices in terms of the needs they fulfilled in the present time: how social institutions function and operate within a society. Against evolutionary explanations: how do the structures maintain cohesion in a society. It is a synchronic approach analyzes a particular phenomenon and a particular moment in time. Social institutions exist to fulfill basic biological and psychological needs. Human beings are social and meet these needs through cooperation. This social aspect gives rise to secondary needs for norms, customs, and beliefs to support the social organization: keeps a form of cohesion throughout a society. Functions to uphold matrilineal system of kinship and descent. I. e. magic: used throughout society where there is uncertainty or danger as it alleviates these feelings. Usually discredited as being overly simplistic, but at his time very formidable as it strayed away from the evolutionary perspective. Taught in many countries (australlia, s. africa, u of chicago, oxford)