Structural-functionalism, apart from being ahistorical and synchronic, is also based upon a holistic view of society. According to it, all the various aspects of society are not independent of each other, but interdependent, just like the body of a living organism. While considering society as a system, it follows that like a system society is also a bounded unit. Anything that takes place inside a society is affected by other parts of the society, but not from its exterior. Like for example, the religious and economic aspects of a society are interdependent on each other, but not on the outside.
Thus, in addition to ahistoricity and boundedness, structural functionalism carries an element of isolation. At the time when this theory was popular, the British social anthropology was a part of the British colonial system. It was thus, extending its rule over many regions, that then became the objects of study for the anthropologists. They assumed isolation of societies like the Andaman Islanders, that was already deeply impacted by colonial rule. Later anthropologists like Eric Wolf have criticised the assumption of ahistoricity of societies that were part of a global system of trade and travel for several centuries before colonisation.
Structural-functionalism follows Durkheim (1938) who said that a social fact can be explained only by another social fact. Therefore structural -functional explanations are limited to other social variables interior to the society. In this way, they remain isolated from psychological and historical variables in their explanations, although not quite from the environment, that is incorporated by the indigenous people into their cosmologies. For example, in the Andaman Islanders, we find that natural elements like the winds and rain are deified as supernatural beings and included within their pantheon. In the next section we examine the functional theory of Malinowski that although similar in basic principle to that of Radcliffe-Brown, deviates in important aspect of methodology.
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