Structural Anthropology, Primitive Social Organisation and History

Abstract

Whatever the restrictions and limits upon structural anthropology claimed by its representatives it cannot avoid those requirements which are imposed upon all discourses which claim to provide the substance of any anthropology — to provide concepts adequate for the analysis of primitive or archaic societies as totalities and for the analysis of the forms which make up these societies as duly defined. In this section of the text it will be my concern to examine one aspect (a highly important one) of the contribution of Lévi-Strauss’s ‘reformulation’ of anthropology to the provision of correct categories and forms of conceptualisation for this task. As such, the examination will concentrate upon his analysis of the kinship formations of ‘primitive’ societies, but at the same time a general concern here will be that of assessing the overall worth and validity of the whole mode of orientation which his anthropology advocates with respect to forms of social organisation generally called ‘primitive’.