ANTH245 2007-09-24

← Go to Main Page

Business

• Responses ...

Recap

The transformational process

• Review the basic idea of how the linear order is translated into a structural pattern
  • Go over the examples
• Compare to chiasmus

The canonical formula of myth

• Explain what the formula means (unpack it into three transforms)
• Briefly mention Mosko's work

Who is communicating with whom?

• Describe the process as a two-stage operation
  • Story is received and parsed for consciousness consumption
  • Generates a second story, which is parsed for unconscious consumption
• The big question -- In the case of the second process, who communicates with whom?

Segue

The Computer as symbol and as tool

• Taking Levi-Strauss' references to the computer seriously

Computing and the Database

• All of L-S's references to cybernetics and computing are really references to computing
• Databases represent structure
• Databases represent (logical) possibility

Colby

• General Inquirer System
• The IBM 7090
  • 32K addressable memory / $3M (in 1960s dollars!)
  • See also this and this.
• Coding methods
• Cultural Grammars

Comparisons

• L-S
  • Same premises, different units and rules
• Rappaport
  • Compare culture patterns and schema to R's sacred propositions
• Bateson
  • Patterns

Tobin and the HRAF

The HRAF

• http://pulproxy.princeton.edu/connect
• Murdock's World Atlas

Why the controversy?

• The status of "codes"
• Violence to texts