Structuralism and the ecology of mind. Comparative analysis of the anthropological projects by C. Levi-Strauss and G. Bateson

Abstract

This article is an attempt of comparative analysis between two anthropological projects, that of Claude Levi-Strauss and that of Gregory Bateson. The object chosen here for comparison is the thought-form considered as a condition of generating and justifying of method, rather than the subject matter or method as such. By comparing the concepts of structure and pattern central to either doctrine, the author shows that both notions can be regarded as resulting from the analysis of the two types of transformation sequences, the specific continuous (Levi-Strauss) and the abstract and discrete one (Bateson). Comparison between the observation strategies yields evidence that there exists an essential difference of method as applied by Levi-Strauss and Bateson, despite both scholars appealing to the concept of mind as an explanatory principle behind the selection of observed facts. For both of them the fundamental characteristic of observation is the distance between the observer and the other. For Levi-Strauss, distance is the condition of observation which lets the mind manifest itself. For Bateson, mind is manifested owing to the redundancy in communication which makes it possible to distinct the signal from noise, where the distance is a secondary characteristic of the communicative circuit. On the other hand, the fact that both critical strategies remain largely in agreement as to their sceptical attitude to functionalism testifies in favor of a deep theoretical unity of both projects within a larger theoretical context. The analysis of instrumental and biological metaphors of culture, as used by Bronisław Malinowski, Ruth Benedict, Bateson and Levi-Strauss, makes it possible to reconstruct a list of specific features to which the 'anthropology of form' is recurring in its attempt to rethink the functionalist concept of culture.