Structural anthropology is a school of sociocultural anthropology based on

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthro ...

' 1949 idea that immutable deep structures exist in all

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these grou ...

s, and consequently, that all cultural practices have

homologous Homology may refer to: Sciences Biology *Homology (biology), any characteristic of biological organisms that is derived from a common ancestor *Sequence homology, biological homology between DNA, RNA, or protein sequences * Homologous chrom ...

counterparts in other cultures, essentially that all cultures are equitable. Lévi-Strauss' approach arose in large part from

dialectics Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to ...

expounded on by

Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

and

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...

, though dialectics (as a concept) dates back to

Ancient Greek philosophy Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empire ...

. Hegel explains that every situation presents two opposing things and their resolution; Fichte had termed these " thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." Lévi-Strauss argued that cultures also have this structure. He showed, for example, how opposing ideas would fight and were resolved to establish the rules of

marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between t ...

mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of Narrative, narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or Origin myth, origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not Objectivity (philosophy), ...

and

ritual A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized, b ...

. This approach, he felt, made for fresh new ideas. He stated: In

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the souther ...

he showed that there are "dual organizations" throughout Amazon rainforest cultures, and that these "dual organizations" represent opposites and their synthesis. As an illustration, Gê tribes of the Amazon were found to divide their villages into two rival halves; however, members from each half married each other, resolving the opposition. Culture, he claimed, has to take into account both life and death and needs to have a way of mediating between the two. Mythology (see his several-volume ''Mythologies'') unites opposites in diverse ways. Three of the most prominent structural anthropologists are Lévi-Strauss himself and the British neo-structuralists

Rodney Needham Rodney Needham (15 May 1923 – 4 December 2006 in Oxford) was an English social anthropologist. Born Rodney Phillip Needham Green, he changed his name in 1947; the following year he married Maud Claudia (Ruth) Brysz. The couple would collaborat ...

and Edmund Leach. The latter was the author of such essays as "Time and False Noses" (in ''Rethinking Anthropology'').

Influences

Lévi-Strauss took many ideas from

structural linguistics Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements within t ...

, including those of

Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss Linguistics, linguist, Semiotics, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 2 ...

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,Émile Durkheim David Émile Durkheim ( or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, al ...

and

Marcel Mauss Marcel Mauss (; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950) was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociology and ...

. Saussure argued that linguists needed to move beyond the recording of ''parole'' (individual

speech act In the philosophy of language and linguistics, speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the kimchi; could you please pass it to me? ...

s) and come to an understanding of ''langue'', the

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

of each language. Lévi-Strauss applied this distinction in his search for mental structures that underlie all acts of human behavior: Just as speakers can talk without awareness of grammar, he argued, humans are unaware of the workings of

social structure In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally rela ...

s in daily life. The structures that form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for vario ...

and operate unconsciously (albeit not in a

Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...

ian sense). Another concept was borrowed from the

Prague school The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and ...

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

, which employed so-called binary oppositions in their research.

Kinship

In his early work Lévi-Strauss argued that tribal

kinship In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says th ...

groups were usually found in pairs, or in paired groups that oppose each other yet need one another. For example, in the Amazon basin, two extended families would build their houses in two facing semicircles that together form a big circle. He showed too that the ways people initially categorized animals,

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

s, and other natural features, were based on a series of oppositions. In his most popular work, '' The Raw and the Cooked'', he described folk tales of tribal South America as related to one another through a series of transformations—as one opposite in tales ''here'' changed into its opposite in tales ''there.'' For example, as the title implies, raw becomes its opposite cooked. These particular opposites (raw/cooked) are symbolic of human culture itself, in which by means of

thought In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, an ...

and labour (economics), raw materials become

clothes Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...

food Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ...

weapon A weapon, arm or armament is any implement or device that can be used to deter, threaten, inflict physical damage, harm, or kill. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, ...

s, art and

idea In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of be ...

s. While Durkheim thought that taxonomies of the natural world are collective in origin (the " collective conscious"), meaning that social structures influence individual cognitive structures, Lévi-Strauss proposed the opposite, arguing that it is the latter that gives rise to the former. Social structures mirror

cognitive Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought ...

structures, meaning that patterns in social interaction can be treated as their manifestations. While structural-functionalists looked for structures within social organisation, structuralism seeks to identify links between structures of thought and social structures. Possibly the most significant influence on structuralism came from Mauss' '' The Gift''. Mauss argued that gifts are not free, but rather oblige the recipient to reciprocate. Through the gift, the givers give part of themselves, imbuing the gift a certain power that compels a response. Gift exchanges, therefore play a crucial role in creating and maintaining social relationships by establishing bonds of obligations. Gifts are not merely physical, incidental objects; they possess cultural and spiritual properties. It is a "total prestation" as Mauss called it, as it carries the power to create a system of reciprocity in which the

honour Honour (British English) or honor (American English; see spelling differences) is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of social teaching and of personal ethos, that manifests itself as a ...

