Unit 5

Concept and Theories of Structure

Contents
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Organic Analogy and Structure
5.3 Social Structure is a Reality: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown’s Contribution
5.4 Social Structure Refers to Relations between Groups:
The Contribution of E.E. Evans-Pritchard
5.5 Social Structure is a Model:
Contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Edmund Leach
5.6 Conclusion
5.7 Further Reading

Learning Objectives
After going through this unit you will be able to
explain the concept of social structure
compare the theoretical contribution of Radcliffe-Brown and Evans Pritchard
critically discuss lrvi-strauss’s concept of structure.

5.1 Introduction
The term ‘structure’ (Latin structura from struere, to construct) was first
applied to ‘construction’. Later, during the classical period, it was used in
the scientific field of biology. To grasp the meaning of this oft-used concept
in sociology and social anthropology (and now, in other social sciences), let
us begin with the analogy of a house.

Irrespective of the type of community to which a house belongs, it is divided

into rooms, with each room set apart for conducting a particular set of
activities. For instance, one room may be used for cooking foods and keeping
raw ingredients and utensils for cooking, and it may be called the kitchen.
Another room may be used for housing the idols and pictures of sacred
deities and ancestors, and stacking sacred books and objects (such as lamps,
incense sticks, peacock feathers, etc), and it may be called the place of
worship, while another room may be used for spreading the bed, keeping
clothes, money and jewelry, storing grains, as happens in rural communities,
and it may called the bedroom. In this way, depending upon the purpose(s),
the other rooms of the house may be set aside, given some sort of
specialisation and name. Terms like ‘study room’, ‘store’, ‘guest room’,
‘toilet’, ‘bathroom’, ‘pantry’, ‘anteroom’, ‘children’s room’, etc, all indicate
the purpose for which a particular portion of the land is marked, and thus
designated. Where the tract of land is less, many of these ‘rooms’ may not
be there, but rather different corners of the same room may be associated
with different tasks and activities, so one of its sides may be used for
cooking, while another, for keeping deities.

Different rooms of a house are all interconnected. Passages, alleyways, and

corridors link different rooms, thus facilitating mobility from one part to the
other. Entry to rooms is through doors and their connection with the outside
world is through doors, windows and ventilators. When all of them are shut, 57
Social Structure as a the room becomes a well-demarcated and closed unit, bearing little interaction
Sociological Concept
with the external world, and when open, it is constantly interacting with
the other parts of the house. Each room has its own boundary, its
distinctiveness, which separates it from other rooms. At the same time, it
is not an ‘isolated entity’, for it is defined (as a bed room or study room)
as a distinct entity in relation to the other rooms, which are also defined
distinctly. In other words, the ‘wholeness of the room’, looking from one
point of view, by stationing oneself in the room, is juxtaposed to ‘its being
a part of the house’, when one looks at it by situating oneself outside it.

Pursuing this analogy further, a village or a neighbourhood may be described

as an aggregate of houses, where each village or neighbourhood maintains
its ‘wholeness’, at the same time, it is a part of the larger units. Each village
or neighbourhood maintains its boundary, its identity, and also, has several
connections (quite like the passages, alleyways, and corridors) with other
villages or neighbourhoods. The relevant concepts that emerge from this
analogy are of the ‘whole’, the ‘interconnections’, the ‘boundary-maintaining
mechanisms’, the ‘aggregation’, and the ‘vantage point of the observer’.

Like a house (or a village or a neighbourhood), a society may be conceptualised

(or imagined) as consisted of parts. One needs to begin with this analogy,
because society does not have the kind of concreteness one finds in a house,
village, or neighbourhood. In fact, the method of analogy is useful for trying
to know the unknown through the known. One knows what a house is, what
it looks like, and by extending its model, one tries to formulate a tentative
idea of society. However, it should not be forgotten that analogy is not
homology: the idea that society is like a house does not imply that society
is a house. Thus, after drawing similarities between a society and a house,
one should also look at the differences between them, for such an exercise
will direct us to the uniqueness of society – the distinct properties of society.

