Foundation for structural anthropology property

Abstract

It is necessary to try, in a work of the class of the Present, to try to define, as a first step, is a structure, the same as its components, and from now on to start to more ambitious theories. As a fundamental principle it should be established that the notion of social structure does not refer to empirical reality, but rather to models that have been built according to that reality. This shows that there are two primary notions that are confused, such as that of social structure and social relationship, both being distinct. This is the raw material or base for the construction of the models that will serve as the basis for the first. However, the structure cannot be identified with the set of social relationships that are presented in a given society. "Structure research does not claim for itself a change of its own between social facts; rather, they are a method that can be applied to various ethnological problems, and resemble the forms of structural analysis used in different domains" (Levi-Strauss, 1970 A, 251).
In order for the chosen models to deserve the structure name, they must fill four conditions: 1) the structure presents the character of a system and consists of many ligation elements, so that the modification of one only becomes the transformation of all others; 2) each model belongs to a group of transformations, and these transformations belong to a model of the same family, from which a group these transformations form a group of models; 3) all these indicated properties allow you to predict how a model will react when one of the elements is transformed; and (4) the model must be developed in such a way that its operation gives account of all the facts observed.