Functionalism applies the analogy of the human body to the different parts of society, using the organs of the body to correspond to societal parts. Like the body, society thrives because of the balanced, harmonic interaction between these parts. In this way, functionalism offers an organic explanation of how people live and interact socially. It studies the function of the individual part in relation to the whole.
Bronislaw Malinowski put forth one of two dominant functionalist theories. According to him, social institutions fulfilled the individual physiological needs (such as shelter) of human beings. Supplementing these needs were so-called instrumental needs (economics, education, government and social control). He theorized, according to the University of Alabama, that "satisfaction of these needs transformed the cultural instrumental activity into an acquired drive through psychological reinforcement."
Radcliffe-Brown was the other dominant theorist of functionalism. He conceived of society as "a system of relationships maintaining itself through cybernetic feedback, while institutions are orderly sets of relationships whose function is to maintain the society as a system," according to the University of Alabama. He distinguished between the social and biological as separate levels of reality and considered individuals as fundamentally irrelevant and replaceable within the dominant confines of societal structures.
Functionalism was a reaction against evolutionist theories that were beginning to be seen as outmoded. It sparked a greater emphasis on the study of institutions within anthropology and altered the methodological landscape. It shifted focus from the historical to the ahistorical, placing greater premium on the present.