Levi Strauss Structuralism

Explain what is meant by the term structuralism, and assess both the strengths and weaknesses of structuralism as a theoretical perspective

“Structuralism is often said to be hard to define because it has taken too many different forms for a common denominator to be in evidence”, (Piaget 1971 p3), there are however 5 main thinkers that are strongly associated with the term despite its ambiguity. Of these 5 perhaps only one would proudly refer to themselves as such. This one would be Levi-Strauss, often seen as the founding farther of Structuralism and the only thinker whose “commitment to structuralism is straightforward and total” (Sturrock 1979 p2). He started a Structuralist movement in France in the 1960’s that would eventually take the intellectually world by storm. The movement was new, exciting and “changed the mind of an age”(Gertz 1988 p26). If this is the case, why is Levi-Strauss’ the only thinker fully commitment to structuralism? Furthermore why is Stucturalism held in little esteem currently? For the purpose of evaluating Structuralism in this essay the focus will be placed upon the Structuralism of Levi-Struass, first illustrating its routes and nature and then showing that it has very strong perhaps un-recoverable weaknesses, with however some redeeming features.
The work of Levi-Strauss and Structuralism as a whole is firmly routed in the work of revered Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. He claimed that a word in any given language is a sign, and that language as a whole is merely a system of signs. Saussure split each sign into two distinct parts: the sound of a word or sign, which he called the signifier, and a mental component, which he labeled the signified (Barnard 2000). The signified is how the mind is triggered when someone hears or speaks a signifier. When a language is spoken the signifier is sound that holds meaning when spoken. Within written language the signifier is any meaningful mark written on a page or elsewhere. Only in theory can these two parts be separated, in practice they are inseparable. “There can be no signified without the signifier” (Sturrock 1979 p6). With this established Saussure asserted the linguistic sign as ‘arbitrary’. The reasoning behind this assertion is two fold. Firstly the signifier can have no natural link to the thing that it signifies, only a cultural link. For example there is no property or characteristic which books posses that make it logical for us to refer to them as books. This just happens to be what we, as humans, agree to refer to them as. For example among other languages they choose to call them not books but ‘livre, ‘boek’ or ‘Buchen’. Furthermore language is also ‘arbitrary’ at the signified level. There are concepts in our language that are absent in others. For example as Benjamin Whorf famously discovered “part of our concept of time is not shared with the Hopi (a tribe of native Indians) – its quantification into periods” (Kay & Kempton 1984 p76). Whorf proved that even a concept as central and crucial as time is not shared between all languages.
The conclusion that Sassure came to was that language “is a system not of fixed, unalterable essences but of liable forms”(Sturrock 1979 p10). Therefore words do not carry any meaning in themselves but draw meaning for each other. It is the position that a word occupies in a language that determines its meaning. These meanings can shift and change because there is nothing to tie them down. For example the word ‘Gay’ a century ago meant happy, however, it now means homosexual. This reveals language as a fundamentally arbitrary system due to its nature, and what is arbitrary can be altered. Sassure’s famous conclusion was that “language is a form not a substance”(Sturrock 1979 p10).
The work of Levi-Strauss depended on this conclusion; he does not study the relationships between self-contained essences but a system of mutually conditioned elements. Levi-Strauss believed that the social world was made up of signs in the same way as all languages. He argued, “the articulation of culture is “like that of a language” (Leach 1973 p37). For human actions or productions to have meaning there must be an underlying system of conventions that makes this possible. This underlying system is ultimately what Levi-Strauss was trying to find, the “structure of all structures. The collective Unconscious”(Barnard 2000). Above all he was trying establish facts that are true about the human mind rather than about the organization of any particular society or class of societies. Therefore just as a structural linguist, such as Saussure, might try to establish ‘deep level’ universals amongst human languages, Levi-Strauss would seek “to discover ‘deep level’ universals which lie at the back of the diversity of human cultures”(Leach 1973 p38).
Having established the routes of structuralism it would appear Saussure’s theory, it’s logic and conclusions are convincing. The human language seems to be a random choice made differently by different cultures. It is clear that learning language is nature to humans but the language itself is culturally relative. However, many would argue that Levi-Strauss’ theory and conclusions are less acceptable. The assertion that social life is ‘like a language’ seems to make a jump that is not entirely convincing. Anthony Giddens agrees and writes, “it does not make much sense to hold, as Levi-Strauss has sometimes asserted, that social life is “like a language” (Giddens 1987 p200).
Levi-Strauss’ carried this perhaps flawed theory into his work on systems of Kinship. The system of Kinship for Levi-Strauss is based on two principles that he believes to be universal to human society. Firstly that humans must exchange things in order to live as a society, he calls this the reciprocity principle, and secondly that incest is universally taboo. Given these two aspects of human nature men must form a Kinship system, which is affectively a “mode of organizing the exchange of women in marriage” (Kuper 1996). Once men are forbidden to have sex with their members of their family they must look elsewhere. They are therefore forced to set up a system in which they can have sex with women from other peoples families and in exchange the men from that family can have sex with members of their family.
