Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-06-01T19:50:44.457Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Graph theory and anthropology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2010

Per Hage  and
Frank Harary
Get access

Summary

This new mathematics (which incidentally simply gives backing to, and expands on, earlier speculative thought) teaches us that the domain of necessity is not necessarily the same as that of quantity.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The mathematics of man”

Anthropology is fundamentally the study of sets of social and cultural relations whose diversity and pervasiveness is illustrated by such terms as “exchange,” “hierarchy,” “classification,” “order,” “opposition,” “mediation,” “inversion,” and “transformation.” The analysis of these relations always presupposes models of some kind, implicit if not explicit, informal if not formal. The models are usually defined in ordinary language, but with results that are not always satisfactory in matters of descriptive adequacy, insight, and communicability. The question thus arises as to whether, in many contexts, mathematical formulations might not be helpful; and if so, what kind of mathematics.

Some time ago, in his essay “The mathematics of man,” Lévi-Strauss emphasized the suitability of the various forms of modern mathematics as a source of structural models in anthropology:

In the past, the great difficulty has arisen from the qualitative nature of our studies. If they were to be treated quantitatively, it was either necessary to do a certain amount of juggling with them or to simplify to an excessive degree. Today, however, there are many branches of mathematics – set theory, group theory, topology, etc. – which are concerned with establishing exact relationships between classes of individuals distinguished from one another by discontinuous values, and this very discontinuity is one of the essential characteristics of qualitative sets in relation to one another and was the feature in which their alleged “incommensurability,” “inexpressibility,” etc., consisted.

(Lévi-Strauss 1955:586)
Type
Chapter
Information
Structural Models in Anthropology , pp. 1 - 13
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×