Claude Lévi-Strauss's Structural Functionalism

Structural functionalism is a significant sociological and anthropological theory that aims to comprehend society and culture by examining the structures and functions that shape them. One of the key figures associated with structural functionalism, despite being primarily known for his contributions to structuralism, is Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, a French anthropologist and ethnologist, played a pivotal role in the development of structural functionalism. His work was influenced by the ideas of Emile Durkheim, who laid the foundation for this sociological perspective. Lévi-Strauss's approach can be summarized as follows:

1. Structural Analysis

Lévi-Strauss applied structuralism to the study of culture and society. He believed that beneath the apparent diversity of human customs and beliefs, there were universal structures or "structures of the mind." These structures resembled grammar in language and could be analyzed through the study of myths, kinship systems, and rituals.

2. Binary Oppositions

A central concept in Lévi-Strauss's work is the idea of binary oppositions. He argued that cultural elements, such as myths, could be deconstructed into pairs of opposing concepts, such as nature/culture, raw/cooked, or male/female. By analyzing these oppositions, he aimed to uncover the deep structures of human thought and symbolism.

3. Functionalist Perspective

Similar to other structural functionalists, Lévi-Strauss emphasized the role of social institutions and cultural practices in maintaining social order and equilibrium. He believed that cultural elements served specific functions within a society, contributing to the establishment and preservation of social cohesion.

4. Cultural Relativism

Lévi-Strauss advocated for cultural relativism, which suggests that each culture should be understood within its own context, without imposing external judgments or values. He believed that all cultures, irrespective of their apparent differences, possessed their own internal logic and coherence.

Lévi-Strauss's work, particularly his structural analysis of kinship systems and mythology, had a profound impact on the fields of anthropology and sociology. His emphasis on the universality of certain structural patterns in human thought and culture contributed to a deeper understanding of the commonalities that underlie diverse societies worldwide. Claude Lévi-Strauss's structural functionalist approach, coupled with his insights from structuralism, continues to be influential in the study of culture, symbolism, and social systems.

See also: Structural Anthropology

Meaning of Mytheme Explained (Levi Strauss)

In the study of mythology, a mytheme is the irreducible part of a myth, a constant element (unlike a cultural meme ) that always appears interchanged and reassembled - "tied" was the image of Lévi-Strauss - with other related myths in various ways, or united in more complex relationships, such as a molecule in a compound. For example, the myths of Adonis and Osiris sharing a handful of elements, leading some researchers to conclude that they share the same source.

The resercher of popular legends Vladimir Prop considered that the unit of analysis was the individual story . Instead, mytheme is equivalent mythology to phonemes , morphemes and sememe in the linguistic structure divides language: meaning smaller units possible within a linguistic system.

In the 1950s, Claude Lévi-Strauss first adapted his technique of linguistic analysis to the analytical critique of myths. In his work on the mythological systems of primitive tribes, made on the analogy with the linguistic structure, he adopted the term mytheme , stating that the system of meaning within the myths is very similar to that of a linguistic system. This idea is questioned by Roman Jakobson , who considers the mytheme to be a concept (or phoneme) that has no meaning in itself, but appears through sociological analysis.

See: Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth

Binary Oppositions in Anthropology - summary

De Saussure's linguistic theory led Claude Levi-Strauss , an anthropologist-structuralist who worked during the 20th century, to identify the way in which culture functions similarly to language, and following Roman Jacobson saw the human brain as organized in the form of binary pairs of opposites. Levi-Strauss marked a series of such basic contrasts in which any culture can be understood in terms. Levi-Strauss, who studied the myths of different peoples, argued in his structural anthropology that the myth obeys binary laws of action and through them described a series of dichotomies, one of the main ones being the dichotomy between nature and culture. He saw the myth as a logical model designed to reconcile and deal with contradictions concerning fundamental questions of human existence, with the compromise between the two poles being achieved by an intermediary helping to deal with the threatening middle ground.

