The British anthropologist, Edmund Leach who disliked synchronic functionalism also made significant contribution to the idea of social structure as a model, although there are many significant differences between the approaches of LéviStrauss and Leach to structuralism. Leach has dealt with change without abandoning the useful notions of structure and function. 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.
Radcliffe-Brown (1952) who believes that social phenomena are investigated by methods similar to those used in natural and biological sciences makes an important distinction between an ‘individual’ and a ‘person’. As an individual, ‘he is a biological organism’ which keeps on carrying out a multitude of physiological and psychological functions till the time he is alive. As a ‘person’, the human being is a ‘complex of social relationships’. It is the unit of study for sociologists and social anthropologists. 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. 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. So we need to understand that society is not a ‘haphazard conjunction of persons’, rather an organised system where norms and values control the relationships between persons. According to Radcliffe-Brown all social relations of person to person, i.e., interpersonal relations (for example, the kinship structure of any society) and the differentiation of individuals and of classes by their social role (for instance, the relation between men and women, employers and employees, etc,) are in fact concerned with relations between persons, which norms and values of that society condition.
Neo Structuralism
Leach was one of the leading advocates of French structuralism in Britain. He was influenced by the ideas of Lévi-Strauss’s and wrote a lot on French structuralism and Lévi-Strauss’s to popularise his ideas in Britain and elsewhere.
However, later, he also became one of the greatest critiques of Lévi-Strauss’s’s structuralism. Leach is sometimes also labeled as Neo-Structuralist for making changes in the ideas of structuralism and giving it new form. Leach developed a grounded and empirical idea of structuralism. He is best known for his work among the Kachins of Burma (now Myanmar). He wrote a book based on this work titled- ‘Political Systems of Highland Burma’ published in 1954. In this book, he tried to understand the political system of Burma in terms of two opposite poles or models and an intermediary model between the two, namely –an egalitarian and democratic model called Gumlao, a hierarchical and autocratic model called Shan and an intermediary model called Gumsa. When compared to the Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism, there is an addition of an intermediary model of political system. Further, these models were based on empirical data and not based on rational thought process that was the case in structuralism (Gordon et.al., 2011; Leach 1970, 1973).
Leach was of the view that the political system of Burma has been changing over a period of time. Sometimes this political system is governed by and dominated by the egalitarian gumlao model and on other occasions this was governed by the hierarchical shan model. However, he further said that it will be a mistake to think about the political system of Burma only in terms of these two opposite poles as a third model also exists and that is a mixture of both the gumlao and shan models. This understanding according to Leach was only possible in the light of empirical field data. He gave importance to history that was absent from the Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism. According to Leach, historical data ranging between 100 to 150 years can give us important insights in developing models to understand society. It was only due to the analysis of the historical data of the Burmese political system that we could reach an understanding of an existence of a third model in the form of gumlao. Thus, we can see that Leach is talking in terms of underlying structures or models but these are generated on the basis of empirical ground data.He also introduced the idea of dynamic structure. This means that the structure is not static as it was supposed by Lev-Strauss but it changes over a period of time. Leach has dealt with change within the notion of structure. Lévi-Strauss’s talked about universal structures but Leach used his idea to talk about local structures as explained in the example of Burmese political system above.