Levi-Strauss (RLE Social Theory)

Structuralism and Sociological Theory

C.R. Badcock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317652342
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

What is the significance of Structuralism for social science? How original is Lévi-Strauss' contribution to social theory? Is he Marxist? Though Structuralism, and its leading representative Lévi-Strauss, are central to sociology, anthropology and psychology, the complexity of his work and the obscurity of his commentators have often proved a barrier to understanding. Now for the first time, Dr Badcock provides a jargon-free assessment of Lévi-Strauss' place in the tradition of French sociological thought – particularly to predecessors such as Comte, Durkheim and Mauss – discusses his relationship to Marx, Sartre, Freud and Talcott Parsons and provides a concise, non-technical account of his complex ideas on kinship, totenism and myth.

1 Origins in Comte, Durkheim and Mauss

The aims of the book

The principal interest of Lévi-Strauss, both to students of the social sciences and to the reading public in general, is that he is the most well-known and widely read author belonging to what has now become known as the structuralist school. This is a label which he himself clearly accepts, using it a number of times in his works, and in the title of at least two of them. Certainly, as far as the social sciences are concerned, one might feel quite confident in calling Lévi-Strauss, the leader of the movement, or, at the very least, its most prominent exponent in the fields of anthropology and sociology.

The interest of structuralism as a movement in the social sciences originates from its claim, implicit or explicit as the case may be, to give a new insight, or consciousness, of man and his doings. This is something which is basic to all human sciences, and to sociology, anthropology and psychology in particular. Because man participates subjectively in being man, and because his works constitute his own subjective awareness, all of these sciences have striven from their very beginnings to give man a new insight into himself and a new consciousness of the society of which he is a part. The principal appeal of structuralism lies in the fact that it has attempted to do this in what appears to be a rather new way.

It has offered explanations of man and culture in terms of what Chomsky has called ‘deep structures’. These ‘deep structures’ are principles of mental functioning which are unconscious but which structuralism attempts to uncover and, in anthropology and sociology at least, to reveal as the true basis of the phenomenon of culture. In attempting to uncover these collective and unconscious determinants of behaviour structuralism plays in the social sciences a role analogous to that of psychoanalysis in individual psychology. Both claim to give a new awareness, a deeper insight into processes which affect us, but of which, until these disciplines emerged, we were largely unaware. And as we shall see later, it is one of the principal aims of this book to show just how much structuralism owes to psychoanalysis.

The desire to have a new consciousness of society, a new insight into culture is, in my opinion, the chief appeal of the social sciences in general, both to students entering on university courses in these disciplines, and to the general public in reading about them. The nature of the hoped-for new consciousness does, of course, vary widely. Some regard the study of sociology and social anthropology as a means of personal liberation from social forces which previously constrained them, but which, once understood for what they are, can be transcended by the individual. In this respect the social sciences play the part of the unmasker of mystifications, the debunker of myths, and the university becomes the slaughter-house for sacred cows. Others look to the social sciences for a consciousness of the realities which underlie the social structure which affects all of us and whose processes we all participate in. Since participation is to a large extent obligatory, it is as well if we can have some reliable information about exactly what we are a part of. Sociology and the study of contemporary social structures in particular is seen as a means to the end of a more rational awareness of social, political and economic realities, and, it is hoped, a more reliable basis for policy decisions.

Others again see the sciences of man and society as giving principally an insight into ourselves, as expanding our subjective awareness in such a way that, for instance, the unintelligible ritual of primitive peoples or even the irrational actions of members of our own society become comprehensible and a part of a meaningful picture of our own social experience.

To all of these interests structuralism appears to have something to offer and, as a new awareness of man and society, it appears to be worthy, at least initially, of our serious interest and a genuine attempt on our part to understand what it has to say.

Of course, it is not the first movement in the social sciences to hold out such a hope. Indeed, as I have already indicated, all social scientists have, in one way or another, offered something similar; all have claimed to give at least some sort of new insight into social reality, and it is my belief that if we really wish to understand structuralism and Lévi-Strauss, rather than merely learn to mouth its jargon and repeat at appropriate moments its clichés, then we must see structuralism and Lévi-Strauss’ contribution to it against the background of the social sciences in general, and of the history of sociological theory in particular.

This, then, is the first aim of this book and the one to which I have devoted the first chapter. I want to try to show that the problems which the work of Lévi-Strauss can be seen to confront were bequeathed to him by an earlier generation of sociologists, and by Durkheim in particular. Furthermore, it is generally true that we can only reliably assess the significance of someone’s contribution, in whatever field it may be, if we see it in the context of what went before it and what brought it into existence. No other book so far written on Lévi-Strauss has attempted to do this, and in doing it I have found it necessary, as the reader will soon see, to go back to the foundations of sociology in Comte and the Enlightenment. This is because the French sociological tradition to which Lévi-Strauss belongs begins with this and because, as we shall see in a moment, I believe that Lévi-Strauss’ position in the history of sociology can only be accurately assessed against the background of its whole expanse.

