Hyndman H.M. - Elementary Structures Reconsidered

Routledge Library Editions

ELEMENTARY STRUCTURES RECONSIDERED

ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY

Routledge Library Editions
Anthropology and Ethnography

FAMILY & KINSHIP In 7 Volumes

First published in 1973

Reprinted in 2004 by
Routledge
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Transferred to Digital Printing 2009

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1973 Francis Korn

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Elementary Structures Reconsidered
ISBN 0-415-32556-0 (set)
ISBN 0-415-33011-4
ISBN 978-1-136-53584-0 (ePub)

Miniset: Family & Kinship

Series: Routledge Library Editions Anthropology and Ethnography

Elementary Structures Reconsidered

Lvi-Strauss on Kinship

Francis Korn

TAVISTOCK PUBLICATIONS

First published in 1973

By Tavistock Publications Limited

11 New Fetter Lane, London 4EE

Printed in Great Britain

By T. & A. Constable Ltd Edinburgh

Francis Korn 1973

SBN 422 74210 4

To Klaus

Figures

Tables

To publish a critique of a famous book written by a famous social anthropologist is perhaps a hardy undertaking. It is a kind of enterprise, at any rate, that calls apparently for a special justification. The present monograph has been written, nevertheless, in the conviction that to analyse what has been done, particularly if this is theoretically in vogue, can be just as useful for the understanding of social facts as to attempt something entirely novel.

I desire to thank those who helped me in maintaining this conviction during the writing of this book. In the course of the three years in which I composed the analyses presented here, I had the privilege of working under the guidance of Dr Rodney Needham at the University of Oxford. I received then not only the benefit of his extensive published work relating to my subject but his personal instruction and constant help in solving all sorts of technical, theoretical, and practical problems. This book could not possibly have been the same without his invaluable aid.

Lic. Ada Korn was so kind as to criticize my own logic, particularly in . Mrs P. Grant gave me unfailing friendly assistance which did a great deal to leave me free to write.

Dr E. R. Leach, the foremost anthropological exponent of Lvi-Strausss views, and Dr P. G. Rivire read and commented on the manuscript.

The work was begun under the auspices of the ConsejoNacional de Investigaciones Cientficas y Tcnicas (Argentina), which awarded me, while I was a lecturer in the methodology of social research at the National University of Buenos Aires, an external scholarship in order to pursue my researches in England.

F. K.

University of Oxford

Parts of this book have previously been published in other places.

The following bodies are thanked for permission to reprint.

The American Anthropological Association, in respect of The Logic of some Concepts in Lvi-Strauss, American Anthropologist, 71 (1969): 70-1. The Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde: The Analysis of the Term Model in some of Lvi-Strausss Works, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 125 (1969): I-II; Terminology and Structure: The Dieri Case, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 127 (1971): 39-81. Tavistock Publications Limited and the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth: A Question of Preferences: The Iatml Case, in Rodney Needham, ed., Rethinking Kinship and Marriage, ASA Monographs II (London: Tavistock Publications, 1971), (pp. 99-132). The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland: Permutation Models and Prescriptive Systems: The Tarau Case (in collaboration with Rodney Needham), Man, n.s., 5 (1970): 393-420.

The diagram on p. 91 (Figure 21) is reprinted from Naven (second edition) by Gregory Bateson, with the permission of the publishers, Stanford University Press. 1958 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

Les Structures lmentaires de la parent, by Claude Lvi-Strauss, has acquired the stature of a classic in social anthropology. In the present monograph I wish to examine its scientific claims to this reputation.

Lvi-Strausss work is considered a remarkable feat of analysis not only by social anthropologists, but also by a surprising number of writers in other fields. To cite the opinion of one of the most prominent modern psychologists, for Piaget the anthropological structuralism of Lvi-Strauss presents an exemplary character and constitutes the most striking model neither functional nor genetic nor historical, but deductive that has been employed in an empirical human science (Piaget 1968: 90). For Boudon, similarly, Lvi-Strausss treatment of marriage rules constitutes an exact, general, falsifiable theory (1968: 203), and the scientific importance of Lvi-Strausss discoveries in anthropology needs no further demonstration (1968: 10).

For Lvi-Strauss himself, Les Structures lmentaires de la parent is an introduction to a general theory of kinship systems. It is presented as an example in method, and indeed as the last word as far as the explanation of kinship systems is concerned: even if some aspect of the problem treated in the work were developed no new idea would need to be introduced (Lvi-Strauss 1949: xi).

I

Les Structures lmentaires de la parent was first published in 1949. The book constituted, according to Lvi-Strauss, a stage in his effort to produce a sort of inventory of mental constraints, an attempt to reduce the arbitrary to an order, to discover a necessity immanent in an illusion of liberty. He chose kinship, he later explained, because it was a domain which might seem at first to be characterized by its incoherent and contingent character, and he tried to demonstrate that it was possible to reduce this domain to a very small number of significant propositions (1963a: 630).