History and Theory of Social Anthropology: Structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss - Essay Example

Your Name: Instructor’s Name: Class: Date: History and Theory of Social Anthropology: An account and assessment of Structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss Introduction The intention in this paper is to discuss the theory of structuralism as propounded by Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist and philosopher. Levi-Strauss used structuralism as a ‘tool’ for the study and understanding of human society and culture.  He is considered ‘one of the fathers of structuralism’ and ‘the most important structuralist anthropologist’. He was born in Belgium in 1908 and studied law, philosophy and sociology at the University of Paris from 1927-1932 before turning to anthropology. From 1934 to 1937 he taught sociology at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, during which time he also conducted fieldwork study among various native peoples of the Amazon. In 1939-1940 he served in the French Army, but in 1941 he fled to the US from the German occupation and was at the New School for Social Research in New York in 1941, where he worked as professor during 1942-1945. In 1950 he was appointed Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études at the University of Paris and in 1959 he was appointed Chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France. Structuralism As mentioned above, Levi-Strauss has the reputation of being the ‘founder’ of ‘Structural anthropology’. Structuralism was heavily influenced by linguistics, especially by Ferdinand de Saussure. At an elementary level, Tobin gives an example of domestic pets to illuminate the relation between structural anthropology and structural linguistics. He says: “In structural anthropology as in structural linguistics, the focus is on identifying the relations that underlie languages, as opposed to focusing on the history of words.  For example, a structural linguist would not be interested in the historical relationship between the French word “chat” and the English word “cat”, but he would be interested in the relationship between the word “cat” and other English words, such as “kitten”, “dog”, and “pet”.  A structural linguist would observe that a kitten is both a type of cat (that is to say, a young one) and not yet a cat; and cats and dogs are different from each other but both are types of pets.  Building on such observations, a structural linguist identifies the logic at work in language.  Similarly, a structural anthropologist looks for the logic at work in culture” (Tobin). “Saussure’s concept of the phoneme (the smallest basic speech sound or unit of pronunciation) and his idea that phonemes exist in two kinds of relationships: diachronic and synchronic were found useful by Levi-Strauss. A phoneme has a diachronic, or "horizontal," relationship with those other phonemes that precede and follow it in a particular usage (as in a sentence), utterance, or narrative—what Saussure, a linguist, called parole (French for "word"). A phoneme has a synchronic, or "vertical," relationship with the entire system of language within which individual usages, utterances, or narratives have meaning—what Saussure called langue (French for "tongue," as in "native tongue," meaning language). Saussure was of the view argued that linguists should go ahead of merely the recording of parole (individual speech acts) and come to an understanding of langue, the underlying structural patterns (grammar) of a language. Levi-Strauss applied this distinction in his search for the mental structures that underlie all acts of human behavior: Just as we are unaware of the grammar of our language while we speak, he argues, we are unaware of the workings of social structures in our daily lives. The structures that form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate in us unconsciously. Lévi-Strauss studied hundreds of myths, breaking them into their smallest meaningful units, which he called "mythemes." Removing each from its diachronic relations with other mythemes in a single myth (such as the myth of Oedipus and his mother), he vertically aligned those mythemes that he found to be homologous (structurally correspondent). He then studied the relationships within as well as between vertically aligned columns, in an attempt to understand scientifically, through ratios and proportions, those thoughts and processes that humankind has shared, both at one particular time and across time. Whether Lévi-Strauss was studying the structure of myths or the structure of villages, he looked for recurring, common elements that transcended the differences within and among cultures” (virtuaLit). Lévi-Strauss says, “Like phonemes, kinship terms are elements of meaning; like phonemes, they acquire meaning only if they are integrated into systems.”Kinship systems," like "phonemic systems," are built by the mind on the level of unconscious thought. Finally, the recurrence of kinship patterns, marriage rules, similar prescribed attitudes between certain types of relatives, and so forth, in scattered regions of the globe and in fundamentally different societies, lead us to believe that, in the case of kinship as well as linguistics, the observable phenomena result from the action of laws which are general but implicit” (Lévi-Strauss, 1958, ch. 2). "A truly scientific analysis must be real, simplifying, and explanatory," according to Levi-Strauss (1958). Phonemic analysis exhibits features that are real, in so far as those who use the language can recognize and respond to them. It can also be easily distinguished from other categories through rules relating to the language. It is possible to explain, even generate the sound-structure of a language from a relatively small number of rules. He applied this ‘simple system of probing’ to find an explanation of why family relations differed in different native South American cultures. In one cultural group the father might have vast authority over the son, with the relationship regulated by taboos, while in another, the mother's brother would have that kind of relationship with the son, with the father's relationship relegated to being only a ‘tokenism’. Some other patterns of relationship have also been noted, such as, for instance, that “if the mother had a dominant social status and was formal with the father, then the father