In their attempts to formulate the idea of society, different scholars have

adopted different analogies. Herbert Spencer (1873) is one of the first ones
to use the analogy of building, with which we have also begun. But of all the
analogies that were used in the formative stage of sociology to comprehend
the idea of society, the most frequently used analogy has been of the
organism: Society is like an organism (Rex 1961). In addition to the analogy
of building, Spencer also develops the organic analogy, believing that this
analogy will be greatly valid if we are able to show not only that society is
like an organism but also that ‘organism is like society’ (see Barnes, H.E.
1948; Harris 1968). Why organic analogy is used more than other analogies –
such as of the solar system, and later, of atomic and chemical systems – is
because an organism is far more concrete than other systems, and is easy
to understand, comprehend, and explain. This analogy was basic to the
understanding of the concept of social structure, a term used for the first
time by Spencer.

In this unit, we will explore the meaning of the term structure and then go
on to examining the contributions of Radcliffe-Brown, Evans Pritchard and
Levi-Strauss to the understanding of social structure.

5.2 Organic Analogy and Structure

The principal unit of an organism is a cell, which combines with others of
58 its kind to form a tissue. An aggregate of tissues is an organ, and an aggregate
of organs is an organism. Thus, an organism can be broken down into organs, Concept and
Theories of Structure
an organ into tissues, a tissue into cells, and from the latter, one of them
can be taken up for study. In a similar fashion, the basic unit of society is
a ‘socialised individual’, one who has internalized the norms and values, and
the ways of meaningful social behaviour. A collectivity of individuals is a
group, and several of them combine together to form a community. An
aggregate of communities is called society. As in the case of organism, a
society can be broken down into communities, which in turn can be divided
into groups, and groups into individuals.

Organic analogy is quite useful as a starting point, but it should not be

regarded as an end in itself, for it breaks down at many levels. For instance,
a single cell can survive; there are organisms made up of single cells. But no
individual can survive alone; the most elemental unit of human society is a
dyad, i.e., a group of two individuals. Aristotle had said long time back: ‘One
who lives alone is either a beast or god.’ Organic analogy helps us to
understand the concepts of society and its structure, but it should not blind
us to the specificities of society, not found in other systems of natural and
biological world.

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1999) gives three meanings of the
term structure: 1) the way in which something is organised, built, or put
together (e.g., the structure of the human body); 2) a particular system,
pattern, procedure, or institution (e.g., class structure, salary structure);
and 3) a thing made up of several parts put together in a particular way
(e.g., a single-storey structure). When a sociologist speaks of structure, he
has all the three meanings in his mind. By structure, he means an
‘interconnectedness’ of parts, i.e., the parts of a society are not isolated
entities, but are brought together in a set of relationships to which the
term structure may be used.

Everything has a structure. Unless it is there, the entity will not be able to
carry out any tasks; it will not be able to work. When its structure breaks
down, or is jeopardized, it stops working, becomes inert, thereby affecting
the activities of the other systems because they are all interconnected. Why
the parts are connected in particular manner is because of the logical and
rational relationship between them. For those who regard structure as an
important analytical concept, the world is an organized entity; it comprises
interconnected parts, where each part is to be studied in relationship with
other parts. To sum up: ‘Structure refers to the way in which the parts of
an entity are interconnected so that the entity emerges as an integrated
whole, which for the purpose of analysis can be broken down into individual
parts.’

No dispute exists in sociology with respect to the idea that structure means
an ‘interconnectedness of parts’, but it exists as to the identity of these
parts – whether these parts are individuals, or groups, or roles, or institutions,
or messages. In other words, the question is: Which of these parts should
receive our primary attention? Second, a difference of opinion exists whether
the structure is an empirical entity, something that can be seen and observed,
or is an abstraction, arrived at from the regularity and consistency of human
behaviour. Around these two ideas are built different theories of social
structure. Robert Merton (1975) is quite right in saying that the notion of
social structure is ‘polyphyletic and polymorphous’, i.e., it has many meanings
and ideas. 59
Social Structure as a
Sociological Concept 5.3 Social Structure is a Reality: A.R. Radcliffe-
Brown’s Contribution
As said earlier, Spencer coined the term social structure, but did not offer
a theoretical perspective on it, except for advancing the analogy between
societies and organisms, which influenced later scholars in developing the
concepts of structure and function. For instance, Émile Durkheim (1938
[1895]), although a staunch critic of Spencer, was greatly attracted to organic
analogy, and said that the idea of function in social sciences was based on
analogy between the living organism and society. He used the term ‘social
morphology’, by which he meant what we mean by the term ‘social structure’.