of both giver and recipient are engaged. Social

relationship Relationship most often refers to: * Family relations and relatives: consanguinity * Interpersonal relationship, a strong, deep, or close association or acquaintance between two or more people * Correlation and dependence, relationships in mathem ...

s are therefore based on exchange; Durkheimian solidarity, according to Mauss, is best achieved through structures of reciprocity and related systems of exchange. Lévi-Strauss took this idea and postulated three fundamental properties of the human mind: a) people follow rules; b) reciprocity is the simplest way to create social relationships; c) a gift binds both giver and recipient in a continuing social relationship Structures are universal; their realization is culturally specific. Lévi-Strauss argued that exchange is the universal basis of

systems, the structures of which depend on the type of marriage rules that apply. Because of its strong focus on vertical social relations, Lévi-Strauss' model of kinship systems came to be called alliance theory.

Marriage

Lévi-Strauss' model attempted to offer a single explanation for cross-

cousin marriage A cousin marriage is a marriage where the spouses are cousins (i.e. people with common grandparents or people who share other fairly recent ancestors). The practice was common in earlier times, and continues to be common in some societies to ...

, sister-exchange, dual organization and rules of

exogamy Exogamy is the social norm of marrying outside one's social group. The group defines the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. One form of exogamy is dual exogamy, in which two groups ...

. Over time, marriage rules create social structures because marriages are primarily forged between groups and not just between spouses. When groups exchange women on a regular basis, they marry together; consequently, each marriage creates a debtor/creditor relationship that must be balanced through the "repayment" of wives, either immediately or in the next generation. Lévi-Strauss proposed that the initial motivation for the exchange of women was the

incest taboo An incest taboo is any cultural rule or norm that prohibits sexual relations between certain members of the same family, mainly between individuals related by blood. All human cultures have norms that exclude certain close relatives from ...

. He deemed this the beginning and essence of culture, as it was the first

prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...

to check natural impulses; secondarily, it divides labor by gender. Prescribing exogamy creates a distinction between marriageable and tabooed women that necessitates a search for women outside one's own kin group ("marry out or die out") and fosters exchange relationships with other groups. Exogamy promotes inter-group alliances and forms structures of social networks. Lévi-Strauss also discovered that a wide range of historically unrelated cultures had the rule that individuals should marry their cross-cousin, meaning children of siblings of the opposite sex—from a male perspective that is either the FZD (father's sister's daughter) or the MBD (mother's brother's daughter). Accordingly, he grouped all possible kinship systems into a scheme containing three basic kinship structures constructed out of two types of exchange. He called the three kinship structures elementary, semi-complex and complex. Elementary structures are based on positive marriage rules that specify whom a person must marry, while complex systems specify negative marriage rules (whom one must not marry), thus leaving room for choice based on preference. Elementary structures can operate based on two forms of exchange: restricted (or direct) exchange, a symmetric form of exchange between two groups (also called moieties) of wife-givers and wife-takers; in an initial restricted exchange FZ marries MB, with all children then being bilateral cross-cousins (the daughter is both MBD and FZD). Continued restricted exchange means that the two lineages marry together. Restricted exchange structures are generally quite uncommon. The second form of exchange within elementary structures is called generalised exchange, meaning that a man can only marry either his MBD ( matrilateral cross-cousin marriage) or his FZD (patrilateral cross-cousin marriage). This involves an asymmetric exchange between at least three groups. Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage arrangements where the marriage of the parents is repeated by successive generations are very common in parts of Asia (e.g. amongst the Kachin). Lévi-Strauss considered generalised exchange to be superior to restricted exchange because it allows the integration of indefinite numbers of groups. Examples of restricted exchange are found, for instance, in the

Amazon basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Boli ...

. These tribal societies are made up of multiple moieties that often split up, rendering them comparatively unstable. Generalised exchange is more integrative but contains an implicit hierarchy, as e.g. amongst the Kachin where wife-givers are superior to wife-takers. Consequently, the last wife-taking group in the chain is significantly inferior to the first wife-giving group to which it is supposed to give its wives. These status inequalities can destabilise the entire system or can at least lead to an accumulation of wives (and in the case of the Kachin, also of

bridewealth Bride price, bride-dowry ( Mahr in Islam), bride-wealth, or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride dow ...

