An Attempt to Refine Structural Anthropology
From the seasons to the DNA double-helix to binary code, order surrounds, shapes, and is designed by humans. The exploration of this phenomenon in its various formal explorations provides the very foundation of mathematics, philosophy, religion, and science. The existence of order is the central of all thought, even if it is a construction of the human brain. This is due to the fact that the very act of defining something as a "concept" and the object of a process called "thinking" is an act of ordering. Its existence is the central intuition that causes us to question and to look for it in all things. Order expressed in culture is the central assumption that allows social scientists to study social phenomena.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim suggested that phenomena occurring in society can be classed as "social facts" and thus the objects of truly scientific investigation. One such "fait social" was language. From this concept, Ferdinand de Saussure developed his "linguistics of language" (Matthews 12) and gave rise to structuralist thought.
Though he did not use the term, Saussure is credited as the principle founder of Structural Linguistics. Saussure’s theories were applied, adjusted, and adapted by others to the diverse investigations of "the life of signs within society," or semiology (Saussure 16). This led to wide and varying interpretations of structuralism. In spite of this, Structuralists share many central themes. The primary focus of a structural analysis is "on gain(ing) insight into [the] systematic and structural character of" the symbolic social phenomena (Matthews 3). This is done by first separating the social side of the system from the individual execution through expression because the system exists solely through collective use. For Saussure, in linguistics, these parts are labeled "langue" (language), for the social, and "parole" (speech), for the individual (Saussure 9).
Because a change to one element of a system yields a new system, "the study of systems must…be separated strictly from that of historical relations between systems" (Matthews 10). In other words, one must take a synchronic view for the study and description of a language. Additionally, however, an historical examination is needed to understand what the observations reveal about the underlying structure of the system. And so, a diachronic study of the system is needed, once the synchronic study is completed, in order to avoid the "mistake of the comparative philologists" (Saussure 3).
Finally, because their intention is an objective description of systems, structuralists seek to establish structure by classifying elements. This taxonomy is developed through the employment of a value system which is based on opposing distinctive features. No unit has an existence independent of the relations between it and other units. Thus, "in…system(s) there are only differences, with no positive terms" (Matthews 23).
Anthropology is one of the social sciences concerned with semiological systems. Though the employment of the structural method could grant many revelations, most structural works are Claude Lévi-Strauss’, or studies of his work. This is due to problems with methodology, terminology, and the fact that many "would-be students of structural anthropology have given up too easily and too soon" (Decker 537). In this essay I intend to apply structuralist theory, with some adjustments, to define the method of structural analysis of a culture in anthropology. Though I will try to avoid them, the reader must take a stance of skepticism against the possible biases of my interpretation of structural analysis.
For anthropologists, culture is the social fact under investigation. Because language is one facet of culture, many of the same techniques can be applied to the study of both. For example, Bloomfield’s fundamental assumptions, with some adjustment, may be accepted by anthropologists as well (Matthews 23). First, it can be assumed that there exists a communicative link between actions and meaning. Second, this link is logical and regular according to utility, meaning that certain actions are better at conveying certain meanings. Third, within a society, meaningful acts are similarly performed by its members. It can also be assumed that culture’s purpose is to promote solidarity within a society. Thus, culture is a collective system by which meaning is expressed through various acts. It now becomes necessary to define more precisely the elements of the system and where exploration should be focused.
Not all actions are significant; however, all actions can be significant. Sometimes a cough is just a cough; other times it’s a gesture of disdain for cigarette smoking. The process of filtering will be detailed later in the paper; however, significant acts will be classified as "behaviors." Essentially, behaviors can be equated to Saussure’s "parole." Unlike parole, however, behaviors are also the cultural sign because they are the medium by which meaning is expressed. Also, there is a distinction between culture, Saussure’s "langage," and a single culture, parallel to "langue." Culture, therefore, is the faculty of having a culture, which is the system realized by a specific group of individuals, and behaviors are significant acts, preformed by individuals.
Just as langue is the true object of linguistic investigation, an anthropologist focuses on a specific synchronic state of a culture and describes the observable social phenomena (behaviors). The aim of such an investigation is to discover the underlying "social structure." After the structure is found, the anthropologist can begin to analyze the system in order to find the embedded laws which cause the observed phenomena (Lévi-Strauss).
