As the structuralist theoretical inspiration has proved
highly consequential for many of the human sciences, a
number of works have appeared that critically review and re-
vise the earlier reading and understandings of the ground-
breaking effort of the founders. Among these, Paul J. Thi-
bault’s Re-reading Saussure (1997) stands out as he
demonstrates how Saussure’s ideas about language were not
simply formal and abstract but much more concerned with
how meaning is produced in social life. Thibault thoroughly
criticizes the more conventional readings of Saussure. Roy
Harris’s work is also highly interesting for its analyses of the
ways in which Saussure’s intellectual legacy has been
handled.
STRUCTURALISM AS METHOD AND THEORY IN THE STUDY
OF RELIGION. Jeppe Sinding Jensen’s article “Structure” in
Guide to the Study of Religion (2000) traces the development
of structuralism in the human sciences with a special empha-
sis on the ramifications for the study of religion. Hans H.
Penner forcefully advocates structuralist theory for the study
of religion in his Impasse and Resolution: A Critique of the
Study of Religion (1989). Penner disproves the thesis set forth
by Leach and others about the probable weakness concerning
the validity and replicability of structuralist methodology.
Penner demonstrates how scholarship on, for example, Bud-
dhism and Hinduism has benefited from structuralist analy-
ses by discovering the underlying regularities of the symbolic
systems. However, the most central issue in structuralist
analysis is myths and mythologies. Here, Penner agrees with
Lévi-Strauss, writing that “it is very dangerous if not errone-
ous to view myths as symbolic representations of actual social
realities or of some cultural psyche, whatever that may mean.
Furthermore, it is also a mistake to study myths as concealing
some hidden ‘mystical’ meaning. The meaning of a myth is
given in its concrete relations with other versions. Thus, it
is clearly a misunderstanding to call this type of analysis re-
ductionistic” (p. 176). In his later anthology, Teaching Lévi-
Strauss (1998), Penner took up the problem of teaching
structuralism, which has been fraught with difficulties arising
from the many criticisms and misunderstanding of Lévi-
Strauss’s work: “From my own study of this thought I believe
it is fair to say that the charges of ‘anti-history,’ ‘idealism,’
and the impossibility of verifying or falsifying his work are
simply false. Nevertheless, these charges were leveled at the
very beginning of his publications and as usual they were
then used by many who seem to have not read his publica-
tions.... For many in the study of religion he was simply
put down as a ‘reductionist’” (p. x).
Others have wanted to know how one could “prove” the
existence of structures, and many simply confused structure
as an abstract term for a set of relations with more empirical
manifestations of systems and design, such as the structure
of government or of a building, for example. Earlier structur-
alists were suspected by their more empiricist counterparts
of being too philosophical, idealist, or rationalist, and thus
of generating scholarship that was not grounded in “reality.”
STRUCTURALISM IN EMPIRICAL STUDIES. Over the years,
more empirical and subject-oriented research in a structural-
ist frame of mind has replaced the style of the earlier pro-
grammatic and more technical essays. Structuralism has be-
come ordinary, legitimate, and mainstream in the study of
religion to the extent that terms such as “structural,” “struc-
turalist,” or “structuralism” do not appear in the title of
works that draw on the structural heritage. There are certain
traits that can disguise the fact that an argument in the study
of religion has come from structuralism, including: notions
of systemic relations and of synchronicity; the idea of there
being no firm foundations and definite pristine historical ori-
gins; and the absence of single or direct references for mean-
ings and semantic contents. It is also a structuralist idea that
elements and meanings are neither fixed nor given but always
depend on relations to other elements and meanings—that
is, the notion of systemic relations between elements. A fur-
ther trait of a hidden structural argument occurs when the
text metaphor is extended to cover actions and institutions,
which thus become “readable” because of the rules of compo-
sition (constitutive and regulatory) that govern their func-
tions. Another keyword is transformation, which structualists
use instead of change or influence to stress the way in which
something novel is always created or produced in relation to
a given structure; thus, it can also be shown that, for exam-
ple, syncretism is not simply a hodge-podge of singular
elements but a cultural creation with certain structural
properties.
An instructive empirical example of “implicit structural-
ism” is given by Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt
Pantel in Religion in the Greek City (1994). In their study
of the Greeks’ “figuration of the divine,” they point out that
a remarkable feature of Greek culture is:
the large degree to which all their systems of representa-
tion—pantheons, myths, visual images—were mutually
supportive. If there was a logic at work behind the con-
stitution of the pantheon and the elaboration of myths,
this was no less true of the creation of the visual images
of the divine that populated the Greek city. Moreover,
these systems of representation cannot be separated
from the rituals which gave expression to the underly-
ing systemic structures. It is clearly impossible, for ex-
ample, to study a statue in isolated abstraction from the
ritual use to which it was put. (p. 228)
Other religions and cultures of the Indo-European language
family have been subjected to various structural approaches
from early on, as in the approach of Georges Dumézil con-
cerning the relations between the ideological roles of rulers,
warriors, and peasants in the mythologies of traditional
Indo-European societies. However, Old Norse mythology
has also proven a field well-suited to structural analysis. The
value of structural analysis in the study of myth, ritual, and
other sociocultural institutions in the Hindu religious tradi-
tions has also been demonstrated. Thus, whenever we talk
about such issues as the Confucian concept of li (propriety),
the Muslim system of tahara (purity), or similar sets of so-8758 STRUCTURALISM [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS]