Page 112 - Prathima Volume 12

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understanding of cultural activities and practices. In that circumstance, the “structure”
referred to is not a social structure but a mental one: a structured way of organizing
knowing about the world. This approach permits structural-social anthropologists to
discover universal laws in human cultures as linguistic structuralists do on human
languages. This transposition is allowed by the realization that structure is an
underlying component of human institutions. Furthermore, structural-social
anthropologists looked at the process of communication and considered the cultural
forms as the instruments of this communication contrary to structural linguists who
were concerned more about forms than meaning; for instance, Levi-Strauss's work.
Structural social anthropologists are not only concerned about the structure of cultural
forms but also their meanings; for instance, Leach's work of Pul Eliya (1961) that he
took a structural-functionalist approach in the study of land tenure and kinship in a
Sinhalese village in Sri Lanka. To convey meaning, it is important to take into account
all the elements of the structure like the amalgamation of all elements as a whole of
separate musical instruments in an orchestra.

For instance, Leach (2013) referred to the linguistic concepts of syntagmatic and
paradigmatic chains to explain the meaning conveyed in the cultural structure. Further,
he presented the structure as a coherent system by itself whatever the elements it is in
relation to. According to Leach, the notion of distinctive features in linguistics was at
the root of the application of structuralism in social anthropology. Thus, the theory of
binary opposition is well adapted in ethnography in explaining variations among
culture. When taking into account the binary oppositions as conceived by Lévi-Strauss
(2018), it seems that this confirms Leach's assumption according to which the
elements of symbolism are not things in themselves, but “relations” organized in pairs
and sets.

Specifically, Radcliffe-Brown's concept of social structure is designed by the
relationships that exist between the different components of this society. The different
members are persons arranged into categories and groups who perform as actors of
social life. Like Mauss [2000 (1950)], with the exchange of gifts, he mentions a
continuous circulation that maintains the relationships between groups. The role of
individuals in the social institutions contribute to assuring the continuity of the
structure. Like Durkheim (2013, 1955), he considered the primitive society as the best
laboratory for understanding social structure considering that our modern society is
too complex. Further, Durkheim thought about societies as "real "things" that were
organized "organically", that is, like bodies are organized. That is what is meant by the
"organic analogy.” I infer from Radcliffe-Brown's (2013, 1952) conception of social
structure that the group matters more than the individual. Although Radcliffe-Brown
explained how the individual is incorporated in the social structure, he has not looked

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