Durkheim’s sociology exercised an indelible impact on the British social

anthropologist, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, who was a student of the diffusionist
W.H.R. Rivers, and had carried out his first-hand fieldwork with the Andaman
Islanders from 1906 to 1908. The findings of this field study were first
submitted in the form of an M.A. dissertation in 1910. Subsequently, it was
reworked for a book published in 1922 titled The Andaman Islanders, which
is regarded as one of the first important books leading to the foundation of
the functional approach. Besides his contribution to what he called the
‘structural-functional approach’, one of his important contributions was to
the understanding of the concept of social structure. As said previously,
there are scholars prior to Radcliffe-Brown who had used the term social
structure, but it was Radcliffe-Brown (1952) who not only defined this concept
but also initiated a debate on it. Throughout his teaching, he emphasised
the importance of the study of social structure. This submission of Radcliffe-
Brown was closely linked to his notion of social anthropology, which he was
quite willing to call after Durkheim, ‘comparative sociology’.

a) A Natural Science of Society

For Radcliffe-Brown (1948), social anthropology is the ‘theoretical natural
science of human society’. That is to say, social phenomena are investigated
by methods similar to those used in natural and biological sciences. Each of
the sciences has a subject matter that can be investigated through our
senses. Thus, the subject matter is empirical, which can be subjected to
observation. Radcliffe-Brown pursues the analogy of the natural science: all
natural sciences systematically investigate the ‘structure of the universe as
it is revealed to us through our senses’. Each branch of science deals with
a ‘certain class or kind of structures’ — for instance, atomic physics deals
with the structure of atoms, chemistry with the structure of molecules,
anatomy and physiology with the structure of organisms. Then, it moves
further with the aim to ‘discover the characteristics of all structures of that
kind’. Each science endeavours to understand a structure with which it is
concerned, and then, all the structures of that type are compared to discover
their common characteristics. All sciences move from particular to general,
from understanding a structure to understanding the structure.

If social anthropology is a natural science of society, then its subject matter

must be amenable to observation and empirical enquiry. Social structure is
what social anthropologists study; it is the province of their enquiry. It is
observable; it has a concrete reality. Radcliffe-Brown (1952) writes: ‘Social
structures are just as real as are individual organisms.’ It is clear that Radcliffe-
Brown’s concept of social structure is tied to his natural science conception
of social anthropology.
60
b) The Content of Social Structure Concept and
Theories of Structure
When we speak of structure, we have in mind, as said earlier, some sort of
an ordered arrangement of parts or components. A piece of musical
composition has a structure, and its parts are notes. Similarly, a sentence
has a structure: its parts are words, so does a building, the parts of which
are bricks and mortar. The basic part of social structure is the person. Here,
Radcliffe-Brown (1952) makes an important distinction between an ‘individual’
and a ‘person’. As an individual, ‘he is a biological organism’, comprising a
large number of molecules organised in a complex way, which keeps on
carrying out a multitude of physiological and psychological functions till the
time he is alive. This aspect of human beings — the ‘individual’ aspect — is
an object of study for biological and psychological sciences.

As a ‘person’, the human being is a ‘complex of social relationships’. It is the

unit of study for sociologists and social anthropologists. As a person, he is
a citizen of a country, a member of a family, a supporter of a political party,
a follower of a religious cult, a worker in a factory, a resident of a
neighbourhood, and so on. Each of these positions the person occupies
denotes a social relationship, because each position is related to another
position. A person is a member of a family in relation to other members and
the set of interrelationships of the members of a family constitutes its
structure. Each person occupies, therefore, a ‘place in a social structure’.
Radcliffe-Brown uses the term ‘social personality’ for the ‘position’ a human
being occupies in a social structure. It however does not imply that the
position remains the same throughout the life of an individual, for it changes
over time. New positions are added; old are deleted. We study persons in
terms of social structure and we study social structures in terms of persons
who are the unit of what it is composed.

Society is not a ‘haphazard conjunction of persons’, rather an organised

system where norms and values control the relationships between persons.
A person knows how he is expected to behave according to these norms and
values, and is ‘justified in expecting that other persons should do the same.’
Radcliffe-Brown includes the following two aspects within the social structure:
1) All social relations of person to person, i.e., interpersonal relations. For
example, the kinship structure of any society consists a number of dyadic
relations, such as father and son, mother and daughter, mother’s brother
and sister’s son, etc.
2) The differentiation of individuals and of classes by their social role. For
instance, the relation between men and women, chief and commoners,
employers and employees, etc, are aspects of social structure, for they
determine social relations between people.

In both cases, we are in fact concerned with relations between persons,

which norms and values of that society condition.

