Does Anyone have Anything To Say about Structural Anthropology?

My vague reccolection is that Levi-Strauss hypothesized that binary opposition was a key symbolic element in just about everything (black/white, self/other, etc. etc.). This being just another variation on the structural-functionalist theme of deep-down-we're-all-the same. It's been quite a few years though, so that's about all that I can tell you.

And Levi-Strauss was anti-binary and demonstrated famously that many kinship systems which claimed to be binary were in fact complex binary attempts to represent TRINARY structures.

I want to go into this field just to write a paper on the disintigration of traditional kinship structures called "Oh how the Moities have fallen"

OK, not really, but didn't L-S believe that the right-brain/left-brain split = the original binary opposition, hence the seeming ubiquity of similar structural oppositions in all aspects of human culture? This always struck me as being a bit crude, to say the least, but I could well've read this in some 'critical' guide rather than in the great man's own work...

Brief answer is that not only haven't I read him, I've not met him either, nor talked to his household servants, hence know very little about him. Did he have any strong opinions on the issues of his day, e.g., "Which is more indie rock: Doc Martens are Nikes?" "Which is more indie rock: croissants or danishes?" Can his work on binary oppositions be used as a model to analyze ILx's use of binary oppositions, e.g., "Taking Sides: the continuous vs. the bipolar"?

I do have opinions about "binary oppositions," which is that they rarely or perhaps never function as either/or-type dichotomies, but rather as comparative terms. So they're more like "hot and cold" than like an on-off switch. E.g., no one claims that climates can be classed as either "hot" or "cold"; rather, a "hot" climate is simply one that's hotter than some other climate that you're comparing it to. But the same thing happens to "masculine vs. feminine," "independent vs. dependent," "base vs. superstructure," "ground vs. thing being grounded," "essence vs. accident," and so forth, things that have an "either/or" air about them but don't function that way in actual conversation. I obviously don't know if LS ever had any thoughts on this, or if he didn't, whether he should have.

I love 550s.

Not structural anthropology (LOVE STRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY FWIW), but a quote from Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' the Old Way: A Story of the First People that I thought was provocative:

The Peabody Museum of Harvard has a collection of tools used by chimpanzees, including several such sticks, one of which a large male chimpanzee was seen using to beat a female. (The rare event, reported during a lecture at Harvard, outraged a group of politically correct female graduate students, underexposed to life and overexposed to academia, who vehemently attacked the female lecturer for reporting the event as science without censuring the male aggressor. This scene, too, was older than our species, wherein a group of primates mobs a conspecific who has temporarily fallen in status.)

So much unexpressed stuff to unpack here -- a) why were the students outraged? b) even if they were, is Thomas being overly dismissive of them? c) what the relationship between academia and life? d) why call them politically correct? is there other political anthro baggage being dragged around here unexamined?

a) why were the students outraged?

when i got to university i wrote an essay about how 18th century british politics were totesally corrupt and undemocratic, and dude was all, who applied those standards at the time? you're risking anachronism, big time. he was right, though, hmm, idk, not entirely.

b) even if they were, is Thomas being overly dismissive of them?

i found it acceptably dismissive

c) what the relationship between academia and life?

i <3 academia and it's hard to avoid cliches here but people who have never left it since 18 tend to be QUITE LITERALLY cloistered and have difficulty (e.g.) with people/viewpoints from without

d) why call them politically correct?

because thats what they were being from the sound of it

you're risking anachronism, big time. he was right, though, hmm, idk, not entirely.

Right, so it's more complicated than just, "lol u've been in academia too long stupid PC chicks."

OT, but did you recently come back after some time away from ilx hm? i feel like i hadn't seen your posts for awhile and then just recently a bunch of them.

i wish

I recently checked out The Savage Mind from the library, mostly because I want to read L-S's infamous takedown of Sartre, as part of my ongoing efforts in 20th century intellectual history... still barely looked at it though.

b) even if they were, is Thomas being overly dismissive of them?

i mean, we're talking about chimpanzees, right?

could we change the ways of animals? should we?

chimpanzees are the obnoxious social climbers of the primate world, mandrills are more real imho

Hah, I think chimps behavior should be shocking and that people should understand just how brutal ape social behavior is (according to our own human standards). If you're not shocked by the fucked up shit apes do then IMO it is you who have been in the anthro department too long.

As far as structural anthropology goes its awesome and set the stage for post-structuralism and cultural materialism.

i think requiring the performance of an apology for describing an act of violence between not-humans is a little bit much, yeah.

but, that quote, with it's p up-front pejorative description of grad students, may not be totally accurate.

As far as structural anthropology goes its awesome and set the stage for post-structuralism and cultural materialism.

― Ignore Me! (Viceroy), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 8:46 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

thanks, structural anthropology

maybe their objection was to describing the violence as gendered in the first place. i have no idea how or why chimps beat each other with crude tools (not an anthro grad student, am i), maybe it wasn't a male-female thing at all, and depicting it thus was itself a gendered characterization

xp oh you

idk if cultural materialism (like raymond williams iirc) rly did come out of structural anthropology anyway

wiki'ing it it appears there are two radically different types of cult. mat.

interesting

its not a straight lineage, i know, but most cult. mat. that I know of uses the structuralist constructions of "structure, superstructure, and infrastructure"... plus I think you can place anth frameworks into two large groups, one being primarily driven by considerations of nature and the exterior (ecology, environment) and the other primarily driven by considerations of the mind and the interior (society, psychology).

Cultural materialism as it currently stands kind of came from both groups, as it part of it is born from cultural ecology and part of it is born certainly from the loins of social critique and analysis.

structural anthropology is kind of radically anti-historical iirc, not into causation and change n shit? long time since i covered it, but anyway, that's why it rubbed up funny like with some other disciplines. imo cultural materialism, being definitely interested in human history, kinda-sorta marxist-inspired, is one such?

I think this is my own peculiar understanding. Structural anth was anti-historical, I think as a reaction against historical particularism. But it was very much focused on the internal - culture as a representation of the mind. Levi-Strauss I think was even quoted as saying something like "Anthropology is in its pure form a study of the mind." That, of course, is a paraphrase.

The idea though, is that understanding the human mind is the ultimate goal for anthropology, and I think cultural materialism is largely in this camp -- the idea that mental structures lead to cultural ones. Its just a lot more nuanced and complicated because in the meantime we discovered there's feedback and that external structures also affect cultural ones. Cult. mat. at the current I think is a synthesis between the mental and human-biological influences on culture, and the external, historical and environmental influences on culture -- but when it was developed it was largely a reaction against the purely ecological-determinist framework that was popular in the 80s, and got flack for being so focused (meaning, focused AT ALL) on "constructs" rather than things that could be measured objectively.

Its been a few years since I had my upper level cultural anth and anth theory classes though so take whatever I say with a grain of salt.

There's a very readable biog of Lévi-Strauss that's just been published:

http://www.amazon.com/Claude-Levi-Strauss-Laboratory-Patrick-Wilcken/dp/1594202737