Functionalism

functionalism, in anthropology and sociology

functionalism, in anthropology and sociology, a theory stressing the importance of interdependence among all behavior patterns and institutions within a social system to its long-term survival. It was supported by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in the late 19th cent., a reaction against the evolutionary speculations of such theorists as E. B. Tylor. Durkheim sought to comprehend the utility of social and cultural traits by explaining them in terms of their contribution to the operation of an overall system. Functionalism was promoted in England by B. Malinowski, who argued that cultural practices had psychological and physiological functions, such as the reduction of fear and anxiety, and the satisfaction of desires; and by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, whose theoretical work contended that all instituted practices ultimately contribute to the maintenance, and hence the survival, of the entire social system. Functionalism was supported in the United States by sociologist Talcott Parsons, who introduced the notion that there were stable structural categories that made up the interdependent system of a society, and that functioned in such a way as to perpetuate a society. The functionalist approach has been criticized as an ideology that celebrates the status quo. Its detractors charge that it pays little attention to conflict and change as essential features of social life, and simplifies the relationship between individual agency and the structures of social action.

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functionalism, in art and architecture

functionalism, in art and architecture, an aesthetic doctrine developed in the early 20th cent. out of Louis Henry Sullivan's aphorism that form ever follows function. Functionalist architects and artists design utilitarian structures in which the interior program dictates the outward form, without regard to such traditional devices as axial symmetry and classical proportions. After World War I, the German Bauhaus produced a number of influential architects and designers, notably Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who worked within this aesthetic. Functionalism was subsequently absorbed into the International style as one of its guiding principles.

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functionalism

In the social sciences, a theory that stresses the interdependence of the patterns and institutions of a society and their interaction in maintaining cultural and social unity. In sociology, functionalism emerged from the work of Émile Durkheim, who viewed society as a kind of “organism” that carried with it certain “needs” that must be fulfilled. Similar views were adopted in anthropology by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, who attempted to explain social structures as enduring systems of adaptation, fusion, and integration; and by Bronislaw Malinowski, who viewed culture as the expression of the totality of individual and collective achievement, where “every custom, material object, idea, and belief fulfills some vital function.” The U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons analyzed large-scale societies in terms of their social, psychological, and cultural components and focused on problems of social order, integration, and equilibrium. Later writers argued that functionalism was too rigid to account for the breadth, depth, and contingencies of human social life and that it ignored the role of history in shaping society.

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functionalism

In psychology, a broad school of thought that originated in the U.S. in the late 19th century and emphasized the total organism in its endeavours to adjust to the environment. Reacting against the school of structuralism led by Edward Bradford Titchener, functionalists such as William James, George Herbert Mead, and John Dewey stressed the importance of empirical, rational thought over an experimental trial-and-error philosophy. The movement concerned itself primarily with the practical applications of research (see applied psychology) and was critical of early forms of behaviourism.

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Functionalism

In architecture, the doctrine that a building's form should be determined by practical considerations of use, material, and structure and not by a preconceived picture in the designer's mind. Though not an exclusively modern conception, it is closely associated with the Modernist architecture of the second quarter of the 20th century. The fight for an “honest” form of expression by architects such as Louis Sullivan and Le Corbusier came about as a result of changes in building techniques, needs for new types of buildings, and discontent with historical revivalism, which had been paramount in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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functionalism

1. the theory of design that the form of a thing should be determined by its use

2. Psychol a system of thought based on the premise that all mental processes derive from their usefulness to the organism in adapting to the environment

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functionalism [′fəŋk·shə·nə‚liz·əm]

(anthropology)

The view that a social system is an expression of human biological and social needs.

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functionalism

A philosophy of architectural design asserting that the form of a building should follow its function, reveal its structure, and express the nature of its materials, construction, and purpose, minimizing or eliminating all purely decorative effects. See Louis H. Sullivan’s 1896 statement on this subject, “. . . form ever follows function, ” under Sullivanesque.

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Functionalism 

a movement in 20th-century foreign architecture based on the affirmation of the primacy of function (utilitarian purpose) over form.

In the second half of the 19th century the principle of integral form was joined with the ethical principle of truthful expression of the purpose and structure of a building. This approach was in opposition to eclecticism, which embodied the splitting of aesthetic and utilitarian principles that is characteristic of bourgeois culture (as was pointed out in particular by the British critic J. Ruskin and the British writer, theorist, and designer W. Morris). The concept of integral architecture developed under the influence of the theories of natural science, chiefly the evolutionary theory of C. Darwin. Increasingly, nature was considered as the source of perfect models of adaptation of form to purpose (as seen, for example, in the work of the American sculptor and art theorist H. Greenough).