Victor Turner, a British anthropologist , studied the nature of rites of passage in different societies and argued for the existence of two types of social structures. The first is a state of the 'status system' which is the stable state of social order, and in contrast the liminal state in which the rites of passage are carried out - the 'communites'. The differences between the characteristics of these two situations are described by Turner through a series of binary oppositions, such as a stable structure versus characteristics of transition and movement, equality-inequality, lack of property-ownership, sacred-secular and more. Social life, both of individuals and of groups, moves between these two situations - two polarizing and inseparable poles. (see Turner on Liminality)

 

Mary Douglas, a British anthropologist and sociologist, is following Levy-Strauss in trying to understand the world under study through sorting and categorization. Douglas researched the laws of purity and impurity in primitive religions, and saw them as symbols that defined the boundaries of society. It linked the pure-unclean opposition to other basic social relationships, such as the relationship between order and disorder, existence-non-existence, form-lack of form, life and death.

see also;

Meaning of Binary Oppositions explained

Binary oppositions in linguistics

Binary Oppositions, Poststructuralism and Deconstruction

Summary: The Elementary Structures of Kinship / Claude Lévi-Strauss

The Elementary Structures of Kinship (in French Les structures élémentaires de la parenté ) is a work by the anthropologist and philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss, published for the first time in 1949 . 

In the first chapter of The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Lévi-Strauss develops the idea that culture is not fair or superimposed on life. "There is some strange behavior of the species that the individual can go back to in the face of these things." There is no pre-cultural character of man . The absence of rules seems to be a good criterion for differentiating nature and culture, however, constancy and regularity exist in both. In this sense, Lévi-Strauss defines that the character of the norm belongs to the other person, while the universal character belongs to nature. There is no articulation mechanism between nature and culture. The prohibition of incest is a rule (the normative character of the institution indicates the field of culture) of universal character (of the field of nature).

For Lévi-Strauss, the prohibition of incest is the culture itself. Distinguished intellectuals have developed explanations for the prohibition of incest, explanations of which can be divided into three types:

The first type seeks to maintain the dual character of the prohibition (separating nature and culture). The prohibition would be a way to protect men from the nefarious character of consanguine marriage . But it is scientific proof that from the standpoint of heredity, "the prohibitions on marriage do not seem justified." This is an instrumental view: culture would be understood as society's solution to nature's problems.

The second type of explanation eliminates the term culture and explains the prohibition by its natural character: man would have an instinctive horror of incest. The criticism of this explanation lies in the fact that if this were really instinctive, there would be no need for the prohibition. But prohibition is a social rule, albeit a universal one.

Third-type explanations also eliminate a term, nature. The prohibition would be a purely social rule, and the physiological character would be just an accidental aspect. Linking incest to totemism, the prohibition would thus be a vestige of the exogamy rule. Levi-Strauss claims that a historical explanation does not exhaust the problem. So the third type of explanation is vague.

The incest problem does not lie in proving what settings historic led to such and such modes of institutions of societies in particular, but that root cause makes all societies in all places and times regulate the relations between the sexes (this is a synchronous look at the problem). The prohibition of incest is the only rule that ensures culture's dominion over nature. It is at the same time "the step taken by nature and culture. The prohibition of incest is the link that unites the two. Without it culture is not yet taken; with it nature ceases to exist as a sovereign kingdom."

In chapter three of The Elementary Structures of Kinship, it is highlighted that the prohibition of incest expresses the passage from the natural fact of consanguinity to the cultural fact of the covenant . Culture bows to the fatality of biological inheritance . But culture becomes aware of its rights in the face of the alliance phenomenon. From then on, nature doesn't go any further. Nature has an indifference in the modality of relations between the sexes . Nature imposes the alliance without determining it. Culture accepts this fact and immediately sets the modality - nature leaves the alliance to chance, culture sets the rules.

Culture intervenes, which is to replace chance with organization. The foundation of the covenant is the necessary balance between giving and receiving. Women would be a scarce asset, whose distribution requires collective intervention. This is based on the idea that polygamy makes the number of women not enough. Even if this is not the modality, the problem is that desirable women are a minority, so the problem of scarcity is inevitable. Demand from women is always virtually or really in a state of tension. Marriage has not only an erotic but also an economic importance in the division of labor between the sexes.

See also: Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth

Totemisn

structural anthropology

Structural Anthropology - summary

Structural anthropology is a paradigm which branches of structuralism in anthropology, developed in the 1940s by the ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and constitutes his major work.  Structural Anthropology aims to explain the diversity of social facts by the combination of a limited number of logical possibilities linked to the architecture of the human mind, breaking with the dominant currents of ethno-anthropology: evolutionism, diffusionism , culturalism , functionalism. Structural Anthropology uses the general principles of the so-called fundamental sciences, apprehending a society as a complex system endowed with invariable autonomous properties ("structural") resulting from the relations between the elements (the individuals) which compose it, not deductible from the study of these. only individuals and not consciously perceptible a priori by them.