Of his investigations into social structures, Lévi-Strauss is best known for his work on kinship systems and mythology. He recognizes that meaning is expressed in kinship. He writes that "like phonemes, kinship terms are elements of meaning; like phonemes, they acquire meaning only if they are integrated into systems." Further, he specifies that, "kinship systems…are built by the mind on the level of unconscious thought." He also recognizes that the meaning of kinship terms is not expressed simply in the "nomenclature." Recognizing that kinship terms also require specific actions and attitudes, Lévi-Strauss suggests that kinship is the result of two systems, a "system of terminology," which is the vocabulary and a "system of attitudes," which is the psychological and social prescriptions of the particular society. Though intuitive, the actual application of this value system seems too subjective, in my opinion. For his extensive study of myth, Lévi-Strauss applies paradigmatic observations to show that myths can be classified into categories. Specifically, he shows that myths can be classified by which societal conflicts they are intended to resolve. He then presents what dialectic processes might occur to resolve these "internal contradictions," for example, the shepherd motif used by authors to represent their noble patrons (Decker 528). Finally, he also suggests that any meaning which can be found in the symbolism of a myth actually exists in the myth. Again, though intuitive, Lévi-Strauss does not give any specific method for proving which meaning interpreted is the actual meaning of the myth. Thus, "while he aims at a science of meaning, he is forced…to discovery by insightful guess and check" (Decker 515). Science, however, requires a certain sense of objective "self-awareness," meaning that the experimenter must be removable, without changing the experiment, or its results. For scientific investigation, clear definitions of the object and the specific methodology are paramount.
"No [one] is an island unto [oneself]." "Nothing social occurs within a vacuum." These idioms express the common knowledge that humans are connected to each other beyond the accident of birth. Not only are people connected biologically, humans have developed the faculty for transmitting abstract information between each other to perform cooperative action. As cognitive science is showing, I believe that this faculty is characteristic of our species and is found in the human brain. Furthermore, because no two individuals are exactly the same-because two objects cannot consist of the same matter, in the same space, at the same time-this opens any generalization to exceptions. That being said, society is not encompassed by a single individual. Society is a collection of individuals existing cooperatively. Their culture, as I defined it earlier, allows for this cooperation. Thus, culture and society exist as a dialectic pair: a society maintains a culture, a culture maintains a society. In order to observe culture itself, it must be assumed that the particular organization of a society is the result of its particular culture. This is why the observation of behavior reveals the underlying social structure.
In culture, behaviors are the smallest unit of expressed meaning, similar to the morpheme in language. A behavior is any conventionalized cultural sign that pairs an action "image" with a mental "concept" (Saussure). The action is performed by the "presenter," while the concept is transmitted to the "interpreter." Like the morpheme, behavior has distinctive features which exist as opposition between behaviors in the culture system. Before continuing, I suggest that onomatopoeia is not a true linguistic sign, which is the morpheme; rather it is the vocal form of imitation, which is a behavior (conventionalized, specifically by the culture’s phonetic system). This allows behaviors to be distinguished by how motivated, or arbitrary, they are. Behaviors can also be contrasted by the association between the performers. Associations can be set into taxonomy by familiarity, sex, and generation-the identities of gender, and the relationships of kinship, friend, and enemy are all combinations of prescribed behaviors. Finally, the setting in which the behavior takes place is a distinctive feature. Numerous examples exist to show that certain actions are prescribed, or "culturally accepted," in specific places, at specific times-again, the meaning of private or public settings, as well as others, is found in the associated behaviors.
There are other features of a behavior which are interesting to note and can lead to valuable insights, most notably the actual form of the action and the cognitive/emotional states of the performers. The observable forms of behaviors are detected by the senses. Though it would appear that the actual form of the behavior would be the most significant distinctive feature, one finds that its significance is dependent on the other features. Take, for example, different forms of salutations: saying "hello," shaking hands, hugging, waving, and kissing. Thus, a salutation can be seen, heard, or felt. Immediately, it can be observed that setting is a distinguishing feature between the use of speech and gestures from the rest: there is more distance between the performers. It can also be conceived that at various times, or with various relations, the use of physical contact is different. With regard to the performers’ cognitive or emotional states, it would appear that this can change the interpretation of an act. However, these states are realized after extended observation of behaviors, since it is not possible for direct observation of these mental states.
