Some Considerations on the Nature of Social Structure and Model Building: A Critique of Claude Levi-Strauss and Edmund Leach

Abstract

THAT branch of anthropology, or rather that anthropological approach, which is known today as anthropology has a long and intricate genealogy that goes back to the 18th century French philosophers Montesquieu and Rousseau, to the encyclopedists, and so forth. The approach to the study of society initiated by these men was kept alive in the 19th century by people of such diverse interests as sociologists, philosophers, economists, and scientists, such as Spencer, Comte, Saint Simon, Adam Smith, and so on. This intellectual tradition culminated in the so-called French sociological school, which began in the late 19th century with Emile Durkheim as its most important and original exponent. Implicit in this approach is the holistic idea that societies are not random associations of persons, but are well ordered systems with built-in dynamic mechanisms, very much like the combustion engine of a motor car. However, modern anthropologists do not speak of societies as being systems, but as having structures. Thus, the term social structure is used by most anthropologists, and occasionally by many who do not call themselves such (they prefer to use social organization), with reference to a set of problems that have to do mainly with the description, analysis, and ultimate explanation of life.