The terms structural analysis (or method ) in anthropology have often been used interchangeably as synonyms for structural anthropology by Lévi-Strauss himself, who set them as the titles of several of his articles and works. Today, these different terms remain attached to his name and continue to designate his general work and his methodology). To generally designate the use of the structural paradigm in anthropology, among other authors for example, the term usually used is that of structuralism in anthropology.

Structural anthropology, originating from various intellectual filiations of holistic orientation (Durkheimian sociology, Maussian ethnology, Saussurian linguistics, phonology, natural sciences, mathematics), will gradually develop an emerging scientific paradigm very close to the systemic current and the cognitivism which was established at the same time, by its taking into account of the structure (synchrony) / history (diachrony) dialectic, relations within the system and between systems, and its ambition to describe the human “mental enclosures” within of a vast science of man.

Although Lévi-Strauss initially used the term structuralism and referred to structural linguistics, he firmly and early, in the 1950s, dissociated himself from the recovery of his methods of analysis by a vast intellectual movement. transdisciplinary of formalist and semiological inspiration , which will capture the generic name of structuralism and experience in the 1960s an immense media, intellectual and political success. Lévi-Strauss will also in the 1970s abandon any reference to the notion of structure, to mark the major paradigm difference that separates him from the politicized and ultra-formalist evolution of so -called generalized structuralism .

See also: Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth

Totemisn

Summary: Totemism by Claude Levi Strauss

Before Claude Levi-Strauss, Western thinkers often used totemic phenomena to illustrate the supposed primitiveness of indigenous peoples. In his work "Totemism Today," Levi-Strauss aims to dismantle this perception. Previously, studies of these societies were pejoratively termed as "the study of uncivilized peoples." Levi-Strauss reframes this to "the study of peoples without written language," seeking to demonstrate that totemic thinking — the process of selecting a particular animal or object as a totem — is not a mark of irrationality. The choice of animals is based on binary contrasts, a need to differentiate themselves from the natural world by positioning these animals as symbols. Totemic thought, he argues, is as logical as Western thought.

Levi-Strauss criticizes the Western tendency to exaggerate the differences with other cultures, a practice often rooted in self-glorification. He notes that societies often define their normalcy by contrasting it with perceived madness, a phenomenon he sees mirrored in Western attitudes towards non-Western cultures.

Levi-Strauss revolutionizes anthropological methodology, shifting from studying "primitive tribes" to a systematic analysis of myth structures and their internal relational dynamics. He posits that such systems are universal across human cultures, transcending historical and cultural divides. The primary role of myths, particularly totemic myths, is to mediate the tensions between opposing realities. Myths and their derivative stories are tools for navigating existential contradictions. Levi-Strauss explores the dichotomy between nature and culture through theories of familial and communal exchanges.

The totemism phenomenon, linking animals, concepts, or plants with communal groups through feelings of reverence and identification, is not merely a psychological or local occurrence. Levi-Strauss challenges interpretations of totemism as a primitive, religious phenomenon, suggesting instead that culture's role is to impose order over chaos, thus sustaining societal continuity.

Levi-Strauss references various anthropological studies on totemism, such as Linton's work on symbolism in the US military. He argues that cultural practices, rather than totemism itself, play a more significant role in social organization. Totemism, according to Levi-Strauss, represents cultural intervention in nature, aimed at structuring social systems. This intervention, motivated by economic reciprocity, sustains community cohesion and prevents familial monopolization of social power.

The totem, varying in form but consistent in essence across societies, facilitates communal identity. Contrary to being a product of religious anxiety, it is the totem that generates this anxiety, underpinning communal discipline. For Levi-Strauss, the totem remains a vital aspect of human association, its structure inherent to human society. He views myth as a cognitive tool for interpreting natural phenomena, evolving into subjective consciousness over time. Totemism, similarly, is not an inherent construct but a culturally created unit.

Levi-Strauss also addresses the "totemic illusion," a concept he describes as a semantic distortion within the same category of phenomena. The perceived value of these phenomena results from an erroneous interpretation of reality, which he argues is not an inherent characteristic.

See also: Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth

Claude Levi-Strauss - introduction and main ideas

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 - 2009) is an anthropologist and ethnologist who had a major impact on social sciences and humanities in the second half of the 20th century. Lévi-Strauss became in particular one of the founding figures of structuralism from the 1950s by developing a specific methodology, structural anthropology, through which he radically renewed ethnology and anthropology by applying to them the holistic principles derived from the language , the phonology, mathematics and natural sciences.

