Structuralism
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Emphasis on:

• Relationity - Humans are embedded in layered webs of meaning and significance
• Underlying, not directly observable structures and models
• Transformation - A change in structured system A will produce complementary changes in other parts of the system to produce structure B. Though they seem different, A and B are the same

The term structuralism is label that has been imposed for convenience on a variety of divergent fields of thought. Recently, however, it has been largely associated with the work of Claude Levi-Strauss.

Finding Boasian gestalt theory insufficient, Levi-Straus turned to linguistics, and the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure was not interested in the development of languages but with the underlying structures of languages.

At the same time as Levi-Strauss became interested in Saussure, he was also investigating the field of cybernetics. Cyberneticians developed computer systems to do such things as control missiles so that they could compensate for the avoiding action of a target. In doing so, cyberneticians thought that they had found out how they could make something "think". The rules that they had applied to missiles also applied to the nervous systems of animals and human brains - they thought.

The cyberneticians thought that computers functioned through endless series of binary oppositions, each forming part of increasingly complex structures. There seemed to be a similarity with structuralism.

Levi-Strauss thought this to be tremendously exciting. He was fusing high technology with social science to produce a true science. With this theory in mind, Levi-Strauss set of to find out how the theories derived from linguistics and cybernetics applied to structure of culture.

Two famous manifestations of structuralist theory are Totemism (1962) and The Savage Mind (1966). Apart from attacking functionalism, he outlines his theories and they way in which they apply to the realm of culture. A bastardised version follows. Human beings are continually trying to make sense of their world. They do this by imposing structures on the world, because this is the only way that the brain can handle information. However, because the structure of the world does not conform to our cognitive methods of understanding, our understanding is always incomplete. As events change, we are driven to reinterpret what we have understood. Some societies with rapid rates of change ("hot societies") change their structure of reality more quickly than others ("cold societies").

Criticism of Structuralism

Most obviously, cybernetics as Levi-Strauss understood it is now defunct science. The original cybernetic model seems much too basic, or even an inaccurate model for the functioning of the human mind.

Much of the linguistic theory that formed the basis for structuralism is also no longer accepted.

Other Notes in this Category

1. Pierre Clastres and Political Anthropology
2. Structuralism

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