He also suggests that both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown were inclined
through theirfieldwork in small-scale situations to think of societies as
wholes.
We may rather suggest that this idea of the whole was a theoretical post
hoc move, because the social contexts these two foundingfigures studied
were either quitefluid and expansive or had been modified by colonial
contact. Perhaps also Jarvie himself is in a quandary here, because his own
idea, borrowed from Popper, of the‘closed society’suggests a bounded
whole as a unit of study. These differing frames of analysis produce multi-
ple contradictions and conundrums. In seeking to break functionalist
frames and to lead us back into the kinds of generalizations Frazer
attempted as an exemplar of comparative and generalizing study, Jarvie
himself depends on the very idea of a totality that he employs to criticize
the functionalist theories he is attacking. He seeks to bring back to life
Frazer and to kill his own immediate fatherfigures to give life to the
grandfather. However, a more subtle approach recognizes that this is too
crude an approach, and to get closer to history we have to break the frames
that Jarvie has used to break other frames. So the process continues.
1 FRAMING HISTORY 9