[from Malinowski, "What is Culture?" in A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays. University of North Carolina Press, 1944; Oxford University Press, 1960: 36-42.]
| "Whether we consider a very simple or primitive culture or an extremely complex and developed one, we are confronted by a vast apparatus, partly material, partly human and partly spiritual, by which man is able to cope with the concrete, specific problems that face him. These problems arise out of the fact that man has a body subject to various organic needs, and that he lives in an environment which is his best friend, in that it provides the raw materials of man's handiwork, and also his dangerous enemy, in that it harbors many hostile forces. ...the theory of culture must its stand on biological fact." |
| "it is clear that the satisfaction of the organic or basic needs of man and of the race is a minimum set of conditions imposed on each culture." |
| "...culture will not appear to us a "patchwork of shreds and tatters", as it has been quite recently described by one or two competent anthropologists. We shall be able to reject the view that "No common measure of cultural phenomena can be found," and that "The laws of cultural processes are vague, insipid, and useless."" |
| The scientific analysis of culture ... can point to another system of realities that also conforms to general laws, and can thus be used as a guide for field-work, as a means of identification of cultural realities, and as the basis of social engineering. The analysis just outlined, in which we attempt to define the relation between a cultural performance and a human need, basic or derived, may be termed functional. For function can not be defined in any other way than the satisfaction of a need by an activity in which human beings cooperate, use artifacts, and consume goods. The essential concept here is that of organization. In order to achieve any purpose, reach any end, human beings have to organize. Organization implies a very definite scheme or structure, the main factors of which are universal in that they are applicable to all organized groups, which again, in their typical form, are universal throughout mankind. |
Culture is an integral composed of partly autonomous, partly coordinated institutions. It is integrated on a series of principles such as the community of blood through procreation; the contiguity in space related to cooperation; the specialization in activities; and last but not least, the use of power in political organization. Each culture owes its completeness and self-sufficiency to the fact that it satisfies the whole range of basic, instrumental and integrative needs.