Bringing these together, Radcliffe-Brown says that social structure is that

concrete reality that comprises the ‘set of actually existing relations at a
given moment of time, which link together certain human beings.’ We can
conduct direct observation on social structure – we can see the ‘actually
existing relations’, describe and classify them, and understand the relations
of persons with others. Social structure is observable, empirical, and fully
amenable to study by methods of natural and biological sciences.
61
Social Structure as a c) Structural Type
Sociological Concept
When a social anthropologist carries out his fieldwork in a particular,
territorially defined, society, what he actually investigates is its social
structure, i.e., ‘an actually existing concrete reality, to be directly observed.’
But from what he observes, he abstracts a general picture of that society.
In this context, Radcliffe-Brown makes a distinction between ‘social structure’
and ‘structural type or form’. This distinction is also related with Radcliffe-
Brown’s conception of science, and of social anthropology as a ‘natural
science of society’. He says that as distinguished from history (or biography),
science is not concerned with the particular or unique. It is concerned,
rather, with the general, with propositions that apply to the entire
phenomenon. We are concerned with, he says, ‘the form of the structure’.

Say, in the study of an Australian tribe, an anthropologist is concerned with

the relationship between the mother’s brother and sister’s son. He observes
several instances of this relationship in their actual context, from which he
abstracts its ‘general or normal’ form, which is largely invariant. If social
structure is bound by factors of time and space, varying from one context
to another, structural type is general and invariant.

Social structure continues over time, a kind of continuity that Radcliffe-

Brown calls ‘dynamic continuity’. It is like the ‘organic structure of a living
body’. As a living body constantly renews itself by replacing its cells and
energy level, in the same way, the actual ‘social life renews the social
structure.’ Relations between people change over time. New members are
recruited in a society because of birth or immigration. While the social
structure changes over time, there remains an underlying continuity and
relative constancy, which designates its structural form.

Reflection and Action 5.1

What does Radlliffe-Brown mean by dynamic continuity?

This certainly does not imply that the structural form is static — it also
changes, sometimes gradually, sometimes with suddenness, as happens in
cases of revolution. But even then, some kind of a continuity of structure
is maintained. Our job as sociologists and social anthropologists is to discover
the structural form of society. It is to move from particular to general, or in
the language of Radcliffe-Brown, from ‘ideographic’ to ‘nomothetic’. While
the former designates a specific social structure, the latter is the structural
form. While the former requires an intensive study of a single society, the
latter is an abstraction of the form of that society. Also, the study of a single
society needs to be compared with similar studies of other societies. This
process, systematically carried out, can lead us to the discovery of general
laws that apply to human society as a whole.

For Radcliffe-Brown, the various steps of reaching the general laws are:
1) Intensive study of a social structure using the standard anthropological
procedures.
2) Abstraction from this its structural type.
3) Comparing the structural type of a social structure with the structural
types of other social structures, by rigorously using the comparative
method.
62
4) Arriving at the laws of society, the invariant propositions that explain Concept and
Theories of Structure
human behaviour in diverse social situations.

For Radcliffe-Brown, there is only one method of social anthropology, i.e.,

the comparative method, for it helps us to move from the particular to the
general. Social structure is what we study, but what we arrive at is the
structural type.

d) Society and Social Structure

Radcliffe-Brown’s attempt was praiseworthy, for it was the first rigorous
attempt to define the concept of social structure, rather than just taking
its meaning for granted. However, it led to many questions and confusions.
If social structure is a collectivity of interpersonal relations, real and
observable, then what is society? Do we study society and find its structure?
In his letter to Claude Lévi-Strauss, Radcliffe-Brown gave the following
example: ‘When I pick up a particular sea-shell on the beach, I recognize it
as having a particular structure’ (see Kuper, ed., 1977). The question that
immediately comes in our mind is: What do I study? The seashell or its
structure? Pursuing the example further, Radcliffe-Brown says: ‘I may find
other shells of the same species which have a similar structure, so that I can
say there is a form of structure characteristic of the species.’ Here, do I
describe the structure of each of these shells and then subject their structures
to comparison? Or, do I assume that since they all happen to be seashells,
they will have a similar structure?

