Symbolic Anthropology

Symbolic anthropology, or '''structural anthropology''', is a theoretical strain within Cultural Anthropology that draws upon linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's notion of semiotics, which aims to study the ways in which signs govern cultural life. The champion of this theoretical approach within cultural anthropology is Claude Levi-Strauss,who in his hallmark study of myth and its function in human society provided an ethnographic account of Saussure's linguistic theory. Drawing on Saussure's notion that language is structured in binaries, where a word finds its meaning in the existence of its opposite, Levi-Strauss analyzed the structure of myth in order to understand the structure of human behavior, all of which is born out of this universal human tendency for the human mind to relate to the world in opposites. In his book "The Raw and the Cooked," Levi-Strauss explores the notion that while cultures may vary dramatically, there are universal themes that can be located in myths which illustrate this human willingness to divide the world into oppositional categories. While the content of myth may vary widely, the similarities of myths across cultures and through time originate in their structural, rather than topical, sameness. This is rooted in Levi-Strauss' notion that myth '''is''' language: it has to be communicated in order to exist, it cannot exist on its own, it is a creation born of the universal structure of the human mind. Myth, in this new linguistic sense, consists of both "langue" and "parole"- a synchronic and ahistorical structure coupled with diachronic and historical details found within the myth itself. Levi-Strauss contribution to Saussure's theory of langue and parole is what he deemed "reversible and non-reversible time". Langue, as a timeless manifestation of the structure of the human mind, exists in the past, present and future, while parole is unilinear and directional- we can't turn back the clock on history. Myth, then, is both historical and ahistorical, timeless and specific.

Levi-Strauss' understanding of the Oedipal myth is helpful in understanding the structural approach to anthropology. One theme in the Oedipal drama is the problem of walking upright. Levi-Strauss interprets the tension produced by this anomaly in behavior as one between the foreign and the native. While the story of Oedipus is culturally and historically specific, the tension between the foreign and the native can be found in myths the world over. By reducing myth, then, to its most basic strucural components , or "mythemes," we can unlock the universal. All cultural phenomena, in this sense, are unique variations on a universal linguistic structure that shapes thoughts. Culture becomes the structure of the human mind writ large.

SEE ALSO

Information About

Symbolic Anthropology