Structuralism

"structuralism is a way of looking at the world that focuses on the recognition of permanent structures and the relationships between them."

"Structuralism is interested in defining the laws of transformation by recognizing permanent structures and the relationships between them."

Structuralism pinpoints the relationships between things and not just the thing itself. It is an attempt to help understand the materials at hand.

"The basis of the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss is the idea that the human brain systematically processes organized, that is to say structured, units of information that combine and recombine to create models that sometimes explain the world we live in, sometimes suggest imaginary alternatives and sometimes give tools with which to operate in it. The task for the anthropologist, for Levi-Strauss, is not to account for why a culture takes a particular form, but to understand and illustrate the principles of organization that underlie the onward process of the transformation that occurs as carriers of the culture solves problems that are either practical or purely intellectual."