Further, Radcliffe-Brown writes: ‘By examining a number of different species,

I may be able to recognize a certain general structural form or principle, that
of a helix, which could be expressed by means of logarithmic equation.’ Do
I compare different species of seashells to arrive at their general structural
form? Or, do I compare the structural forms of each of the species of seashells
to reach at a structural form that is common to all? These questions clearly
show that while there is no confusion between the categories of particular
and general, confusion prevails with respect to the distinction between
‘society’ and ‘social structure’, ‘social life’ and ‘social structure’, and the
‘structural form’ of a social structure and the ‘structural form’ of social
structures. One more observation: what Radcliffe-Brown understands by the
term ‘structural type’ is what many understand by the term ‘social structure’.
And, what Radcliffe-Brown calls ‘social structure’ is what many would call
‘society’.

5.4 Social Structure Refers to Relations Between

Groups: The Contribution of E.E. Evans-
Pritchard
Radcliffe-Brown’s paper on social structure, originally the Presidential Address
to the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1940,
referred to Evans-Pritchard’s idea of social structure. While Radcliffe-Brown
did not disagree with Evans-Pritchard’s use of social structure, he found it
more useful to include under the term social structure a good deal more than
what Evans-Pritchard had included. Evans-Pritchard delineated his concept
of social structure in the last section of the last chapter of his book, The
Nuer (1940).

Evans-Pritchard carried out a piece of intensive fieldwork with the Nuer of 63

Social Structure as a the Sudan. In his first monograph on them, he tried to describe Nuer society
Sociological Concept
on a more abstract plane of analysis than was usual at that time because of
a lack of a proper theory. Evans-Pritchard looked for such a theory in his
work on the Nuer, although many of his ideas that exercised impact on
sociology and social anthropology developed later.

In his monograph on the Nuer, he first gives an account of the importance

of cattle for the life of the people he had studied. The ecological system in
which they find themselves conditions their territorial distribution and
transhumance. The Nuer concepts of time and space arise largely from their
patterns of livelihood. Then, Evans-Pritchard examines the territorial sections
which form their political system, in the absence of a centralised political
authority. The Nuer are a good example of a stateless (or, acephalous) society.
Their discussion has given rise to the concept of segmentary political system,
where social order is largely a function of the opposition and balance of
different sections of society.

Evans-Pritchard’s description of the elements of Nuer society and their

interrelationship guided him to the concept of social structure. Instead of
beginning with the idea of person, as did Radcliffe-Brown, he began with
viewing social structure in terms of groups. To quote him (1940: 262):

By social structure we mean relations between groups which have a high

degree of consistency and constancy.

Structure is an ‘organised combination of groups’. Individuals come and go,

they are recruited and eliminated over time, but the groups remain the
same, for ‘generation after generation of people pass through them’ (1940:
262). The processes of life and death condition individuals, but the structure
of society endures. It is clear that for Evans-Pritchard, social structure deals
with units which are largely invariant, i.e., groups. What Radcliffe-Brown
means by ‘structural form’ is what Evans-Pritchard means by ‘social structure’.
The groups considered for describing social structure may be called ‘structural
groups’ – the examples of which among the Nuer are territorial groups,
lineages and age-sets.

Evans-Pritchard does not consider the family as a ‘structural group’. It is

because he thinks that the family does not have the kind of consistency and
constancy which other groups have. A family disappears at the death of its
members and a new family comes into existence. However, it does not imply
that the family is less important, for it is ‘essential for the preservation of
the structure’ (1940: 262). New members are born into family, which maintain
the system and its continuity. This formulation of structure, Evans-Pritchard
clarifies, does not imply that the groups — consistent and constant — that
constitute the structure are static. Territorial, lineage and age-set systems
do change, but slowly, and ‘there is always the same kind of interrelationship
between their segments.’

Reflecting on the example of the Nuer, Evans-Pritchard says that the tribe
is not a haphazard congregation of residential units. Every local group is
segmented, and these segments are fused in relation to other groups. Because
of this, each unit can only be defined in terms of the whole system. One
may conceptualise a society as a ‘system of groups’ in which relations exist
between ‘groups of persons’, and these relations are structural relations.
64 Thus, structure is a ‘relation between groups’. These relations can be spoken
of in terms of a system. Evans-Pritchard considers kinship relations as a Concept and
Theories of Structure
kinship system; or, one may speak of political relations as a political system.

