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accomodate the existence and immutability of underlying structures , Levi–
Strauss , of course, discredits it. He acknowledges its existence, though , as part
of culture and therefore as yet another item for structural analysis . In his
capacity of anthropologist he suggests that functionalists abandon studying
tribes and villages as enclosed systems , and instead of, for example , studying
the Trobrianders or the inhabitants of a mountain hamlet in terms of practical
geographical limits and their intrinsic properties, begin to look at such' 'cross–
cultural interactions " as migrations, revolutions, wars and their lasting
consequences . These criticisms were, of course, primarily directed at Malin–
owski's "descendants, " but they also apply to Parsons's structural-func–
tionalism.
We are all familiar with the irrational components of Parsons's rational,
"American" sociology, based on seemingly objective dichotomies like
particularism vs . universalism, affectivity vs. affective neutrality, with its
concerns with systems and boundary-maintenance , its assumptions of the
goal-directedness of all human action , etc . But we are more at home with this
native variety of irrationality than with the strange French (philosophical and
mythological) import. Yet in some ways Levi-Strauss and Parsons are not so far
apart, for both lean heavily on Durkheim, and we would expect some "con–
vergence, " and agreement in, at least their interpretations of him . But they
derive from different aspects of Durkheim's theory . Parsons basically incor–
porates the idea of' 'organic" solidarity, and his individuals depend only on
specific groups in their society, on certain functions and relations which
indirectly bind them to humanity as a whole . The solidarity of Levi-Strauss's
natives is still basically tribal , that is to say "mechanical ," and thus auto–
matically binds the individual directly to his entire society with its more or less
organized totality of beliefs and sentiments. The myths of Levi-Strauss's
natives emanate from their total reality which is
sui genens :
their conscious or
unconscious thoughts and actions stem from their tribal lives, their religion ,
and their ways of dealing with the elements, with neighboring tribes and with
survival. These are then the' 'collective representations " and are social facts of
the same order as are their habits of hunting and gathering, their rites of
cooking and of religion . And to Levi-Strauss, rituals that are to bring rain,
fertility , or other desired goods, and which we dismiss as irrational and
I
or
magical thinking, become-within their own context-the rational manifes–
tations of the natives ' unconscious lives and of their universe. The key to their
meaning, however, is provided by Levi-Strauss .
This, I must say, is the appealing side of structuralism . There is no
denying that as our skepticism of the theory grows, we also become more
receptive to the idea that there might be "deep" structures linking all of
humanity, everywhere, because such a theory would add weight to the cher-
