Radcliffe-Brown was seen as the classic to Bronislaw Malinowski's romantic. Radcliffe-Brown brought French sociology (namely Emile Durkheim) to British anthropology, constructing a rigorous battery of concepts to frame ethnography. Although he often rejected it, Radcliffe-Brown was associated with Functionalism, specifically considered to be the founder of Structural Functionalism. While Malinowski was attributed with the methodological foundations of anthropological fieldwork, Radcliffe-Brown was attributed with developing a sophisticated functionalist theoretical framework.
Radcliffe-Brown also contributed extensively to the anthropological ideas on kinship.
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