This brings us to the issue of defining a group. For Evans-Pritchard, a group

is a congregation of people who consider themselves as a distinct unit in
relation to the other units. The members of a group have a discernible sense
of identity and they are defined so by other groups. Among the members of
a group exist reciprocal obligations. They are expected to fuse together
whenever they encounter an issue pertaining to their group or one of its
members. The ‘vengeance groups’ are formed on this basis. Their aim is to
avenge the death of one of their members. In a case of homicide, the
members of the group of the slain become one as opposed to the members
of the group of the slayer, thus emerge two ‘structurally equivalent and
mutually opposed groups’. In this sense, the segments of a tribe, a lineage,
and an age-set are all examples of groups. However, a man’s kindred does not
constitute a group, and so do the members of a neighbouring tribe or the
strangers.

To sum up: for Evans-Pritchard, the parts of social structure, among which
structural relations are to be described, are groups that endure over time.
Social structure is not an empirical entity for him. From the study of the
social relations of people, we move on to an understanding of their groups.
When we describe the relations between groups, we are already on our way
of describing their social structure. Therefore, social structure is an
anthropologist’s abstraction from the existing reality. It should be kept in
mind here that for Evans-Pritchard (1951), social anthropology is not a branch
of natural science, as it is for Radcliffe-Brown, but it is a kind of historiography.
Its kinship is with history, and not natural and biological sciences.

5.5 Social Structure is a Model: Contributions of

Claude Lévi-Strauss and Edmund Leach
Perhaps the most provocative and debatable contribution to the concept of
social structure was that of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French structuralist,
who is famous for his ingenious cross-cultural analysis of myths and kinship
systems. If for functionalism, society is a ‘kind of living creature’, consisting
of parts, which can be ‘dissected and distinguished’, for structuralism, it is
the analogy from language that helps us in conceptualizing society. From the
study of a given piece of language, the linguist tries to arrive at its grammar,
the underlying rules which make an expression meaningful, although the
speakers of that language may not know about it. Similarly, the structuralist
from a given piece of social behaviour tries to infer its underlying structure.
In structuralism, the shift is from observable behaviour to structure, from
organic analogy to language (Barnard 2000).

Further, structuralism submits that the set of relations between different

parts can be transformed into ‘something’ that appears to be different from
what it was earlier. It is the idea of transformation — of one into another
— that lies at the core of structuralism, rather than the quality of relations.
Edmund Leach (1968: 486) has given a good example to illustrate this. A piece
of music can be transformed in a variety of ways. It is written down, played
on a piano, recorded on a phonographic record, transmitted over the radio,
and finally played back to the audience. In each case, the piece of music
passes through a ‘whole series of transformations’. It appears as ‘printed
notes, as a pattern of finger movements, as sound waves, as modulations of 65
Social Structure as a the grooves on a piece of bakelite, as electromagnetic vibrations, and so
Sociological Concept
on.’ But what is common to all these manifestations of music, one different
from the other, and each conditioned by its own rules, is their structure. In
a similar fashion, while different societies vary, what remains invariant (and
common) to them is their structure. Lévi-Strauss (1963) aptly showed this in
one of his studies where he compared the totemic society of the Australian
Aborigines with Indian caste system, and found that both of them had the
same structure. If for Radcliffe-Brown, structure is observable, for Lévi-
Strauss, it is an abstract concept. If for Radcliffe-Brown, what persists is the
‘structure’ of a particular society, at a particular point of time and place, for
Lévi-Strauss, what persists is the ‘structure of the entire human society’
(Barnes, R.H. 2001).

In his celebrated essay of 1953 in A.L. Kroeber’s Anthropology Today, titled

‘Social Structure’, Lévi-Strauss says that social structure is not a field of
study; it is not a ‘province of enquiry’. We do not study social structure, but
it is an explanatory method and can be used in any kind of social studies.
In opposition to Radcliffe-Brown, Lévi-Strauss says that the term ‘social
structure’ has nothing to do with empirical reality. It refers to the models
that are built up from empirical reality. He writes: ‘…the object of social-
structure studies is to understand social relations with the help of models’
(1953: 532). Social structure is a model; it is a method of study.

Here, Lévi-Strauss distinguishes the concept of social structure from that of

social relations. The latter are the ‘raw data of social experience’ – they are
the relations between people, empirical and observable. It is from social
relations that models comprising the social structure are built. Although the
models are built from raw, empirical reality, they cannot be reduced to it.
The ensemble of social relations in a given society can be described, but
social structure is an anthropologist’s construction, built for the purpose of
analysis.

Reflection and Action 5.2

How does Levi-Strauss distinguish between the concept of social structure
and social relations?