usually had close relations with the son” (Claude Lévi-Strauss). An explanation for these variations in family relations could be explained by ‘the role’ of the four family members, brother, sister, father, son in a cultural group that requires a man to obtain a wife from outside his own ‘kith and kin’. “A brother can give away his sister, for example, whose son might reciprocate in the next generation by allowing his own sister to marry exogenously. The underlying demand is a continued circulation of women to keep various clans peacefully related” (Claude Lévi-Strauss). This pattern of ‘marriage relationships’ marks a crucial constituent of the “social relations” that define a ‘social structure’. Levi-Strauss says that “social relations consist of the raw materials out of which the models making up the social structure are built …” (1958, ch. 15). Social structures thus include the familial, political, ecological, religious, economic, magical and a whole host of other relations experienced in a socio-cultural formation. The important point, however, is that “behaviour is structured by these relations”. It can, therefore, be said that Levi-Strauss’s structuralism consisted, at least partly, in reducing the data about cultural systems to essential formal relationships among their elements. Structural Anthropology Anthropological studies as developed by Levi-Strauss’s have placed great importance on an understanding of the structure of society and its possible transformations. Historical categories concerning the elements of a social system were considered irrelevant for an understanding of the tem, and hence are excluded from his anthropology. It may be that the ‘structuralist method’ has an inbuilt tendency to ‘militate against’ or to eschew an understanding of the ‘historical dynamics’ of a society, even though it may not be able to ‘turn a Nelson’s eye’ to the existence of its historical connections and the inexorable succession of historical facts that might explain why or how a society has come to be what it is. (see Sociology before the Russian Revolution). The essential components of Levi-Strauss's work are usually summarized as ‘(1) alliance theory, (2) human mental processes, and (3) structural analysis of myth’. (1)Alliance Theory: Alliance theory emphasizes the importance of marriage in society as distinguished from the importance of descent. The basic proposition on which the theory is built is that “the exchange of women between groups of related men results in greater social solidarity, and that the result of this cohesion is better chances of survival for all members of the resultant kin group. Lévi-Strauss' claims that the regulating of marriages through prescription and preference and the proscription of other types of marriage creates an "exchange" of women in simple societies. This interchange, accompanied by exchanges of gifts, ensures the cooperation of the members of these groups”. He says: ““It is always a system of exchange that we find at the origin of rules of marriage…The notion of exchange [can] become complicated and diversified; it has constantly appeared to us in different forms...But no matter what form it takes…it is exchange, always exchange, that emerges as the fundamental and common basis of all modalities of the institution of marriage” (Levi-Strauss, 1969, pp. 478-479). In his quest to understand the rules that govern marriage in different cultural formations without resorting to any guidance from their histories, he has to “reconstruct their marriage rules in order to understand what their structure was.  He found that that there was not much variation among marriage systems as one might expect or as they might appear at first glance.  The reason for this near-unanimity in marriage customs is because of a deep structure that underlies marriage rules, namely “a system of exchange” (Tobin). Two different “structural models” of ‘marriage exchange’ can be discerned in Levi-Strauss: in one the women of one group are offered to another group in terms that are "explicitly defined" by the "elementary structures of kinship"; in the other the who should be the spouses for the women in one’s group is left "undetermined and always open", but which, however, does not include certain closely knit kin-people such as aunts, uncles, etc as in the Western countries. In course of time it is the marriage rules that create social structures because marriages are essentially and primarily a ‘social bond’ between groups and not just between the two individuals, who are incidental to this bond. Groups exchange women for marriage on a regular basis they create a debtor/creditor relationship is made good through the "repayment" of wives, either at once or subsequently in the next generation. The motivation to go in for the exchange of women between clans was the “taboo on incest”, which Levi-Strauss considered as both the foundation and the product of culture, as it was the first and essential rule to check natural impulses; and secondly it facilitated ‘the sexual division of labour’. Lévi-Strauss observes that incest is prohibited “not because [of] a biological danger ... but because exogamous marriage results in a social benefit (1969, p. 480).  Exogamy “provides the fundamental and immutable rule ensuring the existence of the group as a group” (1969, p.480). For Lévi-Strauss the connection between nature and culture in humankind is provided by this ‘universal proscription of the incest taboo’. “In the incest taboo nature transcends itself and creates culture as the controlling element of human behavior. Sex and other drives are regulated by culture; man has become a cultural entity” (Glazer). Social structures are built on the basis of the above two types of exchange, from which he derived other all possible kinship systems and grouped them into a scheme containing three basic kinship structures. The three kinship structures were designated as 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 a certain amount of room for choice based on preference. Elementary structures can operate based on two forms of exchange, ‘restricted’ (or direct) exchange, and a ‘generalised’ exchange, which may imply that a man is free to marry either his cousin on the maternal side or his cousin on the paternal side. Levi-Strauss considered ‘Generalised exchange’ is considered better than ‘restricted exchange’ because it is possible to have an integration