ciocultural codes of conduct, we may perceive the validity of
structural approaches. E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N.
McCauley demonstrate in Rethinking Religion (1990) that
this goes for rituals as well. In a number of studies of religious
traditions, implicit structuralism has made its impact. This
may also be in the mode of a pragmatic structuralism work-
ing from the positions of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bour-
dieu. In some areas, such as studies of the Muslim tradition,
these inspirations have made an obvious impact—Talal
Asad’s Genealogies of Religion (1993) is an example. The “sys-
tematicity” argument may of course be overstated, and there
is a problem if one suggests that entire systems should be
present in every human actor’s individual mind—and con-
sciously so. This is not the case, for the structuralist argu-
ment presupposes that competence is largely unconscious, in
the sense that speakers may talk without explicit knowledge
of the linguistic rules they obey or violate.
THE SURVIVAL OF STRUCTURALISM IN SEMIOTICS AND SE-
MANTICS. It is frequently assumed that the advent of post-
structuralism indicated the demise of structuralism. This
may have been the case in literary theory and criticism, where
other reading strategies have replaced structural analysis. But,
there is even a “post” post-structuralism—or is there? As it
turns out, post-structuralism is a continuation of structural-
ism, but with an emphasis on self-critical and reflexive
thought. However, the field has been bursting with near-
perplexing jargon, and the consequences for the human and
social sciences of applying postmodernist theory have been
quite uncertain to many. It is understandable when scholars
of religions are uneasy with post-structuralism and postmod-
ernist skepticism about realism and the idea that all claims
to truth are but power games. Students of religion are quite
sensitive to the differences between religious and scholarly
discourse. The crucial questions also involve the problem of
representation, that is, about who speaks how about whom,
and here the “post” movements present both problems and
solutions. There is the problem that profound difference
makes us all different, while at the same time it also makes
us all equal—and game for comparison and analysis.
Semiotics, the study of signs and signification, also arose
out of the structuralist milieu, and in the French tradition
it represented, as “structural semantics,” attempts toward de-
veloping a formal science of meaning. In the study of reli-
gion, semiotics evolved into a more practical approach, dem-
onstrating the heuristic capacities of the methodology. The
field of biblical studies has, on the whole, proven fertile
ground for structuralist and semiotic analyses, as witnessed
by the appearance of journals such as Semeia: An Experimen-
tal Journal for Biblical Criticism and Linguistica Biblica. In
a more general vein, Richard Parmentier’s Signs in Society
(1994) concerns semiotics in the anthropology of culture.
Semantics, the study of meaning in philosophy and lin-
guistics, is also generally an heir to structuralist notions, as
the general theory of meaning in the wake of analytic philos-
ophy has turned towards holistic perspectives, as shown in
Jensen’s “On a Semantic Definition of Religion” (1999).
This is also forcefully demonstrated in Language, Truth, and
Religious Beliefs (1999), edited by Nancy K. Frankenberry
and Hans H. Penner, a reader on relevant positions for this
discussion. How semantics and structuralist thought have
converged on the philosophy of language is also the topic of
Jaroslav Peregrin’s important work, Meaning and Structure
(2001), in which a number ofpostanalytic philosophical and
holist positions are reviewed. Holistic methodology is conso-
nant with the general structuralist tenet that elements of a
system (words, terms, concepts, and so on) do not have
meaning in themselves but only in relation to other elements
and the larger system that they constitute—such as in a lan-
guage or a “form of life,” as Ludwig Wittgenstein later
termed the preconditions for mutual understanding. What
goes for conceptual systems in general also goes for the study
of religion, as the notions, models, and theories employed
in that activity are also interdependently defined.In direct relation to methodology in the study of reli-
gion, mention must be made of Gavin Flood’s Beyond Phe-
nomenology (1999), where the author proposes a shift in
philosophical basis away from the subject and toward a phi-
losophy of signs as the “first philosophy” for the study of reli-
gion. This idea is precisely in accordance with the fundamen-
tal tenets of the structuralist paradigm.
MEANINGS, MINDS AND SYMBOLIC WORLDS. Holistic and
structuralist theory is also opposed to the “mentalist” point
of view, where meanings must necessarily and only be locat-
ed in individual minds. However, the thought that meanings
are somehow related to what individuals “have in mind” is
obvious, not only from common experience, but also on the
basis of cognitive theories and research; however, the precise
way in which symbolic systems, meaning, and the mental
and cognitive are related is a complex question over which
there is considerable controversy. The concept of the
“human mind,” as used by Lévi-Strauss and others, has
caused consistent confusion, since in French it would mostly
refer to something social and public, but in English it would
refer to a mental realm. There is no doubt, however, that the
“universes of the mind,” as they have been called by the semi-
otician Yuri Lotman (1990), must not only be in minds, but
must also be abstract systems of signs so that they may “circu-
late” between minds and thereby be involved in the creating
of worlds of meaning.
All this may seem suggestive of idealism. If so, it is not
a problem. For, as Peter Caws argues in his Structuralism
(1997), “a form of idealism that may be philosophically sus-
pect if applied to the world of nature may be exactly appro-
priate when applied to the world of society, since although
the existence of nature cannot reasonably be supposed to be
dependent on minds (the New Physics to the contrary not-
withstanding), the existence of society as society can”
(p. 17). It is only when humans invent, construct, and make
some things “count as” other things that society, culture, and
language come into existence—with art, politics, money,STRUCTURALISM [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS] 8759