Lévi-Strauss makes three distinctions: first, between observation and

experimentation on models; second, the conscious and unconscious character
of the models; and third, between mechanical and statistical models. The
observation of social relations and the construction of models after these
facts need to be distinguished from ‘experiments’ on models. By
experimentation, Lévi-Strauss means the ‘controlled comparison’ of models
of the same or of a different kind, with an intention to identify the model
that accounts best for the observed facts. In a structural analysis, the first
step is to observe the facts without any bias, then to describe them in
relationship to themselves and in relation to the whole. From this, models
are constructed, and in the final analysis, the best model is chosen. This
distinction is with reference to the anthropologist who studies society.

By comparison, the distinction between conscious and unconscious models

is made with reference to the society under study. Conscious models, also
known as ‘homemade models’ and ‘norms’, are the “insider’s models”: they
are those according to which the society views itself. Underneath these
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models are ‘deeper structures’, the unconscious models, which the society Concept and
Theories of Structure
does not perceive directly or consciously. Anthropologists principally work
with the models that they construct from the deeper lying phenomena,
rather than with conscious models. It is because, Lévi-Strauss says, the aim
of conscious models is to ‘perpetuate the phenomena’ and not to ‘explain’
it. But, from this, we should not infer that conscious models could be
dismissed, for in some cases, they are far more accurate than those that
anthropologists build. Even when conscious models are inaccurate, they
guide us to deeper structures.

Let us now come to the last distinction. The classic formulation of mechanical
models is that they are those models which lie on the same scale as the
phenomenon is. And, when they — the model and the phenomenon — lie on
a different scale, they are called statistical models. Unfortunately, as critics
have noted, Lévi-Strauss does not explain the meaning of the ‘same scale’.
But from the example he has given, it seems that he is concerned with the
quantitative differences between ‘what people say’ and ‘what they do’. To
make it clear, Lévi-Strauss gives the example of the laws of marriage. When
there is no difference between marriage rules and social groupings — the
two are placed on the same scale — the model formed will be mechanical.
And when several factors affect the type of marriage and people have no
option but to deviate from the rule, the model formed will be statistical.

Box 5.2: Edmund Leach on Social Structure

The British anthropologist, Edmund Leach (1954, 1961), also made a
significant contribution to the idea of social structure as a model, although
there are many significant differences between the approaches of Lévi-
Strauss and Leach to structuralism. For instance, whereas Lévi-Strauss is
interested in unearthing the ‘universal structures’ – structures applicable to
all human societies at all point of time — Leach applies the method of
structuralism to understand the local (or regional) structures. Because of
this, some term Leach’s approach ‘neo-structural’ (Kuper 1996 [1973]).

Leach has formulated a conception of social structure that is “essentially the

same as Lévi-Strauss’s” (Nutini 1970: 76). Like Lévi-Strauss, Leach divides the
‘social universe’ into different epistemological categories: the raw data of
social experience (i.e., social relations) and the models that are built from
it. Models are not empirical; they are the ‘logical constructions’ in the mind
of the anthropologist. Like Lévi-Strauss, Leach also arrives at the distinction
between the mechanical and statistical models, i.e., models built respectively
on ‘what people say’ and ‘what people do’, but he calls mechanical models
‘jural rules’ and statistical models ‘statistical norms’. The meaning Leach
gives to ‘jural rules’ and ‘statistical norms’ is essentially the same which
Lévi-Strauss gives to mechanical and statistical models.

But two important differences stand out. First, for Lévi-Strauss, both
mechanical and statistical models are of roughly equal analytical value and
they complement each other. For Leach, jural rules and statistical norms
should be treated as separate frames of reference. In an analysis, the
statistical norms should have priority over the jural rules. We should begin
our study with the actual behaviour of people, the deviations that occur and
the conformity they achieve. Second, Leach points out that mechanical
models or jural rules are qualitative rules of behaviour. Sanctions support
67
Social Structure as a them and they have the power of coercion. Statistical models or norms are
Sociological Concept
only ‘statistical averages of individual behaviour’. They do not have any
coercive power.