Within culture, behaviors can be combined to express larger semantic values. These combinations are called "institutions." As with sentences in language, institutions have internal structure, or syntax (Chomsky and Bar-Hillel). If one accepts the assumption that culture aided the survival of the human species through its promotion of cooperation, one can see that the cultural syntax of institutions follows the notion of "form follows function." Likewise, if the semantics of culture is based on the simple truth formula of "the species survives," and the natural and social environments put certain stresses on a society which lead to "internal contradictions" or conflict, one can see that institutions are subject to rules of "formation" and "transformation" as a reaction to conflict (Lévi-Strauss). In other words, culture is a self-regulating system which seeks active balance through use of institutions in order to insure its basic truth formula. Unlike language, in which the sentence is not included as an element, only its syntax, institutions are social forms and are included as an element of culture, and because institutions create social balance and are social creations, they are the source of cultural inertia (Saussure). In a synchronic observation, institutions are an important object to note. The specific rules of its formation, however, are found only in diachronic analysis, which will be discussed later in the essay.
As elements in the culture, institutions can be categorized much like behaviors. Perhaps the most obvious of the distinguishing characteristics is the organizational form of the institution. This can be found by determining the scope of the institution, as in how many people it is applied to (large group/small group/individual), what specific features link its individuals (sex/ethnicity/age/etc), and how constructed the institution is, or its level prescription (constructed/partially constructed/"natural"). Gender identity, for example, is an organizational institution which applies to the entire culture and links individuals by their sex, and due to the fact that biological differences do exist, it is only partially constructed by a culture. The other distinctive feature of institutions is the type of production which it facilitates. This feature is most closely linked to its purpose, i.e. the need that it fills in a society. Production can be tangible, like hunting, or intangible, like language or cohesion. Language shows that institutions are combinations of these two distinctive features. Language also reveals that, through its application to almost all human behavior, institutions can be combinations of several institutions, for example, the family institution. Thus, in the syntax of institutions, the utility of the truth formula lends itself to a combinational property. This same property occurs within languages, as seen in embedded sentences.
Though institutions help to insure social stability and cohesion, variation does occur within a culture. When this disturbance maintains mutual intelligibility with the culture at large, it is called a "subculture." This can be compared to a dialect in language. Due to culture’s tendency to resist change and the connection of people through proximity, distance and time are necessary to cause subcultures to become new cultures, mutually unintelligible with their source culture. This process can be seen in the varying cultures which have spawned as a result of British colonization.
With these definitions related to social phenomena (behaviors), it is now possible to return to the concept of social structure, the object which the anthropologist hopes to discover and understand. Lévi-Strauss writes that "the term ‘social structure’ refers to a group of problems" which are very broad and that even its definition is "so imprecise that it is hardly possible for a paper strictly limited in size to meet them fully." He continues by writing that social structure is not the legitimate object of any scientific study, but that "the main interest of social structure studies seems to be that they give the anthropologist hope" to be able to "borrow methods and types of solutions from disciplines which have gone far ahead" of anthropology in studying the phenomena, such as linguistics. Though this may be true, it is only because the total integration of the human sciences has not yet occurred. Furthermore, just as the systems which make up human beings and their social systems are complex and the result of collective existence, a true anthropology must be a collective scientific endeavor, ranging from bio-chemistry to the study of art. No individual can hope to fully understand the totality of human existence through one’s own discovery; however, cooperation may lead to collective understanding.
In order to complete the list of terminology and to proceed to describe the process of structural analysis in anthropology, the term "social structure" must be fully defined. Lévi-Strauss wrote that "the term ‘social structure’ has nothing to do with empirical reality but with models which are built up after it," and that "social structures cannot be reduced to the ensemble of the social relations to be described in a given society." He defines "social relations" as "the raw materials out of which the models making up social structure are built." When he outlines the requirements for a model to be the social structure, he seems to contradict himself by writing that the "model should be constituted so as to make immediately intelligible all the observed facts" which must be the social relations. I suggest that his set of requirements for models, which he claims "is not an anthropological question, but one that belongs to the methodology of science in general," is correct, but that his distinction and definition of "social structure" are not.