) at one end of the chain. From a structural perspective matrilateral cross-cousin marriage is superior to its patrilateral counterpart; the latter has less potential to produce social cohesion since its exchange cycles are shorter (the direction of wife exchange is reversed in each successive generation). Lévi-Strauss' theory is supported by fact that patrilateral cross-cousin marriage is in fact the rarest of three types. However, matrilateral generalised exchange poses a risk as group A depends on receiving a woman from a group that it has not itself given a woman to, producing a less immediate obligation to reciprocate compared to a restricted exchange system. The risk created by such a delayed return is obviously lowest in restricted exchange systems. Lévi-Strauss proposed a third structure between elementary and complex structures, called semi-complex structure or Crow-Omaha system. Semi-complex structures contain so many negative marriage rules that they effectively prescribe marriage to specific parties, thus somewhat resembling elementary structures. These structures are found, for example, among the

Crow Nation The Crow, whose autonym is Apsáalooke (), also spelled Absaroka, are Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a federally recognized tribe, the Crow Tribe of Montana, with an Indian reservation loc ...

and Omaha

Native Americans in the United States Native Americans, also known as American Indians, First Americans, Indigenous Americans, and other terms, are the Indigenous peoples of the mainland United States (Indigenous peoples of Hawaii, Alaska and territories of the United States are ...

. In Lévi-Strauss' view, the basic building block of kinship is not just the nuclear family, as in structural-functionalism, but the so-called kinship atom: the nuclear family together with the wife's brother. This "mother's brother" (from the perspective of the wife-seeking son) plays a crucial role in alliance theory, as he is the one who ultimately decides whom his daughter will marry. Moreover, it is not just the nuclear family as such, but alliances between families that matter in regard to the creation of social structures, reflecting the typical structuralist argument that the position of an element in the structure is more significant than the element itself. Descent theory and alliance theory therefore look at two sides of one coin: the former emphasising bonds of

consanguinity Consanguinity ("blood relation", from Latin '' consanguinitas'') is the characteristic of having a kinship with another person (being descended from a common ancestor). Many jurisdictions have laws prohibiting people who are related by blood fr ...

(kinship by blood), the latter stressing bonds of affinity (kinship by law or choice).

The Leiden school

Much earlier, and some 450 miles north of Paris, a specific type of applied anthropology emerged at Leiden University,

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

that focused frequently on the relationship between apparent cultural phenomena found in the Indonesian

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Archi ...

Batak Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of closely related Austronesian ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia, who speak Batak languages. The term is used to include the Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Toba, ...

, Minangkabau,

Moluccas The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located ...

, etc., though it was primarily aimed at training governors for colonial

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. This type of anthropology, developed by late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholars, was eventually called "de Leidse Richting," or "de Leidse School,". Multiple researchers were educated in this school. This theory attracted students and researchers interested in a holistic approach, that was broad and deep, that related economic circumstances with mythological and spatial classifications and that explored the relationship between the natural world and religious,

symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

ic systems. This was long before structuralism. The "Leiden" perspective drove research for many decades, influencing successive generations of anthropologists. The most recent chairs were held by J. P. B. de Josselin de Jong (chair: 1922–1956, 1964), who coined the concept of the Field of Ethnological Study in 1935, and later his nephew

P. E. de Josselin de Jong Patrick Edward de Josselin de Jong (July 8, 1922 – January 1, 1999) was a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Leiden for over 30 years, and department chair from 1957 through 1987. His research specialization was on the Minang ...

(chair: 1956–1987, 1999).

British neo-structuralism

The British brand of structuralism was mainly espoused by Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach, who were both critical towards the structural-functionalist perspective and who drew on Lévi-Strauss as well as

Arthur Maurice Hocart Arthur Maurice Hocart (26 April 1883, in Etterbeek, Belgium – 9 March 1939, in Cairo, Egypt) was an anthropologist best known for his eccentric and often far-seeing works on Polynesia, Melanesia, and Sri Lanka. Early life Hocart's family ha ...

. They also found grounds for critiquing Lévi-Strauss. Leach was more concerned with researching people's actual lives than with the discovery of universal mental structures. He found that the latter's analysis of the Kachin contained serious flaws. According to Leach, Lévi-Strauss' project had been overly ambitious, meaning that his analyses were too superficial and the available data treated with too little care. While part of his analysis of the Kachin was simply based on incorrect ethnographic information, the rest reflected Kachin ideology but not actual practice. In theory, Kachin groups were supposed to marry in a circle ideally consisting of five groups. In reality, the system was strongly unbalanced with built-in status differences between wife-givers and wife-takers. Lévi-Strauss had incorrectly assumed that wife-takers would be of higher rank than wife-givers; in reality, it was the other way round, and the former usually had to make substantial bridewealth payments to obtain wives. Overall, some lineages would accumulate more wives and material wealth than others, meaning that the system was not driven primarily by reciprocity. The marriage system was quite messy and the chance of it breaking down increased with the number of groups involved. In generalised exchange systems, more groups imply greater complexity to ensure that all wife-givers will eventually be on the receiving end, an issue that Lévi-Strauss had already foreseen. He thought that in practice there would be competition for women, leading to accumulation and therefore asymmetries in the system. According to Leach, in Kachin reality instabilities arose primarily from competition for bridewealth. Men sought to get the maximum profit in forms of either bridewealth or political advantage from their daughters' marriage. Lévi-Strauss had only accorded a symbolic role to marriage prestations, effectively overlooking their significance within the system. Leach argued that they are also (or even primarily) economic and political transactions and are frequently connected to transfers of rights over land, too. Marriage exchanges need to be analysed within their wider economic and political context rather than in isolation, as Lévi-Strauss attempted. Leach charged the latter with neglecting the effects of material conditions on social relations. He also challenged the claims to universality made by Lévi-Strauss about the model, doubting whether structures generated by marriage rules would be the same in different social contexts.

