"If it cannot predict, it is not science": I argue social anthropology can Author's name (parents' draft): Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor) Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really." Author's name (my first draft): 0161__Rajivan Abstract. Can the social world be predicted? If it cannot, can any study of it count as scientific? Isn't what distinguishes science from non-science successful prediction? This paper argues that social anthropology can predict some social change. It introduces a structural-functionalist theory of literary fashion to counter the objection that functionalist anthropology ignores social change. Literary fashions are there to maintain social structure. If there is a structure of the best-and-the-rest and a foreign writer appears in-between, the rest do what that foreign writer does, upping their game, so that he or she appears as merely one of them. I argue that this structural-functionalist theory of literary fashion enables prediction. Draft version: version 2 (24 June 2026: madness removed) Software used (freeware): Google docs (which deleted original version), Duckduckgo search. Have you ever met a community of skilled craftspeople: this person is skilled at this, and that person is skilled at that? "You think you are a good medic, but we have good medics"; "You think you are a good comedian, but we have good comedians"; "You think you are a good philosopher, but we have good philosophers." What then, if anything, can you offer them? What they want, it seems, is justified predictions, ones that lead to astute investments. But can the social world ever be predicted with justification? Focusing on the little-known discipline of social anthropology, British social anthropology to be specific, I shall argue that it can. In the early 1920s, British social anthropology went functionalist. It no longer inquired into how they arose and emphasized instead the social function of institutions. For Bronislaw Malinowski, different societies have different systems of institutions for meeting the needs that all humans have, such as for bodily comfort. One studied these systems and how they functioned to meet these universal needs. For A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, institutions function to maintain a social structure. Individuals may come and go but the social structure was stable over time. Functionalism of either variety was criticized for ignoring social change: it portrayed societies as unchanging systems. During the coronavirus lockdown, I thought that it is wrong to simply assert that functionalism cannot deal with any social change and devised a functionalist theory of fashion, though it was actually focused on literary fashion. I have not shared it until now though. A foreign literary writer appears on our shores; he is not considered by the literary establishment to be the level of "our best writers" but considered above the rest at present. The rest are set the task of competing (or they simply do?), so that the establishment can say, "Why do we need you, foreign literary writer? Because we have these people." He dies. The rest go back to their earlier level. Then another literary foreigner appears, different though, but also not considered the level of "our best." The rest are sent the task of competing, some of whom were involved in the last competition even. A casual reader has an experience of changing fashions and are not fashions mysterious? But a functionalist social anthropologist can say that fashion is about maintaining social structure, or a structural-functionalist can. "There is this the best and there is the rest and there is no space for you in-between, foreign literary writer, and so the rest do what you do, or sort-of anyway, and up their game. You will then be counted amongst them." My theory is influenced by the later stories in The Penguin Book of British Short Stories edited by Malcolm Bradbury. I wondered, "Hey, what is going on here? Is Adam Mars-Jones not simply a structuralist essay?" I was also struck by Bradbury's entry, Fay Weldon, David Lodge, and Rose Tremain. Then I realized what book by a single author this material together resembles: Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. This anthology is not like these old anthologies one can find on the Internet: Best Russian short stories, etc.: the unstrategic anthologist who just picked the best and (seemingly?) most enduring stuff for the naive reader. Those days are over, if they ever were. Given the structural-functionalist theory of fashion above, the simple structure of best-and-rest, and an initial estimation of a new foreign literary writer as in-between the best and the rest, you can predict that the rest will raise their game. (The newspapers will roll out their cashmere sweater range even, to quote Kathleen Stock. "Hint hint hint: you have no idea how posh these people are"?) And the question will appear, "Why do we need you? We have these people." So I am rejecting at least premise (2) of this argument. (1) If it cannot predict, then it is not science. (2) Social anthropology cannot predict. Therefore (by modus ponens): (3) Social anthropology is not science. Appendix: a dispensability assumption I think the undergraduate and even postgraduate student is likely to think of the functionalism-and-social-change criticism as simply that functionalist anthropology ignores social change. But perhaps the original criticism is not quite this. Functionalism was taught by making analogies with biology. A society is a social organism and its institutions have functions. The depiction of a society as a stable social organism makes one think of homeostasis, or makes me think so anyway. And homeostasis is not about zero change; it is about a system that regulates, keeping the organism alive. Critics at that time would probably have responded to my structural-functionalist fashion theory above by saying, "It needs to be able to deal with a change in social structure is what we actually mean. Not this microplasticity." That leads me to contemplate a problematic assumption which I confess I am nevertheless attracted to. (Analogies dispensable assumption) The biological analogies which feature in social anthropology texts are helpful but dispensable. My worry is that you cannot understand what earlier debaters even mean without the analogies. I suspect Marilyn Strathern will say dispensable and Jeanette Edwards will say, "No." References Aroesti, Rachel. 2025. In an era of AI slop and mid TV, is it time for cultural snobbery to make a comeback? The Guardian 28th September 2025. Available on: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/28/cultural-snobbery-too-much-studio-rogen-house-of-the-dragon Bradbury, Malcolm. (ed.) 1988 (1987). The Penguin Book of British Short Stories. Harmondsworth: Penguin. (B.S. Johnson entry?) Kundera, Milan (translated from French by Aaron Asher). The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Faber and Faber. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1960 (originally 1944). A Scientific Theory of Culture And Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press. Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press. Seltzer, Thomas. (ed.). N.d. BEST RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13437/13437-h/13437-h.htm Stock, Kathleen. 2025. X post. Available at: https://x.com/Docstockk/status/1971825591646073201