Levi-Strauss' innovation in the field of anthropological thought was in the application of linguistic structuralism (see de-Saussure's work) to the social sciences, to culture and, in fact, to reality. The basic idea is that just as language is made up of structures, so are human phenomena. The two most important works of Levi-Strauss dealt with the study of kinship and the study of mythology. Using a large database of data he came to the conclusion that despite what seems like a great mixture of perceptions, the "primitive" world of the natives is an intellectually orderly world, with an almost-scientific order. Therefore, the differences between Western and Indigenous society are only at the surface level, and at the depth level they are secondary. The white person and the black person, red or yellow, process information in the same way, using the same procedures, which are based on several universal binary opposites: nature versus culture, male versus female, life versus death.

Main idea's in Claude Levi-Strauss theory:

"The sad tropics" (

T

ristes Tropiques) 

Strauss was interested in fieldwork in Brazil but in his diary he described a difficult journey into the depths of the jungle and his feeling that it is impossible to really understand people who are different from us so he came to the idea that the only way to understand other people's worlds is to see thought patterns The universals that we and they have in common - this is a binary mechanism - thinking through opposites. Was influenced by linguistics and he takes it to the side of culture.

The principle of binary thinking is innate, universal and the differences between cultures stem not from the structure of thinking but from the elements with which they think, from the various materials found in every human group.

The structural analysis - Levi-Strauss focuses on myths that are ostensibly stories of fantasy but there are similar myths all over the world and in his opinion this myth is a basic transfer of knowledge to culture and by myths one can analyze certain, hidden things of culture- i.e. the meaning of the myth is in its structure. For example: the story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" - Goldilocks symbolizes the enlightened person who came from culture and the three bears symbolize nature - it is a basic pair of opposites and gold, as the bears are hybrid creatures that allow to merge or mediate between the opposites.

The story of Oedipus - in order to tell the myth you have to follow the lines - one thing after another. To understand the myth one has to go by the columns and look at each column as a unit.

Two opposites and an intermediary element - according to Levi-Strauss the myth creates syntheses between the opposites and dulls the severity of the opposites but does not resolve the opposites - thus the myth creates a reality for itself in which man can deal with the binary inherent in human experience.

Survival - Survival is a reciprocal exchange, it is a system that regulates the exchange of women between different groups in marriage and thus defines relationships between groups - therefore, according to Strauss, there is a prohibition on incest because it interferes between groups which is the basis for group interaction.

Levi Strauss' approach  differs from the functional tradition in that he studies culture as an independent phenomenon in society - in the structure of thinking. Strauss does not seek what is visible, but deals with what is hidden and deep, which is universal.

See also: Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth

Totemisn

The Elementary Structures of Kinship 

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis – part 4: the making of myth

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4

Claude Levi-Strauss was heavily influenced by de-Saussure thoughts onthe nature of the linguistic sign. But while de-Saussure separated the synchronic from the diachronic and focused his attention only on the former, Levi-Strauss hold that a myth is not static, and the different times see different versions of the same myth.

When faces with multiple versions of the same myth anthropology until Levi-Strauss was concerned with figuring out which is the "true" version. Levi-Strauss holds that there is no "correct" of "original" version of a myth and that all versions are valid for study especially if studied together. This is because that all versions of a myth, however different in their detail, represent the same "deep structure" of the myth. The extraction of this deep structure of myth can be facilitated by the co-examining of different version of the same myth. The structural study of myth according to Levi-Strauss is able to make order out of chaos by analyzing variations on the structure of the myth. This, for example, can serve to study the way a myth develops over time.

For Levi-Strauss, a myth is the product of contradicting values which exist in every culture. Contradiction such as life and death are irreconcilable and humans are therefore pushed to resolve the contradiction through its symbolic processing in the myth.  The myth works to symbolically resolve cultural contradictions through mediating symbol chains. For example: the contradiction of life/death is translated into the contradiction between agriculture and hunting, which is in turn translated in the myth into the binary pair of herbivores and carnivores and the eventual mediating "in between" symbol of the scavenger (a coyote or raven).

Tracing the route of such symbolic transfigurations in the myth is the manner in which Levi-Strauss believes that anthropology should proceed in the study of myth.

Broaden your horizons:

  

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis – part 3: the myth of Oedipus

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4

In his "The Structural Study of Myth" Claude Levi-Strauss uses the famous example of the myth of Oedipus to illustrate his structural methodology for the study of myth. Levi-Strauss divides the different mythemes (structural units that make up the myth) of the Oedipus myth into a chart that provides both diachronic and synchronic, both syntagmatic and paradigmatic, representation of the structure of the myth. Each column in Levi-Strauss' chart of the Oedipus myth expresses variants of the same theme and the development of the plot is represented by the relations between the columns.