5.6 Conclusion
The concept of social structure has been a ‘pleasant puzzle’, to remember
the words of A.L. Kroeber (1948), to which, at one time, almost every
anthropologist and sociologist tried to make a contribution, either by drawing
attention to the part (or parts) of society that seemed important to the
author, or by lending support to an already existing idea or theory of social
structure. As noted in the beginning, the debate concerning social structure
has centered around two issues: (1) Among which parts of society are there
structural relations? And, (2) is social structure ‘real’ or a ‘model’ which the
investigator constructs? Of the two major opinions on social structure, Lévi-
Strauss’s is closely connected to his method of structuralism – social structure
is a ‘model’ devised for undertaking the study of social behaviour (relations
and experiences). For Radcliffe-Brown, social structure is an ‘empirical’ entity,
constituting the subject matter of social anthropology and sociology. In his
letter to Lévi-Strauss, Radcliffe-Brown expressed his disagreement with the
former’s concept of social structure and the confusion clouding the idea of
social structure as a ‘model’. Radcliffe-Brown also thought that what meant
by the term ‘structural type’ was what Lévi-Strauss’s term ‘model’ implied
(see Kuper, ed, 1977).

A concept of social structure that the Australian anthropologist, S.F. Nadel,

proposes tries to combine the views of both Radcliffe-Brown and Lévi-Strauss.
In his posthumously published The Theory of Social Structure (1957), Nadel
disagrees with Radcliffe-Brown’s idea that social structure is an observable
entity, but an abstraction from it. At the same time, he rejects Lévi-Strauss’s
view that social structure has nothing to do with empirical reality. From
Radcliffe-Brown, he borrows the idea that each person occupies a position
in the social structure, but from an empirical level of inter-personal interaction,
he moves to a level of abstraction where the person becomes the actor who
plays a role with respect to the others. This abstraction, however, does not
imply that it loses touch with reality. Nadel (1957: 150) writes:

I consider social structure, of whatever degree of refinement, to be still the

social reality itself, or an aspect of it, not the logic behind it…

For Nadel, the components of social structure are roles and the pattern (or
design) of interconnected roles constitutes the social structure of a society.
His definition of social structure is as follows (1957: 12):

We arrive at the structure of a society through abstracting from the concrete

population and its behaviour the pattern or network (or ‘system’) of
relationships obtaining ‘between actors in their capacity of playing roles
relative to one another’.

Besides Nadel, some other sociologists have also emphasised the importance
of roles in defining social structure. Parsons (1961), for example, says that
the structure of a social system is defined with respect to the ‘institutionalized
patterns of normative culture’. Norms vary according to, first, the position
of actors in interactive situations, and second, the type of activity. Norms
68 define roles, with the corresponding rules of behaviour, and they also
constitute the institutions. The aim of social structure is to regulate human Concept and
Theories of Structure
behaviour. In his conception of social structure, Peter Blau (1977) also speaks
of the ‘social positions among which a population is distributed.’ Some of
these concepts of social structure have been put to test in empirical situation.
For instance, Blau and Schwartz (1984) applied Blau’s ideas to understand
real life.

5.7 Further Reading

Barnard, Alan. 2000. History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Harris, Marvin. 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory, A History of Theories
of Culture. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
Merton, R.K. 1975. Structural Analysis in Sociology. In P.M. Blau (ed),
Approaches to the Study of Social Structure. New York: Free Press.
Nadel, S.F. 1957. The Theory of Social Structure. London: Cohen & West Ltd.

References
Barnard, Alan. 2000. History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Barnes, H.E. 1948. Historical Sociology: Its Origins and Development. New
York: Philosophical Library.
Barnes, R.H. 2001. Structuralism. In N.J. Smelser and P.B. Baltes (eds),
International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier
(pp. 15222-15225).
Blau, P.M. 1977. Inequality and Heterogeneity: A Primitive Theory of Social
Structure. New York: Free Press.
Blau, P.M. and J. Schwartz. 1984. Cross-cutting Social Circles. Orlando, CA:
Academic Press.
Durkheim, Émile. 1938 [1895]. The Rules of the Sociological Method. New
York: Free Press.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood
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_________________, 1951. Social Anthropology: The Broadcast Lectures.
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Harris, Marvin. 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory, A History of Theories
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Kroeber, A.L. 1948. Anthropology. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Kuper, Adam. 1996 [1973]. Anthropologists and Anthropology: The Modern
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Kuper, Adam (ed). 1977. The Social Anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown. London:
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_________________, 1961. Rethinking Anthropology. London: Athlone Press.
_________________, 1968. Social Structure. In International Encyclopedia of
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_________________, 1948. A Natural Science of Society. New York: Free Press.
_________________, 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays
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Spencer, Herbert. 1873. The Study of Sociology. New York: D. Appleton.

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