My second main aim is to examine Lévi-Strauss from the sociological point of view. Plenty of books and articles have been published which look at his work from the standpoint of anthropology, linguistics, literary criticism or structuralism in general (the latter usually being the most unintelligible), but few, if any, have ever written about it in the way in which we are accustomed to finding Durkheim, Marx or Comte written about. The great weakness of previous studies in my opinion is that by treating Lévi-Strauss as an anthropologist, or a structuralist or as a structural linguistic bull in a socio-anthropological china-shop they have reduced the significance of his writings by ignoring their wide philosophical, sociological and methodological implications.

Consequently, my third most important aim will be to try to penetrate to this level of general sociological and methodological interest in Lévi-Strauss’ work and to reveal, for what I believe will be the first time, the fundamental philosophical and methodological groundwork of his structuralism. I shall try to show that, as a sociologist and theoretician, Lévi-Strauss can be profitably compared with other sociologists on the same sort of basis which, for instance, one might compare Comte with Pareto. Indeed, more than this, I intend to show that precisely the same theoretical and methodological issues which sociologists are habituated to finding and discussing in the works of such classical writers can also be found in Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism. This will lead us eventually to a consideration of what is probably the most important of these issues both from the point of view of understanding what Lévi-Strauss is saying and from that of realizing what may be wrong in his approach. This is his reductionism. Most people who read his works soon gather that he is in some way or another reducing some aspects of culture to the operation of the mind. But few realize just how he goes about doing this, and still less how notions like Nature as a final reductive explanation enter into his system. Few other writers have directed much attention to this, but it will be my aim to reveal just what Lévi-Strauss’ reductionism reduces to and to demonstrate that it is in fact far less incomprehensible, metaphysical and original than many appear to suspect. Finally, I shall attempt to show that Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism is in fact just a new version of psychoanalysis, but one which, like all psychoanalytic heresies, denies the body and in this case dresses up the ideas of Freud in the trappings of cybernetics.

Sociology as a religion

New intellectual movements like structuralism do not, of course, originate out of nothing. As an intellectual phenomenon virgin birth is unknown. Paternity always exists, even if it is frequently doubtful. My aim in this book is to demonstrate just what the paternity of Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism is, and to show that, far from being new and unfamiliar, it does in fact go back to problems in sociological theory and anthropological practice which existed at the very emergence of these disciplines and which have continued to affect their course ever since. As I have remarked, I intend to try to show that Lévi-Strauss’ version of structuralism, probably the most complete and coherently thought-out that we have in the social sciences, is firmly grounded in traditional sociological and anthropological thought, and that its new and interesting pronouncements can be seen to be attempting solutions to some old and very intractable problems.

Logically enough, the most important of Lévi-Strauss’ contributions to sociological thought go back to the most fundamental problems that sociology encounters, and I shall attempt to show how Lévi-Strauss, in the course of his works, has attempted to resolve them. We shall see, I hope, that not only is this an excellent way of realizing how this new and apparently unfamiliar type of analysis relates to the great traditions and continuities of sociological thought, but that also it provides the best and most reliable means of understanding just what it is that Lévi-Strauss is saying, given that his mode of expression is not always exactly easy to understand. We shall find that a systematic progress through these fundamental problems and Lévi-Strauss’ answers to them is also a clear guide through his works, and we shall also perhaps not be surprised, knowing what we do of the Gallic flair for logic, to find that a logical progression from the most fundamental to the most recondite and rarefied of these sociological questions also entails a more or less strictly chronological consideration of his works.

But if we wish to begin at the beginning of Lévi-Strauss, both logically and chronologically, then we must, as I have suggested, also begin at the beginning of sociology. The reason for this is that Lévi-Strauss’ first major work, his Structures élémentaires de la parenté (translated into English as Elementary Structures of Kinship), while ostensibly being a weighty anthropological study of kinship systems, can in fact be seen to be an attempt at solving one of the most intractable problems of sociological theory, a problem which Lévi-Strauss inherited from Durkheim, his most important predecessor in French sociology, but one which is still very much a theoretical difficulty today and which can be found in the works of many other writers. In order to understand just what this problem is, and consequently to be in a position to appreciate the significance of Lévi-Strauss’ resolution of it, we must first trace it back to Durkheim’s major predecessor, Comte, the first of the modern sociologists and the founding father with whom this difficulty really began. The difficulty in question is not merely widespread, but, as I must now attempt to show, of fundamental importance to sociology as a whole; and like most of its really significant methodological problems, one which springs from one of its most important strengths. In attempting to resolve it, albeit implicitly rather than explicitly, Lévi-Strauss was himself to be the equal of Comte and Durkheim in exploring the most fundamental issues of sociological theory, and his contributions to the problem make him worthy of as much close theoretical scrutiny as has been given to his two great forerunners in French sociology. Lévi-Strauss may have presented himself to the public principally as an anthropologist, but, like others before him such as Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, he is an anthropologist whose work is rich in sociological insights and whose position on the major theoretical issues of sociology other sociologists cannot afford to ignore.