Instead of accepting that social structure is a "kind of model," I propose that the structure actually exists, and that the model is exactly that, a model of the structure. Returning to a fundamental assumption about culture as a system, it is necessary that it have a form, or structure. The question then becomes, "How does it come to exist?" In order to answer this, social structure must be redefined to be the conventionalized relations within a society which are given semantic value through their behavioral realization. Taking the institution of family as an example, the structure of relations exists because specific conventionalized behavior has been prescribed which gives the relationships meaning. For example, the conventional behaviors of affection between parents and offspring and the difference between these behaviors because of gender gives meaning to the relations of mother/father and son/daughter. These prescribed behaviors, combined with others, give rise to gender identity as a part of the total social structure. The brief description of the structure is the model of the structure.
Lévi-Strauss suggests that models of a culture can be further distinguished as "conscious" or "unconscious." I, however, suggest that the terms "abstract" and "realized" better illustrate the distinction. This distinction is much like the distinction between institutions as constructed or natural. For the anthropologist, the study of a culture’s abstract model of itself is invaluable because "even if biased or erroneous, the very bias and type of error are a part of the facts under study and probably rank among the most significant ones" (Lévi-Strauss).
As Saussure has shown, and Lévi-Strauss confirmed, the structuralist method has two parts. The first is synchronic observation and description of observable phenomena and construction of a model of the underlying structure. In order to do so, one must filter out unnecessary data. Because all actions can potentially be behaviors, the process is somewhat tedious. However, it can be represented by asking, "When is red, simply red?" and answering "It’s when it can be blue." In other words, through paradigmatic substitutions, one can create taxonomy of behaviors, valued as described earlier, and discover larger institutions. The final product should be a model of the society defined by its relations as expressed through its behaviors. With care, this model should be an objective realized model of the culture. Before continuing, it should be noted that this process does allow for interpretation, on the anthropologist’s part, and thus, several models could be developed from the same data. The question arises regarding which model is the best. The answer is the one that is "most true;" however, this is not fully realized until after the second part of the process (Lévi-Strauss).
This second part is the diachronic experimentation that leads to the actual analysis of a culture. Experimentation is the "set of procedures aiming at ascertaining how a given model will react when subjected to change and at comparing models" of a single culture or different cultures (Lévi-Strauss). The purpose of this "set of procedure" is to discover the panchronic laws which govern the structure. By comparing two synchronic states of a culture, one can find some of these laws. This can be compared to finding the trajectory equation by plotting specific points of a projectile’s position. In order to find the best fitting "equation," synchronic states must be in close proximity to each other, chronologically speaking. If, for example, one wished to compare the culture of the US, as British colonies, to its present state, one would need to compare every intermediate state as well. In other words, history, the dynamic evolution of a culture, can reveal simple laws affecting cultural change. Comparing the realized model of the observer to the abstract model of the society is equivalent to comparing the trajectory of a plotted formula to the experimented path. In the case of physics, forces such as friction can be discovered; for the analysis of a culture, the internal contradictions and conflicts can be revealed. By performing these two diachronic comparisons for several synchronic states of a single culture, general panchronic laws for the development of that culture can be found. By applying the method to several cultures and comparing results, general truths relating to culture can be discovered. If the total process (observation and experimentation) was repeated on two cultures which are in contact, rules regarding the interaction of cultures can be discovered.
After this method is repeated, a structural model including all of the processes of formation and transformation through time, may be discovered. Thus, a truly conscious model of one’s culture could be developed, so that internal and external conflict is solved by the careful and intentional application of institutions. This process, however, can be applied only to our own culture because "our own society is the only one that we can transform and yet not destroy, since the changes we should introduce would come from within" (Lévi-Strauss).
My conclusion is that there is order in culture. I believe that culture functions as a collective system of communicative meaning within a society and that there is a structure which is revealed through observation. Further, I purpose that fully understanding this structure requires one to see the structure as dynamic, due to the action of some underlying forces. This intuition of underlying structure is a central concept in any structural approach. Originally, I had hoped to actually perform a structural analysis of the institution of public education in the United States. I had hoped to describe what forces and processes shape its structure and what specific role it plays in the US culture and society; however, I found that existing structural method in anthropology lacked structure of its own and that, in order to do an analysis, the method had to be elucidated first. Unfortunately, this paper is limited and the application this method would not only require several pages beyond the set limits, but I found that it would require extensive fieldwork and research, beyond what I had already completed. This calls to question the actual utility of the method, since it is rather demanding. My opinion is that certain adjustments may be necessitated by actual application in the field; however, I have striven to present the method in a logically sound manner, since above all other things, scientific method is based on logic.
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