Analyze scientific theory of culture. Will the crisis in culture in the contemporary society facilitate the emergence of new man? (1984)
Bronisław Malinowski’s A Scientific Theory of Culture (published posthumously, 1944) tried to turn his Trobriand fieldwork into a general, testable theory. Culture, he wrote, is “a vast apparatus, partly material, partly human and partly spiritual” by which people cope with concrete problems. It exists to satisfy human needs, and every element must be explained by its function in doing so.
Components of the theory
1. Needs and cultural responses. Malinowski ranked needs in three tiers:
| Level | Needs | Cultural response |
|---|---|---|
| Basic (biological, “primary determinism”) | Metabolism, reproduction, bodily comfort, safety, movement, growth, health | Food supply, kinship, shelter, protection, activities, training, hygiene |
| Derived (instrumental) | Maintaining the cultural apparatus, regulating behaviour, socialisation, exercise of authority | Economy, social control, education, political organisation |
| Integrative | Cohesion, meaning, confidence | Tradition, values, religion, magic, art, language |
2. Institution as the unit of analysis. Each institution is organised around a charter (its founding value or purpose), personnel, norms, a material apparatus and activities, and it performs a function. The family, for instance, meets reproduction through kinship rules.
3. Culture as an integrated whole. Every custom, object and belief has a use; culture is a balanced system to be studied in the field, not reconstructed by evolutionary or diffusionist speculation.
Assessment
- Strengths: it tied culture to verifiable human needs, made institutions comparable across societies, and established the fieldwork base of functionalism.
- Critiques: Robert K. Merton (Social Theory and Social Structure, 1949) rejected the postulates of functional unity, universal functionalism and indispensability. Explaining a custom by a need is often tautological, since needs are inferred from the custom. The theory is biologically reductionist, cannot account for cultural diversity when needs are universal, and has little to say about conflict, power and change.
Crisis in culture and the “new man”
Contemporary culture shows the crisis Malinowski’s model underplays: material needs are met, but the integrative imperatives (meaning, solidarity, values) are strained.
- Pitirim Sorokin (The Crisis of Our Age, 1941) saw the decaying sensate culture passing through “crisis, ordeal, catharsis, charisma, resurrection” to a new integral order built on creative altruism.
- Erich Fromm (To Have or To Be?, 1976) called for a new man living in the being rather than the having mode, and argued that ecological and psychic crisis might force this change.
- Herbert Marcuse (One-Dimensional Man, 1964) was more pessimistic: consumer society absorbs discontent and produces a conformist, not a liberated, person.
- Indian signals: the National Mental Health Survey 2015–16 found nearly 15% of adults in need of mental-health intervention, a sign of strain in modern living. Against this, movements for ecological living and solidarity networks during the COVID-19 lockdowns showed a search for new values.
Crisis creates possibility, not certainty. Zygmunt Bauman’s “liquid” individual and Ulrich Beck’s reflexive citizen of the risk society are both products of the same crisis: one adrift, one self-critical.
Conclusion
Malinowski’s theory remains a sound account of why cultures exist, but not of how they break down. A “new man” will emerge from today’s crisis only if new integrative institutions (education, movements, ethical frameworks) turn discontent into shared values. Otherwise crisis breeds anxiety and consumerist conformity rather than renewal.