Daniel,

Just a couple of points here.

1. It is certainly true that not all of Levi-Strauss's analyses do not 
adequately match the data.  This is also true of everyone else you care 
to mention, especially if they are prolific.  There is a tendency, with 
Levi-Strauss but also others of his eminence, to single out the odd 
failure as demonstration that it's all simply wrong.  There is also the 
legitimate question of whether he might be interestingly or valuably 
wrong, as might for example be said of Frances Yates, Emile Durkheim, 
Bronislaw Malinowski, Carlo Ginzburg, and perhaps most glaringly Karl 
Marx.  Should we refuse to read any of these people?

2. The article you mention is an interesting case.  It is, of course, a 
relatively early work, and not entirely representative.  Nevertheless he 
did think it important enough to include in _Structural Anthropology_.  
As I've said, ritual is not his strong point: he also makes the 
suggestion, in _La pensee sauvage_, near the end of the first chapter, 
that ritual operates conjunctively, and while a careful examination 
reveals what he means and that it's an interesting argument, it is 
certainly a poor general theory.  He also makes interesting comments on 
ritual at the end of _The Naked Man_, but they are again strange and not 
entirely helpful, albeit interesting and stimulating.  I tend to think 
that you have to take someone like Levi-Strauss on his strong points; 
when he wanders into areas where he is weaker, you have to grant him a 
little license.  Besides, the argument made is very interesting and goes 
a long way toward helping us think through the way magical curative 
rites work -- but to be made a generalizable theory it would have to be 
rethought on firmer data foundations.

3. If you look at the last generation of really big guns in 
anthropology, i.e. those who are approaching retirement now, and 
consider cultural anthropology specifically, you find that there are 
really three views of Levi-Strauss. 

One, following from Geertz, essentially insists that fieldwork is 
everything (and, incidentally, it is flatly untrue that Levi-Strauss has 
contempt for fieldwork -- he just doesn't think that all anthropologists 
have to specialize in it), and assaults Levi-Strauss for his admittedly 
weak fieldworking skills.  This approach tends to produce deep, nuanced 
readings of particular cultural events, traditions, and moments -- but 
it also tends to oppose the very possibility of generalization and thus 
of comparison.  Those of us who like comparison, and especially those of 
us who work on fields and traditions where fieldwork is impossible (such 
as the past) can find Geertz interesting, but it's really not a lot of help.

Another, following from people like Marvin Harris, insist upon the 
scientific nature of study in a stunningly naive, positivistic way.  
Harris famously wrote an article entitled "The Raw, the Cooked, and the 
Half-Baked," which tells you what he thought -- but then look at 
Levi-Strauss's rejoinder in _The View from Afar_, and ask yourself who 
wins that particular fight, since Levi-Strauss basically points out that 
on the set of myths in question, Harris has much more limited sources 
and has chosen a few as supposedly representative without much 
justification.  In any event, that approach is largely dead now, thank 
goodness.

And the third, including the likes of Marshall Sahlins, insists upon the 
historical nature of study, the necessarily comparative status of the 
object studied, and the complicated abstract problems of thought in 
question.  These people take Levi-Strauss very seriously indeed.

Personally, as is I think obvious, I find the Geertz thing interesting 
for fieldworkers but not a lot of help otherwise, since most of Geertz's 
followers seem to think that anything other than close-study fieldwork 
is pointless and I cannot do this fieldwork absent a time machine.  
Besides, I like comparison and intellectual history, neither of which 
Geertz's followers think valid.  Essentially the Geertz approach lends 
itself all too easily to radical disciplinary boundaries, for which I 
have only contempt.  I have no time whatever for postivistic nonsense, 
either.  This leaves me to struggle with Sahlins, J.Z. Smith, and their 
ilk -- interestingly, mostly associated in this country with the 
University of Chicago.  And I find that the great minds in those areas 
all think Levi-Strauss is something we have to continue grappling with 
until we can get past him.  And when I find, in quite a different field, 
Jacques Derrida saying the same thing, I am inclined to think that maybe 
setting aside a corpus of some 20 books and many hundreds of articles 
because of the occasional factual slip is a big mistake.

You don't have to read Levi-Strauss if you don't want to.  Nobody does.  
But theoretical study of magic is not going to progress rapidly without 
taking on board its predecessors.  If you're not a theorist, that's 
fine: stick to the Geertz approach, deal with the particular material, 
and have done.

Chris Lehrich

Daniel Harms wrote:

>Chris,
>
>Thanks for your response.  It does somewhat address the question I
>raised, but I think more needs to be said (especially after some further
>rumination on the topic).
>
>You can chalk me up with the crowd that uses theory rather than
>operating as a theoretician.  As you've said, the first group outnumbers
>the second considerably, and I'd like to address the concerns of both.
>Most of my concerns about Levi-Strauss - and those of anthropologists -
>are based upon its applicability to problems in the field.  It's largely
>here that my objections to Levi-Strauss lie.
>
>I think it's unfair to say that Levi-Strauss was dismissed because his
>intellectual current went out of fashion.  As I understand it, it was
>because his ideas as a theoretician were backed up by selective use of
>the data to fit his own patterns.  Levi-Strauss did relatively little
>fieldwork himself and viewed it with contempt, which led him to seeking
>confirmation of his own system instead of contextualizing the details on
>the ground.  Given his admitted brilliance and coverage of vast amounts
>of data, it's easy for him to make statements that are unquestioned
>unless one goes back to his sources and other data in a particular data.
>
>For example, his famous paper, "The Effectiveness of Symbols," tells of
>a Cuna woman who is being led by a shaman through a ritual organized
>around a narrative, and who finds a framework for healing therein.  The
>trouble is, that woman didn't actually speak the language that the
>shaman was using.   This doesn't invalidate the theory itself, of
>course, but it does lead us to the question of how valid Levi-Strauss's
>systems and assertions can really be if they have such a problematic
>basis.  I think that's an open question and a good one to ask, but don't
>expect Levi-Strauss to assist in solving it.  
>
>Thus, anthropologists did find reasons other than faddism to move past
>Levi-Strauss' work.  That doesn't mean that he should be ignored, or
>that more insights might not be revealed by further study of his work.
>As this group is primarily made up of those in search of tools rather
>than thinking about theory, I think understanding this context is
>necessary in any discussion of Levi-Strauss.
>
>Dan Harms
>Coordinator of Instruction Librarian
>SUNY Cortland Memorial Library
>P.O. Box 2000 
>Cortland NY, 13045
>(607) 753-4042
>  
>

-- 
Christopher I. Lehrich
Boston University