Tuesday 28 April 2009

Wrestling with Levi Strauss

Structuralism is an approach in academic disciplines that explores the
relationship between fundamental elements of a structure through which
meaning is then derived. Structuralism is a popular approach concerned with
analysing language, culture and society.

According to Levi Strauss (a former professor of Anthropology at the College
de France), there should be a basic unit of kinship that could explain all
variations, displaying the qualities of a structure. The purpose is to
organise real data in the simplest effective way so that it can be tested
and refuted.

Last night I dreamed about a debate between Levi Strauss where this was
challenged by somebody who asserted that society is too chaotic to be
structured in a simple way . The consequence is that another way should be
found to evaluate and interpret data.

Is it possible to assert meaning to data if it cannot be placed in a
holistic structure? How will we then be able to determine relationships
between pieces of data?

No comments:

Post a Comment