On Centrism and Dualism - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

CENTRISM AND DUALISM
court, hence representing its periphery, may vary from the conception of the high court and
the attached noble families, representing the center.
In the former case, at the ‘weak’ end of the continuum, the house appears abstract and
metaphorical and is used to articulate social relations. At the ‘strong’ end, the center is often a
stable object, such as a temple, a palace or a set of regalia (ERRINGTON 1989: 239). The
proposed continuum between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ societies, therefore relates not only
different societies, but also links different groups and social strata within a single society,
representing different conceptional levels of a single ideology that are hierarchically related.
II.1.2.5. Discussion
My exploration of the house as an analytic concept has shown that it was intended by LÉVI-
STRAUSS to overcome the restrictions of classic anthropological categories, especially those
associated with descent theory, to provide an analytic framework for the systematic study of
cognatic societies. The main reason was, that in these societies organizing principles that were
traditionally conceived to be mutual exclusive and that were used to classify societies
according to essentialist ‘types‘, seemed to exist in parallel and to be of equal importance.
LÉVI-STRAUSS’ definition (LÉVI-STRAUSS 1982: 174) of the social institution he termed
house, emphasized its corporate character and the essentiality of hierarchy as an organizing
principle of house societies. Furthermore, it is the existence of hierarchy that identifies them
as intermediates between elementary and complex structures, simultaneously uniting the
commonly opposed principles of descent and alliance in a single social system.
Again we find the notion of an intermediate that relates two extremes in a LÉVI-STRAUSSIAN
model. Like the marriage with the patrilateral cross-cousin that relates restricted and
generalized exchange, the house shares features of elementary and complex structures and
again this sharing is used to indicate a transformation from one to the other and to relate both
structurally (cf. WATERSON 1995: 49, 67).
LÉVI-STRAUSS’ concept of house societies was criticized because he presented it as a new
analytic category, a new ‘type’ of society, for which he claimed universal applicability.
According to the general belief in the futility of universal kinship categories (cf. PFEFFER
1992), LÉVI-STRAUSS’ definition has been largely dismissed and a major reason for this
dismissal was his reliance on the traditional categories of kinship studies which he originally
intended to overcome. Kinship categories like cognatic and unilineal societies and their
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