This method enables Levi-Strauss to locate binary relations in the Oedipus myth. For example, the first column in Levi-Strauss' chart has meythemes that represent the attribution of high value to kinship relations (such as Oedipus marries his mother) while events in the second column represent a downscaling of the family (Oedipus kills his father). The third and fourth column in Levi-Strauss' chart of the Oedipus myth represent a binary contradiction regarding the autochthonous origins of man.

Thus, Levi-Strauss' chart of the mythemes of the Oedipus myth find two sets of contradiction which Levi-Strauss finds to be correlated. The validation of the autochthonous theme is the devaluation of the family and kinship and vise-versa. According to Levi-Strauss, these contradictions appear in other cultures' mythologies and they therefore represent a central issue for all cultures.   

According to Levi-Strauss in "The Structural Study of Myth" symbolic translation of different issues is what makes up the myth in the first place and what enables it to function. For example, a binary pair like life/death can be translated into a symbolic pair of sky/earth and eventually find a symbol which unites the two, such as mist (located between the sky and the earth and connects them). These relations should, according to Levi-Strauss, the object of the study of myth.

Broaden your horizons:

  

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis – part 2: on mythemes

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4

In his "The Structural Study of Myth" anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss argues that myth is like language. One might suppose that myth is a subdivision of language (a specific form of using language) but according to Levi-Strauss myth has its own characteristics which distinguish it from its language and which make myth a language in itself. This special attribute of myth is revealed according to Levi-Strauss in the attempt to translate a mythical narrative form one language to another. Unlike other form of language, and especially poetry, which lose a lot in translation, myth retains its capacities even when poorly translated. According to Levi-Strauss, this is due to the nature of the structural components which make up a myth which are irreducible and recurrent across myths.

These structural components of myths, which Levi-Strauss terms "mythemes" are not important in themselves and have no intrinsic value but rather, much like the nature of the linguistic sign according to de-Saussure, depend on their structural alignment in order to gain meaning. Every mytheme receives its meaning form its position in the myth and its relations with other mythemes.

In "The Structural Study of Myth" Levi-Strauss is curious how different mythemes group together and reproduced as an underlying structure of myth. The method Levi-Strauss suggests for the study of myth is supposed to address exactly this concern.

According to Levi-Strauss, a myth should by analyzed into its mythemes which are subsequently classified and visually sorted in columns. The horizontal axis of the mythemes chart represents diachronical development in the myth. The vertical column represents variations on the same subject. Thus a map of relations between mythemes is received which enables the anthropologist to see both temporal and thematic relations. Only is reading the myth with both these aspects taken together into account can the meaning of the myth be deciphered.

Broaden your horizons:

  

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4    

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis

Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4

One of the most influential works in anthropology and structural analysis is "The Structural Study of Myth" published by Claude Levi-Strauss in the 1955. Levi-Strauss' "The Structural Study of Myth" is a programmatic article that discusses the manner in which anthropology should approach the study of myths. Levi-Strauss uses some examples in "The Structural Study of Myth" to illustrate his structural model of myth analysis, but his article is first and foremost a guide to analyzing mythologies.

At the opening of "The Structural Study of Myth" Levi-Strauss discusses an alleged paradox in myths: on the one hand myths seem arbitrary in that that they do not abide by any logic and anything can happen in a myth. On the other hand, Levi-Strauss notes that many different cultures present similar myths, a fact which does not sit well with the seemingly arbitrary nature of myths.

According to Levi-Strauss, it is this contradiction that points the way in the direction of the warranted methodology for the study of myth. While content varies in myth, both across cultures and across times, structure remains the same and stays the same in different cultures and times. According to Levi-Strauss, the "deep structure" of the myth should be the object of interest for anthropologists and the study of myth. What Levi-Strauss is concerned with is not the content of even the structure of a single myth, but rather the underlying structure which exists in groups of myths and even all myths.

The basic premise of Levi-Strauss' "The Structural Study of Myth" is that myth is like language, or rather is language. Myth is not only conveyed by language, it also functions like language in the manner described by de- Saussure in The Nature of the Linguistic Sign and his differentiation between "langue" and "parole". According to Levi-Strauss a myth also has its langue which is the synchronous structure which enables the specific parole of a certain myth. While details may vary from myth to myth, the structure remains the same.


Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4

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