Critiques

Postmodernistic

By the late 1970s/early 1980s, alliance theory had lost influence. With the advent of

postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modern ...

interpretive-

hermeneutic Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate c ...

thought, structuralist and functionalist theories receded. Internal incoherence and a range of intrinsic limitations further reduced its appeal.

Excessive emphasis of affinal ties

By overstressing the structural significance of affinal ties, alliance theory effectively neglected the importance of descent and genealogical ties. Some societies (e.g. African tribal societies) employ descent as their primary organizational principle. In others, alliances are of primary significance, as in e.g. many

Southeast-Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...

n societies and amongst Amazon tribes; and still others emphasise both. The Yanomami fit very well into the alliance theory mold, while the

Tallensi Tallensi, also spelled Talensi, are a people of northern Ghana who speak a language of the Gur branch of the Niger-Congo language family. They grow millet and sorghum as staples and raise cattle, sheep, and goats on a small scale. Their normal do ...

or Azande do not.

Holý Holý (Czech feminine: Holá) is a surname of Czech origin. Notable persons with that surname include: * Antonín Holý (1936–2012), Czech scientist and chemist * Jindra Holá (born 1960), Czech ice dancer * Jiří Holý (1922–2009), Czech acto ...

(1996) pointed out that some

Middle-East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europe ...

ern societies cannot be conclusively explained by either descent or alliance theory. Critics also saw weaknesses in Lévi-Strauss' methods, in the fact that he looked for ideal structures, thereby neglecting the reality and complexity of actual practices. His model explained practices that were not observed. Kuper pointed out that if the structures of the mind really are universal and Lévi-Strauss' model is correct, then why do not all human societies act accordingly and structure their kinship systems around alliances and exchanges? Kuper allowed that exchange was the universal form of marriage, but there could be other significant factors. And even if reciprocity was the primary principle that underlies marriages, the return would not have to be in kind but could take other forms (such as money, livestock, services or favours of various kinds). Also, social cohesion through reciprocity does not have to rest primarily on the bride exchange. Mauss showed that different cultures use all kinds of gifts to create and maintain alliances. Feminists critique Lévi-Strauss' claim that the underlying principle according to which all societies work is the exchange of women by men, who dispose of them as if they were objects. Others, for example Godelier, critiqued structuralism's synchronic approach that led it to be essentially ahistorical.

Materialistic perspectives

Marxists shifted the attention within anthropology from an almost exclusive preoccupation with kinship to an emphasis on economic issues. For them, social structures were primarily shaped by material conditions, property relations and class struggles.

Falsification

Structuralism's main propositions were not formulated in a way so that they could be subject to verification or falsification. Lévi-Strauss did not develop a framework that could prove the existence of his concept of the fundamental structures of human thought, but simply assumed their existence. Boyer pointed out that experimental research on concepts in psychology have not supported a structuralistic view of concepts, but rather a theory-oriented or prototype-based view.

Notes

References

* Barnard, A. 2000. ''History and Theory in Anthropology.'' Cambridge: CUP. * * * Barnes, J. 1971. ''Three Styles in the Study of Kinship.'' London: Butler & Tanner. * * * Devlin, D. 2006. ''Late Modern.'' Susak Press. * Holy, L. 1996. ''Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship.'' London: Pluto Press.* * Kuper, A. 1996. ''Anthropology and Anthropologists.'' London: Routledge. * * Leach, E. 1954. ''Political Systems of Highland Burma.'' London: Bell. * * Lévi-Strauss, C. 1969. ''The Elementary Structures of Kinship.'' London: Eyre and Spottis-woode. * Lévi-Strauss, C. 1963, 1967. ''Structural Anthropology''. Translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. *

External links

Interview with Sir Edmund Leach, website of Prof. Alan MacFarlane

Kinship diagrams that exemplify cross-cousin marriage structures

''Anthropologie structurale'' (1958). Online PDF version
{{DEFAULTSORT:Structural Anthropology Structuralism Anthropology Anthropology books