Structuralist - as exemplified by Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 - )  

Claude Levi-Strauss

One of the leading and most respected intellectuals of our age, extensively published: Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), Totemism (1963), The Savage Mind (1966) The Raw and the Cooked (1969), The Story of Lynx (1995). For Levi-Strauss, his basic questions revolved around: what are the human patterns of thought that bring order to world? And how does man deal with chaos? Main points:

• Mental structures of classification, i.e., our mind takes our varied and potentially chaotic experiences and attempts to logically structures them along binary configurations, utilizing and incorporating the dominant images and symbols that we observe in our world.
• The configurations emanate out of the deep structures of the mind - an unconscious process - not consciously developed and articulated.
• All peoples, all cultures, utilize a binary principles to organize and structure their experiences. Specifically, in order to comprehend and given meaning to any given quality, must have its antithesis and opposite: right-left, moon-sun, female-male, life-death, virtue-sin, strength-weakness, God-Devil, and good-evil. So that in human societies, we observe a series of symbolic polarities running through all segments of society: sacred-profane, culture-nature, republican-democrat, upper class-lower class, winners-losers, etc.
• The only difference between "Euro-American" classification and Tribal classification is in the tools of observing the world and thus the types of images we place in the structures.
  • The Euro-American is "engineer," predicated on tools that are empirical, precise and measurable, resulting in an "expanding" universe of infinite possibilities, models and images, and what is discarded models becoming "history." New information, new data, new theories of mathematics, science and technology are constantly being added and also becoming more abstract.
  • The Tribal is "bricoleur," "handyman," and relies on limited inventor of tools to access finite number of images and models. So Tribal peoples recycle existing images, not discarding anything, i.e., there is no history, but simply rearranges the pieces and materials at hand, like a handyman. The past and present emerged into one, and incorporates mystical elements along side empirical.
  • But both engineer and bricoleur utilize logical processes. "Primitive" man is not illogical, ignorant, or feeble minded, but just as rational and logical as you and I. He just has different tools at his disposal to observe world, and thus amount of images at disposal differs.
• Levi-Strauss' major contribution focuses on the study of myth and thinking. A logical body of knowledge, organized along binary structures, to communicate a significant message about how things are organized and specifically, mediate or lessen experiential contradictions (give order to chaos). And lessens contradictions by introducing an anomalous element - something abnormal to mediate, e.g., virgin mothers, incarnated gods. Example of the Garden of Eden.
• Problem:

  1. A non-empirical approach (as argued by the positivists).

• Contributes:
  1. Structures of thinking are based upon binary principles.
  2. Those structures, as in case of religion and myth, are key to how people see the world and organize their experiences.
  3. All forms of thinking, be they engineer or "bricoleur," are "logical." The tribal "bricoleur is not somehow pre-logical and irrational, not fantasy or illusion, not less significant than other modes of thinking.

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