Theory of Needs

Malinowski’s theory of needs is central to his functional approach to culture; it is the theoretical statement linking the individual and society. It is a simple notion: culture exists to meet the
basic biological, psychological, and social needs of the individual. But the theory seems unduly simplistic if we do not understand Malinowski’s notions of function, the hierarchy of needs,
and the role of symbolism, and if we ignore the intellectual context of Malinowski’s thinking.
First, Malinowski viewed function in a physiological sense:
“Function, in this simplest and most basic aspect of human behavior, can be defined as the satisfaction of an organic impulse by
the appropriate act. Form and function, obviously, are inextricably related to one another” (1944:83). Malinowski developed the
physiological analogy further. For example, he argued that if we
were to describe how a normal lung operates we would be describing the form of the process, but if we attempt to explain why
the lung is operating in a certain manner then we are concerned
with its function. “We could say that the formal approach corresponds to the method of observation and documentation in the
statement of a vital sequence,” Malinowski wrote, “while function is the restatement of what has happened in terms of scientific
principles . . . a full analysis of organic and environmental happenings” (1944:83). This has several implications. First, it means
that societies are integrated wholes, requiring an anthropologist

to examine the interconnections of different cultural domains.
Second, those domains are linked by their complementary functions, and the only anthropological explanations that can be considered to explain those causal links must be functional
explanations. Thus any anthropologist unconcerned with the
functions of culture is, by definition, not engaged in science.
Malinowski recognized that cultural forms do not have simple or single functions, writing that “no [cultural] institution can
be functionally related to one basic need, nor yet as a rule to a
simple, cultural need. . . . Culture is not and can not be a replica
in terms of specific responses to specific biological needs”
(1944:112). Instead, Malinowski wrote that cultural institutions
are integrated responses to a variety of needs, and to outline
those needs he used a variant of his synoptic charts (1944:91):

2. Reproduction 2. Kinship
3. Bodily Comforts 3. Shelter
4. Safety 4. Protection
5. Movement 5. Activities
6. Growth 6. Training
7. Health 7. Hygiene
Malinowski described each of these needs and cultural responses in detail, but a few examples illustrate his argument.
The first human need, metabolism, refers to “the processes of
food intake, digestion, the collateral secretions, the absorption of
nutritive substances, and rejection of waste matter” (Malinowski
1944:91). The cultural response, dubbed “commissariat” (literally the military unit that supplies food to an army), included (1)
how food was grown, prepared, and consumed; (2) where food
was consumed and in what social units; (3) the economic and social organization of the distribution of foods (e.g., trade in
canned salmon or reciprocal exchange of garden products); (4)
the legal and customary rules that ensure the steady operation of
food distribution; and (5) the authority that enforces those rules.
The basic need, safety, simply “refers to the prevention of bodily
injuries by mechanical accident, attack from animals or other human beings” (Malinowski 1944:92), but the cultural response,

protection, may include such different behaviors as placing
houses on pilings away from potential tidal waves, the organization of armed responses to aggression, or the magical recruitment of supernatural forces. And growth—which in humans is
structured by the long dependency of infants—leads to the cultural response of training by which humans are taught language,
other symbols, and appropriate behaviors for different stages
and situations, and are instructed until they are socially and
physiologically mature (Malinowski 1944:107).
Obviously Malinowski was not reducing complex cultural
systems to simple biological needs: he did not argue that salmon
canneries exist in Alaska because humans need to eat. Rather, cultural responses set new conditions—literally new environments—
that elicit new cultural responses. “The problems set by man’s
nutritive, reproductive, and hygienic needs must be solved,” Malinowski wrote, and the solution in turn produces “a new, secondary, or artificial environment. This environment, which is
neither more nor less than culture itself, has to be permanently reproduced, maintained, and managed” (1944:37, emphasis added).
The cultural responses to basic needs create new conditions, and
“new needs appear and new imperatives or determinants are imposed on human behavior (Malinowski 1944:37). These new derived needs or cultural imperatives are “imposed on man by his
own tendency to extend his safety and his comforts” (Malinowski
1944:120), but it would be wrong to think of derived needs as
somehow dispensable. “Man does not,” Malinowski writes,
by biological determinism need to hunt with spears or bow
and arrow; use poison darts; nor defend himself by stockades,
by shelters, or by armor. But the moment that such devices
have become adopted, in order to enhance human adaptability
to the environment, they also become necessary conditions for
survival. (1944:121)
Such items—and the systems of training, raw material exchange,
cooperative labor, etc., they require—“are one and all as indispensable under the ultimate sanction of the biological imperative of self-preservation as are any purely physiologically
determined elements” (Malinowski 1944:122). New cultural responses to primordial conditions create new situations, literally
new environments, to which societies must respond.

Thus culture becomes an enormously complicated behavioral web responding to complex needs that can ultimately—but
not always immediately—be traced to the individual. Malinowski summarized his theory of needs with two axioms: first
“that every culture must satisfy the biological systems of needs”
and second, “that every cultural achievement that implies the
use of artifacts and symbolism is an instrumental enhancement
of human anatomy, and refers directly or indirectly to the satisfaction of a bodily need” (1944:171). In sum, culture is utilitarian,
adaptive, and functionally integrated, and the explanation of
culture involves the delineation of function. A classic example of
that type of explanation is Malinowski’s approach to magic.