| Chapter 1: | Myth and Theory |
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structure. Dumont (1980), whose thought foreshadows Lévi-Strauss’ conclusions in The Story of Lynx, demonstrated that oppositions can be marked by hierarchy. While Mosko (1985) suggested that implicit hierarchy and the transformational aspect of the canonical formula are not applicable to Bush Mekeo society Kunin (2004) developed this area by showing that structure is not necessarily tied to biology. Building upon this idea, I have elsewhere suggested that structure is most usefully seen as being connected with the embodied mind, which is forged at the interface between man and the environment (Miles-Watson 2008, 56–67). This shift means that structure is derived from becoming enskilled in certain ways of perceiving our environment, which has logic and order.
In this new model, the structural anthropologist is not so much uncovering a culture’s system for coding the world around them as learning to see the world somewhat as a group of people do. Or, rather, the anthropologist is learning to see the world from a unique perspective, which is enriched by extending his or her perceptual range, for we are not purely learning to replicate another’s viewpoint: if that was all that the anthropologist did, in today’s world, the value of the anthropologist would be severely diminished.48 A degree of distance lends perspective, and the anthropologist is able to use that perspective to abstract and hence engage in a useful analysis, which has repercussions beyond the specific study and opens the way for further comparative analysis. Comparative analysis is a useful endeavour, for, in reality, no group of people exists as a discrete bounded entity, but they exist with a variety of different groups with whom they interlock and engage in different ways.49 However, if we are to analyse comparatively, then it is desirable, as Leach suggested, to not merely engage in a surface-level taxonomic comparison.50
The neostructuralist approach previously outlined is a powerful tool for a comparative analysis which is built on a detailed knowledge of the specific, yet moves to a desirable level of abstraction. Since the analysis is built on the premise that people dwell in a real world and come to be enskilled in a certain perception of their environments through active engagement, then, at the most abstract level (that of S1), all people’s systems of categorisation will be cognate; however, as we move from the