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Structuralism

Structuralism, as an epistemological point of view, basically argues that elements exist in a system. The meaning of such elements is derived from the relationship of elements to each other and to the system as a whole. Meaning is not inherent in the elements themselves. In anthropology, structuralism as a theoretical movement was developed by the French anthropologist Levi-Strauss around the 1960's. Eager to learn from modern linguistics the path to the empirical knowledge of social phenomena, Levi-Strauss proposed a theory and a method for anthropologists to "almost converge" with the highly developed and sophisticated study of linguistics. Levi-Strauss maintains that the model on which Saussurian structural linguistics is built can be appropriated for the study of society and culture. The argument is founded on the analogy that cultural systems (such as myth, kinship systems, food taboos) are symbolic and arbitrary systems as are linguistic systems. They are not based on any objective or inherently natural aspect of the phenomena themselves. Levi-Strauss argues that they respond to implicit (universal) laws or patterns that govern them, they are unconscious, hidden elements of meaning, and they can only be understood in relation to the systems for which they are part. The observed facts of nature, the bewildering variety of social phenomena and cultural productions, are the products of a universal structure of the mind (a grammar of culture), he argues, which allows people to make sense of their world by superimposing a structure based on a few underlying principles. The role of the structural anthropologist is to gather as many variations of the system in question as possible, to identify the most fundamentally meaningful components in each system, and to discern the structure of the phenomena through the observation of patterning. Following the linguistic model that phonemes (the smallest unit of meaningful sound) are understood in contrast to other phonemes, Levi-Strauss argued that the fundamental patterns of human thought are also based on a system of contrasts to produce meaning. Levi-Strauss proposed that the distinctions between meaningful components/symbols occur through a triad system based on "binary oppositions" and the emergence of mediators. For example, in one of his first major works "Elementary Structures of Kinship"(1969) Levi-Strauss took issue with Radcliffe-Brown's conclusion that descent (matrilineality or patrilineality) determined the patterning of kinship relations. He found this to be an arbitrary isolation based on a small sample of selected observations. He argued that kinship patterns follow universal laws and that the determining structures (the most elementary forms) were the four types of relationships between brother/sister, husband/wife, father/son, mothers brother/sisters son. Each set of opposite relationships is either characterized as positively affective or negatively affective. These patterns act as the building blocks to more complicated forms of kinship systems.

While Levi-Strauss' approach was not very popular with American anthropology, its focus on hidden meaning did have a profound influence on the development of symbolic anthropology in the 1970's and on postmodernism/poststructuralism in the 1980's. In France, a number of scholars followed his structural methodology (Dumont, Heritier). In Britain, it was adopted with considerable transformation, in some cases with the rejection of underlying universal laws and in others with less cognitive emphasis (Leach, Needham, Yalman). For example, Mary Douglas, one of the earliest British anthropologist to be influenced by Levi-Strauss, expanded the structural model most famously in her work on pollution and taboo (Purity and Danger 1966) where she argued that dirt is a universal moral symbol marking the boundaries of social categories. In her later work (Natural Symbols 1970) Douglas developed a structural framework from which to identify and characterize societies. This framework was based on the concepts of "grid and group," (grid: the degree to which social distinctions and boundaries were elaborated in a society and, group: the strength of the division between those who fell inside and outside of such categories). Such qualities would have predictable consequences on the social life and beliefs of societies.

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