American protofunctionalism of the iate 19th century was perfected by the architect L. G. Sullivan, but it was not widely influential in the USA. Only F. L. Wright’s theory of organic architecture was based on protofunctionalism. However in the mid-1920’s, Sullivan’s formula “form follows function” was adopted by Western European rationalist architects, who simplified the theory, reducing it to the primacy of the utilitarian over the aesthetic. The principles of functionality worked out on this basis were elaborated and propagated by Le Corbusier and, most consistently, by the Bauhaus architects in Germany (W. Gropius, L. Mies van der Rohe, H. Meyer). The ideas of integral construction of the environment were connected with the social utopia of “life-building,” that is, the creation of material forms able to aid the “rational transformation” of capitalist society.

The principles governing the construction of a machine were transferred to the structure of buildings, and buildings were thus analyzed in terms of the functions for which they were intended. The functions were in turn analyzed according to Taylorist principles of scientific organization of labor. The concept of zoning, with apportionment of particular spaces for each of the chief life functions (defined thus: “to live, work, rest, and move”), was applied to urban planning as well. In the late 1920’s rational architecture was reduced to extreme mechanicalness by German architects working on municipal housing construction (E. May, B. Taut, M. Wagner).

In the late 1920’s democratic tendencies and elements of social analysis developed in the work of Western European architects associated with functionalism. These tendencies were influenced by constructivism, whose adherents had solved problems closely related to those of the leading functionalists. In the economic difficulties of the late 1920’s functionalism became popular among businessmen, and its Utopian ideas were espoused by social-reform politicians. Elements of social progressiveness, however, were emasculated. Functionalism became firmly established throughout Western Europe and in the USA and Japan. However, as it was disseminated, it lost its distinctive creative method and was transformed into an “international style” of expedient form. Adherents, striving to strengthen faith in the seriousness of the movement, called it functionalism. (The Swiss architectural theorist S. Gidion had already used the term to designate all “nontraditional” architecture of the 1920’s and 1930’s.)

In Germany and France strict adherence to forms and methods became the rule without regard for the environmental and climatic conditions in the countries, which led to contradictions of the very principles of a rational approach to architecture. Already in the 1930’s Finnish (A. Aalto and others) and Swedish (S. Markelius and others) architects, relying on the methods of functionalism, worked out methods that corresponded to the specific requirements of their countries. This led to the appearance of regional schools of architecture that developed within the framework of functionalism. The international style began to disintegrate. Its adherents, becoming disenchanted with the illusions of the “great social mission of architecture” that had united the pioneers of functionalism, moved away from analysis of social problems, undermining the positions of functionalism even more.

After World War II (1939–45), functionalist architecture revived with the rebuilding of destroyed cities, although the unity of the international style disintegrated once and for all. Opposing the basic doctrine of functionalism were Mies van der Rohe, one of its former leaders, as well as adherents of brutalism, neoclassi-cists, and those advocating a return to historical traditions.

Modern Soviet architectural theory pays careful attention to the masters of functionalism, especially as their work bears on the problems of Soviet architecture of the 1920’s. At the same time, the social-utopian views of the functionalists, many of whom hoped to transform capitalist society with the help of architecture, are subject to criticism.

REFERENCES

Vseobshchaia istoriia arkhitektury, vol. 11. Moscow, 1973.
Mastera arkhitektury ob arkhitekture. Moscow, 1972.
Gropius, W. Granitsy arkhitektury. Moscow, 1971. (Translated from German.)
Sfaellos, C. A. Le Fonctionalisme dans I’architecture contemporaine. Paris, 1952.
Zurko, E. R. de. Origins of Functionalist Theory. New York, 1957.

A. V. IKONNIKOV

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Functionalism 

a trend in bourgeois cultural anthropology that emerged in the 1920’s, chiefly in Great Britain and in its former dominions. The founders and principal theoreticians of the functionalist school were B. K. Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown.

Unlike the evolutionists and diffusionists, Malinowski and such other functionalists as R. Firth and E. Evans-Pritchard regarded the culture of each people not as a mechanical blend of vestiges and borrowings but rather as a system of “institutions”—that is, norms, customs and beliefs—established for the purpose of fulfilling essential social “functions” (hence the name of the school). Disruption of any one function leads to the collapse of the social body as a whole.

The functionalists combined theoretical studies with the gathering of ethnographic material. Their method was one-sided: taking into account only the “synchronie” functioning of culture, they ignored the need for a historical approach to the problems of social development. Studies carried out by the functionalist school were used by the British colonial administration in the practice of “indirect government” through local chieftains and the preservation of archaic cultural traits. The method and theoretical constructs of functionalism were developed and partly revised, in sociology, by the proponents of structural-functional analysis and, in cultural anthropology, by the culturalists—notably, E. R. Leach and V. W. Turner.

REFERENCES

Etnologicheskie issledovaniia za rubezhom. Moscow, 1973.
Malinowski, B. A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays. New York, 1960.
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. London, 1952.
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. Method in Social Anthropology. Chicago, 1958.

S. A. TOKAREV