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Journalism in these societies has increasingly become separated from party politics, and has developed norms and routines of its own, a ‘media logic’ distinct from the logic of politics. This does make considerable sense in societies where commercialization and professionalization are relatively advanced. Some scholars-most notably Alexander ( 1981)-have argued that the development of journalism should be seen in this light. Structural functionalism holds that human societies tend to evolve toward increased differentiation, in which institutions become increasingly specialized in the functions they perform. Hallin, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001 2 Differentiation Marxisant anthropological analyses of contradictions in structure and function supplemented structural-functionalism with a compatible, historically oriented, approach to competition, conflict, and change.ĭ.C. Whereas Malinowskian functionalism was seen to have outworn its usefulness by 1945, and American cultural functionalism remained factionally divided, Radcliffe-Brown's successors, particularly Meyer Fortes (1906–83), Edward Evans-Pritchard (1902–73), and Max Gluckman (1911–75), expanded structural-functionalism to address situation, selection, and history while continuing to work implicitly with equilibrium models of processes internal to the sociocultural system. This assumption attributed to social systems an internal integration of parts similar to that found in organisms. The function of any institution (or ‘recurrent social activity’) was the part it played in the maintenance of the larger structural whole. Structural-functionalism emphasized the formal ordering of parts and their functional interrelations as contributing to the maintenance needs of a structured social system. It derived not from German and British precursors but mainly from Durkheimian French sociology with supplementary insights from the Russian geographer and anarchist, Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921). Under the auspices of Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) it emerged as a clear-cut alternative to hybrid Boasian functionalism and successor to Malinowski's particular brand of economism and radical individualism. Structural-functionalism's core concepts are, in harness, structure and system. Vincent, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001 2.1.3 Structural-functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown)