A reconsideration reconsidered

In 1973 Francis Korn''s Elementary Structures Reconsidered: L?vi-Strauss on Kinship appeared. The publisher's blurb, which recommends this book as measured but devastating critique of L?vi-Strauss' work on kinship echoes Needham's evaluation that this is first scholarly and technically competent critique of Les Structures ?l?men taires de la parent? (Needham 1971:xciv). The former quotation may be discounted as commercial exaggeration, but one might have thought that the praise given by such a serious and committed scholar as Need ham is, would have aroused universal interest among professional anthropologists and have led to extensive book reviews in specialist journals. Up until now, however, Elementary Structures Reconsidered has only been reviewed in American Anthropologist (1976: 145) by Ino Rossi, in combination with some other studies on L?vi-Strauss. Yet this study deserves more extensive attention, not only because of the re-analyses of Australian kinship systems (Dieri, Iatmiil, Mara), and the evaluation of mathematical treatment of kinship systems, but also ? and perhaps even especially ? because of chapters 1 and 3, which are devoted to an investigation of the internal consistency of L?vi-Strauss' conceptual framework. In particular, Korn's analysis of the incest-taboo (pp. 8-17) and her treatment of the concept-pairs preferential-prescriptive' and elementary-complex' (pp. 36-39) are important. If the conclusions drawn by Korn were correct with regard to these topics, this would undermine some of the most central arguments of Les Structures ?l?mentaires de la parent?. Therefore I will restrict myself to these two chapters. I shall first of all give a summary of Korn's treatment of the incest taboo. Then I shall point out some of the shortcomings in her analysis. Next I shall criticize Korn's discussion of the concept-pairs, 'preferential prescriptive' and 'elementary-complex

Consistency (knowledge bases · Epistemology · Exaggeration · Genealogy · Kinship · Praise · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Taboo · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Mathematics · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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  Open Access•Claude Lévi-Strau, Claude Lévi‐strau et al.•Population•1949

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