IAS zone

Structuralism

Rachel Briggs and Janelle Meyer

(Note: authorship is arranged stratigraphically with the most recent author listed first)

Basic Premises:

Structuralism was predominately influenced by the schools of phenomenology and of Gestalt psychology, both of which were fostered in Germany between 1910 and the 1930s (Sturrock 2003: 47).  Phenomenology was a school of philosophical thought that attempted to give philosophy a rational, scientific basis.  Principally, it was concerned with accurately describing consciousness and abolishing the gulf that had traditionally existed between subject and object of human thought.  Consciousness, as they perceived, was always conscious of something, and that picture, that whole, cannot be separated from the object or the subject but is the relationship between them (Sturrock 2003: 50-51).  Phenomenology was made manifest in the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre among others.

Gestalt psychology maintained that all human conscious experience is patterned, emphasizing that the whole is always greater than the parts, making it a holistic view (Sturrock 2003: 52).  It fosters the view that the human mind functions by recognizing or, if none are available, imposing structures.

Structuralism developed as a theoretical framework in linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure in the late 1920s, early 1930s.  De Saussure proposed that languages were constructed of hidden rules that practitioners known but are unable to articulate.  In other words, though we may all speak the same language, we are not all able to fully articulate the grammatical rules that govern why we arrange words in the order we do.  However, we understand these rules of an implicit (as opposed to explicit) level, and we are aware when we correctly use these rules when we are able to successfully decode what another person is saying to us (Johnson 2007: 91).

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 to 2009) is widely regarded as the father of structural anthropology.  In the 1940s, he proposed that the proper focus of anthropological investigations was on the underlying patterns of human thought that produce the cultural categories that organize worldviews hitherto studied (McGee and Warms, 2004: 345).  He believed these processes were not deterministic of culture, but instead, operated within culture.  His work was heavily influenced by Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss as well as the Prague School of structural linguistics (organized in 1926) which include Roman Jakobson (1896 to 1982), and Nikolai Troubetzkoy (1890 to 1938).  From the latter, he derived the concept of binary contrasts, later referred to in his work as binary oppositions, which became fundamental in his theory. 

In 1972, his book Structuralism and Ecology was published detailing the tenets of what would become structural anthropology.  In it, he proposed that culture, like language, is composed of hidden rules that govern the behavior of its practitioners.  What made cultures unique and different from one another are the hidden rules participants understood but are unable to articulate; thus, the goal of structural anthropology is to identify these rules.  He maintained that culture is a dialectic process: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.  Levi-Strauss proposed a methodological means of discovering these rules—through the identification of binary oppositions.

The structuralist paradigm in anthropology suggests that the structure of human thought processes is the same in all cultures, and that these mental processes exist in the form of binary oppositions (Winthrop 1991). Some of these oppositions include hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, and raw-cooked. Structuralists argue that binary oppositions are reflected in various cultural institutions (Lett 1987:80). Anthropologists may discover underlying thought processes by examining such things as kinship, myth, and language. It is proposed, then, that a hidden reality exists beneath all cultural expressions. Structuralists aim to understand the underlying meaning involved in human thought as expressed in cultural acts.

Further, the theoretical approach offered by structuralism emphasizes that elements of culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to the entire system (Rubel and Rosman 1996:1263). This notion, that the whole is greater than the parts, appeals to the Gestalt school of psychology. Essentially, elements of culture are not explanatory in and of themselves, but rather form part of a meaningful system. As an analytical model, structuralism assumes the universality of human thought processes in an effort to explain the “deep structure” or underlying meaning existing in cultural phenomena. “…[S]tructuralism is a set of principles for studying the mental superstructure” (Harris 1979:166, from Lett 1987:101).

Points of Reaction:

Some concerns have been expressed as to the epistemological and theoretical assumptions of structuralism. The validity of structural explanations has been challenged on the grounds that structuralist methods are imprecise and dependent upon the observer (Lett 1987:103). Lett (1987) poses the question of how independent structural analyses of the same phenomena could arrive at the same conclusions. The paradigm of structuralism is primarily concerned with the structure of the human psyche, and it does not address historical aspects or change in culture (Lett 1987, Rubel and Rosman 1996). This synchronic approach, which advocates a “psychic unity” of all human minds, has been criticized because it does not account for individual human action historically.

Maurice Godelier incorporated a dynamic aspect into his structural analysis of Australian marriage-class systems and their relationship to demographic factors (Rubel and Rosman 1996:1269). He did so by incorporating Marxist ideas of structures representing an organized reality and the importance of change in society. Godelier took structuralism a step further with his examination of infrastructural factors. In structuralist thought, inherently conflicting ideas exist in the form of binary oppositions, but these conflicts do not find resolution. In structural Marxist thought, the importance of perpetual change in society is noted: “When internal contradictions between structures or within a structure cannot be overcome, the structure does not reproduce but is transformed or evolves” (Rubel and Rosman 1996:1269). This dialectic accounts for the process of antithesis into thesis into synthesis.

Further, others have criticized structuralism for its lack of concern with human individuality. Cultural relativists are especially critical of this because they believe structural “rationality” depicts human thought as uniform and invariable (Rubel and Rosman 1996).

In addition to those who modified the structuralist paradigm and its critics exists another reaction known as “poststructuralism.” Although poststructuralists are influenced by the structuralist ideas put forth by Lévi-Strauss, their work has more of a reflexive quality. Pierre Bourdieu is a poststructuralist who “…sees structure as a product of human creation, even though the participants may not be conscious of the structure” (Rubel and Rosman 1996:1270). Instead of the structuralist notion of the universality of human thought processes found in the structure of the human mind, Bourdieu proposes that dominant thought processes are a product of society and determine how people act (Rubel and Rosman 1996). However, in poststructuralist methods, the person describing the thought processes of people of another culture may be reduced to just that—description—as interpretation imposes the observer’s perceptions onto the analysis at hand (Rubel and Rosman 1996). Poststructuralism is much like postmodernism in this sense.

Materialists would also generally object to structural explanations in favor of more observable or practical explanations. As Lett (1987) points out, Lévi-Strauss’ analysis of the role of the coyote as trickster in many different Native American mythologies rationalizes that the coyote, because it preys on herbivores and carnivores alike, is associated with agriculture and hunting, and life and death (Lett 1987:104) is thus a deviation from natural order, or abnormal. Lett further shows that a materialist perspective is offered by Marvin Harris in the explanation of the recurrent theme of coyote as trickster: “The coyote enjoys the status of a trickster because it is an intelligent, opportunistic animal” (Lett 1987:104). Lévi-Strauss helped to spawn the rationalist-empiricist debate by furthering the inquiry into the idea of panhuman mental processes, and what determines culture.

Another reaction to structuralism is grounded in scientific inquiry. In any form of responsible inquiry, theories must be falsifiable. Structural analyses do not allow for this or for external validation (Lett 1987). Although these analyses present “complexity of symbolic realms” and “insight about the human condition,” they simply cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny (Lett 1987:108-9).