Structural Anthropology
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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 An ...
' 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 groups ...
s, and consequently, that all cultural practices have homologous counterparts in other cultures, essentially that all cultures are equitable. Lévi-Strauss' approach arose in large part from dialectics 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, though dialectics (as a concept) dates back to Ancient Greek philosophy. Hegel explains that every situation presents two opposing things and their resolution;
Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Ka ...
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 ...
,
mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narra ...
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 ...
. 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 sout ...
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 collabora ...
and
Edmund Leach Sir Edmund Ronald Leach FRAI FBA (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist and academic. He served as provost of King's College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1979. He was also president of the Royal Anthropologi ...
. 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, including those of Ferdinand de Saussure,
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 acts) and come to an understanding of ''langue'', the
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
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 rel ...
s in daily life. The structures that form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate
unconscious Unconscious may refer to: Physiology * Unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli Psychology * Unconscious mind, the mind operating well outside the attention of the conscious mind a ...
ly (albeit not in a Freudian 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 ...
of
linguistics Linguistics is the science, 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 ...
, which employed so-called binary oppositions in their research.
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,

Kinship

In his early work Lévi-Strauss argued that tribal kinship
groups A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...
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 ''The Raw and the Cooked'' (1964) is the first volume from '' Mythologiques'', a structural study of Amerindian mythology written by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. It was originally published in French as '. Although the book is par ...
'', 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 Raw is an adjective usually describing: * Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made * Raw food, uncooked food Raw or RAW may also refer to: Computing and electronics * .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...
becomes its opposite
cook Cook or The Cook may refer to: Food preparation * Cooking, the preparation of food * Cook (domestic worker), a household staff member who prepares food * Cook (professional), an individual who prepares food for consumption in the food industry * ...
ed. These particular opposites (raw/cooked) are symbolic of human culture itself, in which by means of thought and labour (economics), raw materials become clothes, food,
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 Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
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 bei ...
s. While Durkheim thought that taxonomies of the natural world are collective in origin (the "
collective conscious Collective consciousness, collective conscience, or collective conscious (french: conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.''Collins Dictionary of Sociolog ...
"), 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 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 Power most often refers to: * Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work" ** Engine power, the power put out by an engine ** Electric power * Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events ** Abusive power Power may a ...
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 relationships 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 kinship 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 The alliance theory, also known as the general theory of exchanges, is a structuralist method of studying kinship relations. It finds its origins in Claude Lévi-Strauss's ''Elementary Structures of Kinship'' (1949) and is in opposition to the ...
.


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 toda ...
, 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 c ...
. 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 alcohol ...
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 The term matrilateral describes kin (relatives) "on the mother's side". Social anthropologists have underlined that even where a social group demonstrates a strong emphasis on one or other line of inheritance (matrilineal or patrilineal), relativ ...
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. 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 do ...
) 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 loca ...
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 State ...
. 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 Arc ...
: Batak,
Minangkabau Minangkabau may refer to: * Minangkabau culture, culture of the Minangkabau people * Minangkabau Culture Documentation and Information Center * Minangkabau Express, an airport rail link service serving Minangkabau International Airport (''see belo ...
,
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 (chair: 1956–1987, 1999).


British neo-structuralism

The British brand of structuralism was mainly espoused by Rodney Needham and
Edmund Leach Sir Edmund Ronald Leach FRAI FBA (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist and academic. He served as provost of King's College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1979. He was also president of the Royal Anthropologi ...
, 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 had ...
. 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 interpretive- hermeneutic 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 African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** Ethn ...
tribal societies) employ descent as their primary organizational principle. In others, alliances are of primary significance, as in e.g. many Southeast-Asian societies and amongst Amazon tribes; and still others emphasise both. The
Yanomami The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. Etymology The ethnonym ''Yanomami ...
fit very well into the alliance theory mold, while the Tallensi or Azande do not. Holý (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 (Europea ...
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.
Feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
s 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

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
s 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.


See also

*
Structuralist theory of mythology In structural anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss, a French anthropologist, makes the claim that "myth is language". Through approaching mythology as language, Lévi-Strauss suggests that it can be approached the same way as language can be approache ...
*
Alliance theory The alliance theory, also known as the general theory of exchanges, is a structuralist method of studying kinship relations. It finds its origins in Claude Lévi-Strauss's ''Elementary Structures of Kinship'' (1949) and is in opposition to the ...
*
Structuralism In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...
*
Post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
*
Structural functionalism Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is "a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability". This approach looks at society through a macro-level o ...
*
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 An ...
*
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,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 ...
*
Edmund Leach Sir Edmund Ronald Leach FRAI FBA (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist and academic. He served as provost of King's College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1979. He was also president of the Royal Anthropologi ...
* '' Anthropologie structurale deux''


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