STRUCTURALISM: EDMUND RONALD LEACH

 

EDMUND RONALD LEACH (1910-1988)

 

Widely known British anthropologist but embraced French structuralism.

He was influenced by the ideas of Levi Strauss’s and wrote a lot on French Structuralism and Levi Strauss’s to popularize his ideas in Britain and elsewhere.

However later, he also became one of the greatest critiques of Levi Strauss’s structuralism.

Leach sometimes labeled as Neo-Structuralist for making changes in the ideas of structuralism and giving it a new form.

Born on November 7, 1910 in Sidmouth

Studied at Marlborough college, later admitted to Clare college Cambridge.

Leach had no initial training in anthropology

He studied mathematics and engineering.

After graduating he joined British trading firm John Swire & Sons (later Butterfield and Swire) with operation in East Asia.

He gained his PhD at the London School of Economics in 1947.

When Leach went to LSE as a student of anthropology he met various eminent anthropologists like S.F. Nadel, Meyer Fortes, E.E. Evans Pritchard etc

He was first posted in China. He spent more than 3 years in Hongkong, Sanghai, Chunking, Beijing etc.

He visited Botel Tobago (now Langu) off the Coast of Taiwan. Spent eight weeks there he wrote about his observations, drew sketches and took many photographs of Yami- the first real primitive he encountered.

Leach resynthesized Levi Strauss.

Student of B. Malinowski and Raymond Firth, Leach believed that here was no inconsistency between “Functionalism” and “Structuralism”

His Structuralism cum Functionalism see relational systems as transformations of one another.

Combined some features of functionalist empiricism and pragmatism with structuralist rationalism and deductive formalism in his studies.

Leach published a short popular introduction to Levi Strauss in 1970 and in 1983 Structuralist Interpretation of Biblical Myth.

He showed a creative role of individual in transforming culture.

Leach made an important point by taking regional rather than a local perspective.

Edmund Leach is best known for his work among the Kachins of Burma (now Myanmar). He wrote a book based on this work titled Political System of Highland Burma published in 1954.

In this famous book he focused on

a          How individuals in society work to achieve power

b          How their action can transform society

Leach asserted that events and behavior on the ground are only seen as structured  when they are ordered by means of verbal categories.

His key breakaway assertion was that the notion of a bounded “tribe” with its own language and culture was useless for understanding the Burmese highlands. Instead he argued that the social landscape of the Kachin hill comprised a shared system of social and political relations, in which clans segmented and allied themselves to one another via marriage and identity codes such as dialect and dress.

Three categories of ideal political order that Kachins themselves used in their political discourse were

GUMLAO: democratic egalitarian

GUMSA: ranked aristocratic

SHAN: monarchical/feudal conceptual ordering of the neighbouring valley centred people.

Leach argued that these different forms in fact represented phases in a very long term fluctuation from egalitarianism to hierarchy and back. The Kachins participated in a regional system that included all three forms of organization. Leach showed how they co-exist and interact, as forms and possibilities known to everyone, in the same region. He also showed how Kachins creatively use power struggles, for example to convert Gumlao into Gumsa organization and how they negotiate their own identities within the regional system.

Leach was of the view that the political system of Burma is neither closed nor stable as it is in constant flux. People constantly enter, left and shifted their position within it. Sometimes this political system is governed by and dominated by the egalitarian Gumlao and on other occasions this was governed by the hierarchical Shan model. However he further said that it will be a mistake to think about the political system of Burma only in terms of these two opposite poles as a third model also exists and that is a mixture of both the Gumlao and Shan model. This understanding according to Leach was only possible in the light of empirical field data. He gave importance to history that was absent from the Levi Strauss’s structuralism. According to Leach historical data ranging between 100 to 150 years can give us important insights in developing models to understand society. It was only due to the analysis of the historical data of the Burmese political system that we could reach an understanding of an existence of a third model on the form of Gumlao.

According to Leach Political units in Kachin hill areas are of varying size and of very unstable in nature. He explains that small political units are aggregating into larger units/systems and large scale feudal hierarchies are breaking into smaller ones and this process involves structural change.

Leach believes that structural change means changes in the ideal system itself. i.e. changes in the power structure. He justifies that a conscious or unconscious wish to gain power is a very general motive in human affairs.

When Leach worked with the Kachins of Burma anthropological theory was largely structural functional. According to structural functionalism part makes the whole, part exists for the whole, maintains and continue it.

But Leach was not convinced with the idea. He argued that society is a process in time. Functionalism could not account for the change in society. Leach raises question on continuity and change. he asserted that real societies never be in equilibrium (contrast to functionalism).  

Leach introduced the idea of dynamic structure. This means the structure is not static as it was supposed by Levi Strauss  but it changes over a period of time. Leach has dealt with change within the notion of structure. Levi Strauss talked about universal structures but Leach used his idea to talk about local structures as explained the Burmese model of political system.