The Elementary Structures of Kinship

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Here is an undisputed classic of contemporary structuralism applied to its ethnological dimension. Structuralism, which has emerged from the application of a linguistic model, has fostered a powerful and revolutionary intellectual movement, whose influence is crucial in all human sciences. In this sense, the elementary structures of kinship are systems whose nomenclature allows for the immediate determination of the circle of relatives and kin, that is: the systems that prescribe marriage with certain relatives or, if you will, those systems that, by defining all members of the group as relatives, distinguish between two categories: potential spouses and forbidden spouses. Consequently, the fundamental aim of this book is to demonstrate that the rules of marriage, the nomenclature, the system of privileges and prohibitions are inseparable aspects of one and the same reality: the structure of the system in question.