A very strong criticism of Levi-Strauss’ Kinship system is an issue with the principle on which it is built. Can the taboo of incest said to be universal to human thought? It is indeed true that every human society to a certain degree will have rules governing sex but do they always include incest? For example Queen Elizabeth II is married to her 2nd cousins once removed. Furthermore in some societies “incest is a misdemeanor barely worth commenting on” (Clarke 1981 p58). Therefore to say the taboo of incest is universal seems un-convincing and largely condemns his theory. Many would continue to argue that Levi-Strauss’ system of Kinships has no place in reality and does not appear to reflect social life in anyway. At first glance this system simply does not appear to actually reveal anything about the social reality.
However, Levi-Strauss asserts that when considering the idea of social structures such as his system of Kinship “there is a point which should be cleared up immediately. The notion of (social) structure has nothing to do with empirical reality but with models which are built up after it” (Lizardo 2010 p658). Furthermore Levi-Strauss compares his Structuralist anthropology to a physicist studying the mathematical properties and structure of a crystal. They are not concerned with real crystals because they will be flawed in some fashion. They will instead use the ideal of a perfect crystal. The formation of a real crystal is determined by pressure and heat. One does not find a perfect crystal in nature but in the mind. Any society that Levi-Strauss would examine in real life would be flawed in someway just as the crystal. Therefore he must create in his mind a perfect social system such as the system of Kinship in order to then reveal social facts, not the other way around (Barnard 2000).
However, one of the major failings of Levi-Strauss is his inconsistency on this point. He argues that his models are unobservable in reality but then attempts to establish that in some cases they are. Furthermore he believed that actors in these social models could in fact be aware of the model or system they had created. He goes on to suggest his models should not be dispensed in anthropology as they might Levi-Strauss notes “ prove to be accurate or, at least, provide some insight into the structure” (Lizardo 2010 p660) of the culture being studied. Moreover even if these models do prove inaccurate then the biases and mistakes made by the actor within the system could offer some insight.
This view is simply not consistent with his original model theory and is in fact a complete contradiction. These models he talks about have something to do with empirical reality. Bourdieu criticizes Levi-Strauss in this exact way. He believed Levi-Strauss to have abandoned his methodical structuralist position and jumped from “model of reality” to the “reality of the model” (Lizardo 2010 p680). However, Bourdieu does not simply dispense Levi-Strauss’ original models. Logical models become false as soon as they try to find a place in reality. Bourdieu accepts these models “so long as they are taken for what they are, logical models giving an account of the observed facts in the most coherent and most economical way” (Lizardo 2010 667). Regardless of Levi-Strauss’ inconsistencies his original “models of reality” (Lizardo 2010 p680) can be seen as useful. They can enable an anthropologist to group diverse factual materials and allow them to show a whole system of relationships by forcing one to relate each opposition to all the others. Here Levi-Strauss is ultimately guilty of not distinguishing between the logic beneath a structural model and actual practical logic that can be used by anthropologists. However, it perhaps does not render the former useless.
Following his work on systems of kinship Levi-Strauss had a desire to apply a new method to non-linguistic cultural phenomena coupled with a belief that through the study of symbolic systems he would be able to gain access to the human mind. This led him to the study of Myths. He saw myth as symbolic thought and through analysis believed he would uncover ‘the unconscious’. “His aim is to show that the meaning of that object [Myth] is determined by its structure” (Clarke 1981 p186). The method for such analysis is complex and best shown through illustration. The New Testament and the relation between the two characters of John the Baptist and Jesus is a good example despite the fact Levi-Struass never applied the analysis himself. For this analysis no knowledge form outside of the myth is required, the meaning comes from within its self and through the relation of the elements within it. John the Baptist and Jesus are linked heavily in the bible as two heroes. However, they are also treated as opposites. John’s mother is too old to conceive but Jesus’ mother is a virgin. John is a man of nature and the wild set apart from society. Jesus is a normal man leading a normal life but hailed as a king. John’s death is by decapitation, a death normally reserved for kings in the bible. Jesus’ death is by crucifixion, the death of a common criminal. These two heroes therefore exchange roles. John starts out as a prophet who becomes a murdered king and Jesus is a king who becomes a murdered prophet. Of course it does not matter whether there is any truth to this story, the myth has meaning within its own terms, its contradictions (Leach 1973).
However, whilst this type of analysis can lead down some interesting roads of inquiry as shown above, Levi-Strauss ultimately did not succeed in revealing any truths about ‘the unconscious’. Furthermore his method offers little to social anthropology today.
In conclusion it has become apparent why Structuralism is no longer held in high esteem. The linguistic Structuralism of Saussure remains a convincing and useful theory. However, “Saussure only wished to see a discipline able to study the life of signs” (Umberto Eco 1973 ), he did not believe as Levi-Strauss that the whole of social life could be viewed as a sign process. It is this jump where structuralism starts to fail. What “changed the mind of an age” (Gertz 1988 p 26) was not sound and convincing theory but “the sense that a new language had appeared in which everything from ladies fashion…to neurology… could be usefully discussed.” (Gertz 1988 p 26). Levi-Strauss’ study of myths is very interesting but fails to reveal anything about the human mind. His system of Kinships is flawed at its very base and he becomes inconsistent on his models place in reality. However, as Bordieu suggested despite its failings the logic of his models, taken as what they are, can be useful. Therefore Levi-Strauss was clearly a brilliant man and his theory’s were groundbreaking but they have not stood the test of time due to some weaknesses that cannot be overcome.

Bibliography:

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