structural anthropologyn.
/ˌstrʌktʃ(ə)rəl ˌanθrəˈpɒlədʒi/, /ˌstrʌktʃ(ə)rl̩ ˌanθrəˈpɒlədʒi/, U.S. /ˌstrək(t)ʃ(ə)rəl ˌænθrəˈpɑlədʒi/ 1. The study of the physical nature of human beings. Now rare.
ΚΠ
1890 O. T. Mason in Ann. Rep. Smithsonian Inst. (1891) 527 A complete syllabus of anthropology would include—first, what man is, and second, what man does. What man is may be denominated structural anthropology; what man does, functional anthropology.
1910 Encycl. Brit. X. 553/2 He made valuable contributions to structural anthropology, publishing, for example, complete and accurate measurements of no less than 1300 human skulls.
1944 Philos. Rev. 53 447 Out of this care for and distrust of the natural man, many natural sciences have originated—biophysics, biochemistry, physiology, genetic and structural anthropology.
2. The study of the social structures of humanity; spec. the study of human society using the theories and techniques of structuralism, associated esp. with the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009).
ΘΚΠ
society > society and the community > study of society > [noun] > other branches
social history1814
social geography1828
social dynamics1843
social statics1843
socio-economics1893
genetics1896
biosociology1897
social engineering1899
social morphology1899
psychosociology1902
socionomics1902
political sociology1905
sociobiology1912
social planning1913
social constructionist1925
futurology1946
sociobiology1946
structural anthropology1950
squalorology1961
proxemics1963
future research1969
women's studies1969
future study1971
social constructionism1976
social constructivism1981
1950 Afr. Affairs 49 166 Dr. Childs is led from his mechanistic use of structural anthropology to fail to perceive the complexities of modern developments.
1965 Language 41 87 He entered a reciprocally profitable and lasting relationship with the French master of structural anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss.
1985 T. K. Hubbard Pindaric Mind 5 Disciplines such as psychoanalysis and structural anthropology have made us aware that empirical categories may reify abstract notions.
2003 R. Grundmann Andy Warhol's Blow Job ii. 2 The grids of structural anthropology simply identify cultural oppositions in their repressed status.
Derivatives
ˌstructural ˌanthroˈpologist n. a specialist or expert in the field of structural anthropology (in either sense).
ΚΠ
1900 Year-bk. Royal. Soc. 145 He was also in the front rank as a structural anthropologist.
1952 Hibbert Jrnl. Oct. 95 The contemporary school of British ‘structural’ anthropologists do not by any means see eye to eye with their American ‘cultural’ counterparts.
1985 Washington Post 10 Mar. f1 The traditional teen movie is a structural anthropologist's dream.
2009 J. Miles-Watson Welsh Mythology i. 23 In this new model, the structural anthropologist is not so much uncovering a culture's system for coding the world around them as learning to see the world somewhat as a group of people do.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2014; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1890