Structure and function in folklore

1
Structure and function in folklore

• The house that words built

2
unifying theories of human process

• The mid 19th century saw the beginning of a one
  hundred year effort to articulate an explanation
  of human interaction as a non-divine,
  super-organic, structured model.
• Theories sought to predict human behaviors
  through identification of key concepts, employed
  with limited observational data to explain
  maximum human agency.

3
Goals of social science

• Emulate natural science--create a predictive
  model of human interaction
• Solidify the position of social science research
  as distinct from natural science and humanitarian
  (principally historical) discourse.
• Apply methods of research proven effective in
  natural science to human social interactions
• Secularize research in human interaction, that is
  de-mythify human interaction.
• Describe universals of human interaction that
  would apply across language and descent groups.

4
Folk speech, narrative, and ritual were central
to this effort.

• Study of social networks in non-literate cultures
  (or a-literate communities) reified the social
  processes to those susceptible to direct
  examination.
• Natural languages (dialects) reflect community
  values.
• Plot narratives were seen as simpler than
  contemporary novel and other prose literature.
• Set aside concerns of violating religious beliefs
  of organized western religious thought.
• Vestiges of past ritual needed theoretical model
  to restore meaning and significance (romantic
  ideals).

5
The importance of models

• Explicit in the presentation of a theory of human
  knowledge or interaction is a model or
  representation of how individuals within a
  community interact and why. The representation of
  modal interactions is often metaphorically
  described as the structure of a social
  organization. Because structures of human
  relationships exist over many generations, the
  model or structure is said to have a stability
  beyond the particular needs or desires of a
  single agent.
• Within the period of unifying theoretical
  presentations, these models were generally seen
  as possessing sufficient stability as to be
  explanations in and of themselves.
• The explanation of why the qualities of
  interaction are undertaken in the manner observed
  (modally) is often described as the function,
  since the utility of an action served the
  stability or goals of the model or structure.

6
Structuralism as an 'intellectual trend'

• The structure is what determines the position of
  each element of a whole.
• Structuralists believe that every system has a
  structure.
• Structuralists are interested in 'structural'
  laws (models) that deal with coexistence rather
  than changes.
• Structures are the 'real things' that lie beneath
  the surface or the appearance of meaning
• (from Alison Assiter)

7
Lévi-Strauss Structuralist

• Alliance theory
• Human mental processes.
• Models are the human mental mode.
• Human mental processes are the same in all
  cultures.
• Structural analysis of myth.
• (Mark Glaser)

8
Structure of myth

• Each myth has a surface and deep structure.
• The model/structure of a myth is identified by
  exploring the deep structure of a myth.
• Myth explore binary oppositions.
• Culture/Nature
• Surface/Deep
• Spectral continua represented as oppositions.
• Mediation. Mediation is the "solution" to an
  opposition.

9
(No Transcript)
10
Functionalism focuses on the structure and
workings of society

• Social institutions (structures) are collective
  means to fill individual biological needs.
• Behavior in society is structural.
• Rules and regulations help organize relationships
  between members of society.
• Values provide general guidelines for behavior in
  terms of roles and norms.
• Institutions (or structures) of society such as
  the family, the economy, the educational and
  political systems, are major aspects of the
  social structure.

11
History and function

• History in its most fundamental intent describes
  decision-making.
• Function would suggest that individuals operate
  in a structure of necessary actions.
• Marwyn Samuels catches the essential chasm
  between explanation in his phrase "necessity
  knows no persuasion. . . where choice knows no
  refuge.

12
Criticisms of theory

• Functionalism was criticized for being unable to
  account for social change, or for structural
  contradictions and conflict. It is described as a
  "consensus theory".
• functionalism is teleological, that is it
  attempts to describe social institutions solely
  through their effects and thereby does not
  explain the cause of those effects.
• Durkheim made a clear distinction between
  historical and functional analysis. Latent
  functions also do not describe the origin of
  action but its functional continuance.
• A further criticism directed at functionalism is
  that it contains no sense of agency.

13
Postmodernism

• Postmodernism, as a theory, is critical of claims
  of truth.
• Grand theories that can explain society in all
  its forms is treated with skepticism
• This critique is important because it exposes the
  danger that grand theory can pose as one way of
  understanding society.