of indefinite numbers of groups under it (1969, p.60). Levi-Strauss described a third structure called the semi-complex structure or the Crow-Omaha system between the elementary and complex structures. This system contains so many negative marriage rules that it resembles more or less the elementary structures. “In Levi-Strauss' order of things, 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 different sides of the same coin: the former emphasising bonds of consanguinity (kinship by blood), the latter stressing bonds of affinity (kinship by law or choice)” (Alliance Theory). Malinowski had said that ancient societies prohibited incest because it stirred up contradictory feelings between sexual pleasure and parental love, or between sexual pleasure and love between a brother and a sister (1969, pp. 485-492). Levi-Strauss says that “It is unfortunate for this thesis that there is practically no primitive society which does not flagrantly contradict it on every point” (1969, p. 486). He goes on to observe that Malinowski was wrong in assuming that feelings precede culture.  “There is nothing inherently contradictory about combining sexual pleasure with parental love or with brother-and-sister love.  It is only because culture conditions us to think of these feelings as contradictory that we think they are contradictory” (1969). (2) Human Mental Processes: Levi-Strauss postulated the uniformity in the functioning of the human mind. He said that the manner in which we see the manifestations of the human mind process may be different in different circumstances, but the human mental processes are the same in all cultures. “The unity of the mental processes results from the biology of the human brain and the way it works. As a result of this unity, e.g. the classification of the universe by "primitive man" has the same basis as when it is done by any group, it is done through models. The fact that resultant models of this classification may be different is irrelevant for him. The analysis of myth in Lévi-Strauss is also based on the premise about the unity of the human mind” (Tobin). Levi-Strauss has suggested that in his analysis of the cultural phenomena such as languages, myths and kinship systems to discover what ordered patterns or structures, they seemed to display, he could reveal the structure of the human mind. He also argued “that behind the surface of individual cultures there must exist natural properties (universals) common to us all. Levi-Strauss focused his attention on the patterns or structures existing beneath the customs and beliefs of all cultures” (Structuralism and Levi-Strauss). (3) Structural Analysis of Myth: Levi-Strauss's analysis of myth is akin to his analysis of mental processes. “The use of the structuralist models of myth allows for the reduction of material studied to manageable levels. The dominant manner to accomplish this goal is based on the use of the following concepts: a) surface and deep structure, b) binary oppositions Culture/Nature, and c) mediation. To discover the model/structure of a myth one must explore the deep structure of a myth. The surface structure provides us with the narrative, the deep structure with an explication of the myth. This is accomplished by discovering the major binary opposition(s) in the deep structure. Likewise, binary oppositions occur in nature and in the human mind. They are such things as night and day, left and right or nature and culture. Nature and culture often functions as a binary opposition in tales. However, depending on the tale or the myth, the binary opposition changes. For example, the binary opposition of life and death is a useful one to explicate "Sleeping Beauty." Here, the deep structure of the story suggests that when the thirteenth fairy declares that Sleeping Beauty is to die at her fifteenth birthday that a life versus death binary opposition is posited. A mediation to solution the problem is now necessary. A binary opposition can be mediated by finding a solution to the opposition created by the binary. The mediation to the culture/nature binary opposition is that culture transcends nature. In the case of "Sleeping Beauty" the nature of the mediation is quite different but equally embedded in within the subject matter. Here the life versus death binary opposition is mediated by the twelve fairy's action: death is transformed into one hundred years sleep. In "Sleeping Beauty" or in any myth the deep structure of the narrative is analyzed through the discovery of a binary opposition and the resultant mediation. This process may in itself create new binary oppositions in the story which need to be followed until one arrives to a final mediation for the story” (Glazer). To conclude, it can be said that “Structuralism is an intellectual movement which bases it analysis on the reduction of materials into models referred to as structures. These structures are not concrete manifestations of reality; but only their cognitive models. Lévi-Strauss stresses that all cultures and not only scholars understand the universe around them through such models, and that humankind comprehends his world on the basis of these mental structures” (Glazer). References Alliance Theory: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_theory - Claude Lévi-Strauss: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Lévi-Strauss Glazer, Mark, 1996: “Structuralism” at www.utpa.edu/faculty/mglazer/Theory/structuralism.htm Lévi-Strauss, C, (1958): Structural Anthropology, 1958, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1968 Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966), The Savage Mind, Chicago, Chicago University Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1969), The Elementary Structures of Kinship, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode Tobin, Jeff: “Lecture on Claude Lévi-Strauss, ‘Principles of Kinship’”, ANTH 490: Senior Seminar, at www. faculty.oxy.edu/tobin/anth490f03/lskinship.html Sociology before the Russian Revolution, at www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/structur.htm Structuralism and Levi-Strauss: A Scientific Revolution in Anthropological Paradigm,: at www.insticeagestudies.com/library/structuralism-and-levi-strauss-a-scientific-revolu.shtml virtuaLit: Critical Approaches: bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/Virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_struct.html Read More