In assessing Lévi-Strauss’ significance for sociology as a whole and his contribution to its persisting theoretical and methodological difficulties it is therefore a good idea to look back for a moment over the history of sociological thought and to try to see just how he fits into it.

The first period of sociological thought, running roughly from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of its third quarter, was what one might term the Age of the Prophets. It was dominated by prophetic figures like St Simon, Comte and Marx.

Each one of these was a lonely exception in the intellectual life of his times. Each lived a more or less precarious existence, deriving little or nothing in the way of material or any other kind of profit from his works. Each expostulated on the present and future state of society in a highly rhetorical and frequently apocalyptic vein. Marx, with his patriarchal head, Jewish looks and unkempt appearance, comes closest to the Old Testament prototype; but Comte and St Simon might equally be seen as prophets of a new science and a new social order. Indeed, the churches which these two founded appear to qualify them for the title of ‘Prophet of Sociology’ with great justice.

The next epoch was dominated by the ‘classical’ sociologists, especially Durkheim and Weber, but also including Tönnies, Simmel and Pareto. The prophets had written visionary books, often concerned with great issues and above all with the future, whether it was the positive or communist revelation as the case may be. The great classical sociologists produced the most famous sociological studies of specific things – one recalls in this context Durkheim’s Suicide and Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Religion of China, and some of the classic studies of Tönnies and Simmel. These sociologists were the first to become accepted into the intellectual and political life of their epochs. No one exemplifies the new respectability of sociology and sociologists in this period better than Durkheim, who occupied the first chair of sociology to be created in any university. Weber, too, had a university chair, and all of these sociologists were in one sense or another accepted into society, rather than remaining lonely figures protesting without it, as had been the lot of Comte, St Simon and Marx.

Towards the end of this period – following the First World War – a new tendency became visible in sociology, particularly in the later works of Weber and Pareto. This was a tendency to turn away from specific, classic studies to general theorizing. This involved both Pareto and Weber in constructing typologies of ‘social action’, an attempt to ground sociological theory in an explanatory framework covering all forms of human behaviour seen in a social context. In the third and most recent period of sociological thought this tendency to general theorizing came to fruition, particularly in the great works of Talcott Parsons – his Structure of Social Action and The Social System Here the concern with the classification of types of social action reaches its highest point, and so too does the desire to develop an all-embracing system of sociological theory. Another, and, in the case of Lévi-Strauss, most important aspect of the contemporary sociological approach, is an attempt to resolve contradictions within sociology itself, and in particular to reconcile conflicting theoretical viewpoints derived from the great prophets and classical founding fathers.

In this respect the history of sociology is remarkably like that of many religions. Typically, the religion begins with a single prophetic founder. This is the original ‘Voice crying in the Wilderness’. Such voices make little impression in their own day, but later a group of dedicated followers forms itself, and the followers of isolated prophets become a sect. Very rapidly, ideological leaders emerge whose job it is to lay down the true, authentic teaching of the master, to define heresy and erroneous interpretations of his words, and to combat schismatic tendencies.

In the history of Christianity, St Paul is the most obvious exampleof this. In terms of my analogy, the Apostle to the Gentiles would correspond to Weber (that is, if we interpret The Protestant Ethic and other works as an attempt to resolve contradictions in Marx’s theory of social change and to bring out neglected aspects of the situation). In the course of this epoch, the sect becomes a church and the prophet’s message becomes religious dogma. In time, the third and last phase supervenes, that of Scholasticism.

As the message of the master becomes widely accepted and orthodox dogma well defined, a tendency towards the elaboration of finer points of doctrine emerges which goes along with a drift towards greater acceptance of the existing social and political status quo. The new religion, its childhood and adolescence now over, enters on maturity. In organizational terms this means the church becoming legitimated and being integrated into the wider society – corresponding to the acceptance of sociology within the university in my analogy. But in theological and philosophical terms it means an effort to accommodate and r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Origins in Comte, Durkheim and Mauss
• 2 Culture as a language
• 3 Lévi-Strauss and Marx
• 4 The debate with Sartre
• 5 Lévi-Strauss and Freud
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index