Radcliffe-BROWN (Radcliffe-Brown), Alfred Reginald

(1881-1955) - English. social anthropologist, developed the structural-functional approach in anthropology and made a major contribution to the emergence of social anthropology as a generalizing the. Discipline. He was educated at Cambridge (1901-06). Conducted extensive field research on the Andaman Islands (1906-08) and in the West. Australia (1910-12). Headed the Department of Social Anthropology in Cape Town (1920-25), Sydney (1925-31), Chicago (1931-37), Oxford (1937-46). Prof.. Social Sciences and director of the Inst for Social Research in Un-cho Farouk I of Alexandria (1947-49). In 1951-54 worked in the Un-cho Rhodes in RSA. Africa. Basic Fixes. work: 'The inhabitants of the Andaman Islands' (1922),' Social organization AUS. tribes' (1948), 'Method in Social Anthropology' (1958), 'Structure and function in primitive on-ve' (1961).
On the formation of the theory. views of R.-B. was influenced by Comte, Spencer, his Cambridge professors A. Haddon and Y. Rivers English. philosopher of science have. Uevell, but above all - Durkheim and French. Sociology. school. He likes the natural scientific methods, set out to create 'natures. sciences on-ve ', R.-B. attached great importance to the collection of empirical. material and saw the task of science to gather facts and the explication of concepts through the progressive induction. Hd. to anthropological. research, he believed finding commonalities, sustainable forms of unity in diversity in the existing on -. In his view, anthropology must be a science, which runs from empiricism, classification, and omni-directional induction to the postulation of a general theory. To become a true science, it must abandon 'psikhol. and pseudo. speculation ', and strictly obey the verifiable facts of the theory of. On of RA-B. represented as dynamic. based on mutual trust system of interdependent elements that are functionally consistent with each other. 'Estestv. science of the ob-ve must answer three sets of issues: how about the islands are structured, operated and developed, ie. seen on the islands in the structural, functional and evolution. aspects'. Rejecting the possibility of the use of history. material for constructing a theory, R.-B. suggested as an alternative to begin construction of a theory based on the compare, analyze existing, available directly. Observation of in-(and primitive, and sovr.) conceive of social anthropology and how to compare, sociology. He focused his efforts on to compare the structural analysis and the classification of types and forms of social structure in relation to primitive on-you studied him and his colleagues in the field studies. Classic. example of such an approach was his book 'The social organization AUS. tribes'. Great contribution made AR-B. in the development of concepts and terms of structural-functional approach, . giving the definitions of 'social structure' (placement of people in the social system) and 'social organization' (systematization of types of activity in the social system), . and also to develop for the Anthropology of such important concepts, . as the 'Corporation', . 'consolidation', . 'structural contradictions', . 'ritual status', . 'ritual value', . 'cooptation', etc.,
. Methodology. originality of his approach is to consider social phenomena as natures. facts (in the spirit of Durkheim), but RS-B. not take Durkheim's reification of social facts, as well as its methodology. demands a causal explanation of some other social facts, as an alternative to RS-B. proposed to look for common structural principles underlying the decomp. social facts.

RI-B. had an enormous influence on a generation of English. social anthropologists, but also played an important role in promoting the structural and functional ideas in America, where this approach was further developed (Warner, R. Merton, Parsons, and others).