structural anthropology

Claude Lévi-Strauss (pronounced |/klod levi stʁos/) (born November 28, 1908) is a French anthropologist who became one of the twentieth century's greatest intellectuals by developing structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture. Claude Lévi-Strauss - Biography. Claude Lévi-Strauss is an anthropologist best known for his development of structural anthropology. He was born in Brussels and studied law and philosophy at the Sorbon ...

Including:

• Claude Lévi-Strauss - Biography
• Claude Lévi-Strauss - Anthropological theories
• Claude Lévi-Strauss - Selected bibliography

Read more here: » Claude Lévi-Strauss: Encyclopedia - Claude Lévi-Strauss

Structural-functionalism drew its inspiration primarily from the ideas of Emile Durkheim, Bronisław Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. Durkheim was concerned with the question how societies maintain internal stability and survive over time. He sought to explain social cohesion and stability through the concept of solidarity. In "primitive" societies it was mechanical solidarity, the fact that everybody performed similar tasks, that held society together. Durkheim proposed that such societies tend to be segmentary, being composed of equivalent ...

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Structural functionalism, Structural functionalism - Theoretical background, Structural functionalism - Structural functionalism and unilineal descent, Structural functionalism - Critiques

Read more here: » Structural functionalism: Encyclopedia II - Structural functionalism - Theoretical background

Lévi-Strauss's theories are set forth in Structural Anthropology (1958). Briefly, he considers culture a system of symbolic communication, to be investigated with methods that others have used more narrowly in the discussion of novels, political speeches, sports, and movies. His reasoning makes best sense against the background of an earlier generation's social theory. He wrote about this relationship for decades. A preference for "functionalist" explanations dominated the social sciences from the turn of the century th ...

See also:

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss - Biography, Claude Lévi-Strauss - Anthropological theories, Claude Lévi-Strauss - Selected bibliography

Read more here: » Claude Lévi-Strauss: Encyclopedia II - Claude Lévi-Strauss - Anthropological theories

Claude Lévi-Strauss is an anthropologist best known for his development of structural anthropology. He was born in Brussels and studied law and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. He did not pursue his study of law, but agrégated in philosophy in 1931. After a few years of teaching secondary school, in 1935 he took up a last-minute offer to be part of a French cultural mission to Brazil in which he would serve as a v ...

See also:

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss - Biography, Claude Lévi-Strauss - Anthropological theories, Claude Lévi-Strauss - Selected bibliography

Read more here: » Claude Lévi-Strauss: Encyclopedia II - Claude Lévi-Strauss - Biography

Before long, descent theory had found its critics. Many African tribal societies seemed to fit this neat model rather well, although Africanists, such as Richards, also argued that Fortes and Evans-Pritchard had deliberately downplayed internal contradictions and overemphasised the stability of the local lineage systems and their significance for the organisation of society (cf. Kuper, 1988:196, 205-6). However, in many Asian settings the problems were even more obvious. In Papua New Guinea, the local patrilineal descent groups were fragment ...

See also:

Structural functionalism, Structural functionalism - Theoretical background, Structural functionalism - Structural functionalism and unilineal descent, Structural functionalism - Critiques

Read more here: » Structural functionalism: Encyclopedia II - Structural functionalism - Critiques

Ferdinand de Saussure is the originator of the 20th century reappearance of structuralism, specifically in his 1916 book Course in General Linguistics, where he focused not on the use of language (parole, or talk), but rather on the underlying system of language (langue) and called his theory semiotics. This approach focused on examining how the elements of language related to each other in the present, that is, 'synchronically' rather than 'diachronically'. Finally, he argued that linguistic signs were composed o ...

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Structuralism, Structuralism - Structuralism in psychology 19th century, Structuralism - Structuralism in linguistics, Structuralism - Structuralism in anthropology, Structuralism - Structuralism in the Philosophy of Mathematics, Structuralism - Structuralism in the Literary Theory and Literary Criticism, Structuralism - Structuralism after World War II, Structuralism - Reactions to structuralism

Read more here: » Structuralism: Encyclopedia II - Structuralism - Structuralism in linguistics

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism like that practiced by Jean-Paul Sartre was the dominant mood. Structuralism surged to prominence in France after WWII and particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of structuralism in France led it to spread across the globe. Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice and focused instead on the way that human behavior is determined by various structures. The most important initial work on this score was Claude Lévi-Strauss's 1949 volume Elementary Structur ...

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Structuralism, Structuralism - Structuralism in psychology 19th century, Structuralism - Structuralism in linguistics, Structuralism - Structuralism in anthropology, Structuralism - Structuralism in the Philosophy of Mathematics, Structuralism - Structuralism in the Literary Theory and Literary Criticism, Structuralism - Structuralism after World War II, Structuralism - Reactions to structuralism

Read more here: » Structuralism: Encyclopedia II - Structuralism - Structuralism after World War II

See the main article at structural anthropology According to structural theory in anthropology, meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture through various practices, phenomena and activities which serve as systems of signification. A structuralist studies activities as diverse as food preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture. For example, an early ...

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Structuralism, Structuralism - Structuralism in psychology 19th century, Structuralism - Structuralism in linguistics, Structuralism - Structuralism in anthropology, Structuralism - Structuralism in the Philosophy of Mathematics, Structuralism - Structuralism in the Literary Theory and Literary Criticism, Structuralism - Structuralism after World War II, Structuralism - Reactions to structuralism

Read more here: » Structuralism: Encyclopedia II - Structuralism - Structuralism in anthropology

Structuralism in mathematics is the study of what structures (mathematical objects) are, and how the ontology of these structures should be understood. This is a growing philosophy within mathematics that is not without its share of critics. Paul Benacerraf's "What Numbers Could Not Be" (1965) is a seminal paper on mathematical structuralism in an odd sort of way: it started the movement by the response it generated. Benacerraf addressed a notion in mathematics to treat mathematical statements at face value, in which case we are commi ...

See also:

Structuralism, Structuralism - Structuralism in psychology 19th century, Structuralism - Structuralism in linguistics, Structuralism - Structuralism in anthropology, Structuralism - Structuralism in the Philosophy of Mathematics, Structuralism - Structuralism in the Literary Theory and Literary Criticism, Structuralism - Structuralism after World War II, Structuralism - Reactions to structuralism

Read more here: » Structuralism: Encyclopedia II - Structuralism - Structuralism in the Philosophy of Mathematics