counters the functionalist position by suggesting that a culture cannot be seen just in relationship to the psychology of the individuals within the culture and the conclusions that might be drawn from that. Wolf sees culture and society as a process of structuring and change. He contends that a society must be seen in its historical context. When Wolf says - The functionalists, in turn, rejected altogether the conjectural history of the diffusionists in favour of the analysis of internal functioning putatively isolated wholes Wolf (1982), he is taking issue with the exclusion of the historical context of a society and the putative isolation of societies. He is contending that a society can be more properly explained as part of an expanded community and in a historical context. He has been against functionalism, viewing society as a bounded system of ordered relations and structured entity. Wolf views society as heterogeneous, interacting across boundaries, more interpenetrating, more interdigitating, and more complex and interconnecting. Wolf (1988): 753) Wolf is paying attention here to history and its importance in explaining a society. He is also paying attention to societies on a grand scale; where previously, cultures had been studied in isolation or compared as entirely separate entities. Now, a society can be examined as a part of a big picture and in its historical context.On the opposing schools of thought, Carrithers says this about the school of Culture and Personality On this theory the human world is composed of separate, distinguished entities: one society and culture might be dominant, but it is still only one separate variant among equals. Carrithers (1992): 12-33. About Funtionalisms Radcliff-Brown Carrithers says He is interested in an arrangement of persons, a social structure, and as he reveals elsewhere, his conception of a social structure concentrates on the political institutions, the economic insti...
