Structural Anthropology In America And France: A Comparison

Abstract

More than fifty years have passed since Claude Lévi-Strauss, the father of
French structural anthropology, applied structural analysis and built models
to elucidate orders beneath various kin-ship systems, in his monumental work The Elementary Structures of Kinship, and more than twenty years have passed since another structural analysis appeared in American
anthropology. However, such important theoretical developments seemed to have no serious impacts on social sciences and human studies in Indonesia. Only very small number of articles using structural paradigm
have been published in the last few years (Ahimsa-Putra, 1995; 1997; 1998; 1999a; 1999b; 2000; 2001), and there seemed to be no serious reactions -in the form of comments, critiques or discussions- from Indonesian social scientists on this paradigm1. This, I think, reflects the
stagnancy of the social and cultural sciences in Indonesia such as anthropology, archeology, history, linguistics, literature and sociology), which unfortunately have never really managed to give any significant
contribution to the theoretical developments in their own fields after their establishment in Indonesian universities forty or so years ago.