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If the incest prohibition and exogamy have an essentially positive function, if the reason for their existence is to establish a tie between men which the latter cannot do without if they are to raise themselves from a biological to a social organization, it must be recognized that linguists and sociologists do not merely apply the same methods but are studying the same thing. Indeed, from this point of view, “exogamy and language…have fundamentally the same function—communication and integration with others.”
(Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship)The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969) is one of those works that appears to come outside the corpus of texts that would conventionally fall under a study of religions gaze. Given that studies of kinship seem to belong to anthropology's past, beyond a narrow community of specialists it probably also falls beyond the attention of most students of anthropology as well. This is regrettable given that it is here that Lévi-Strauss first attempts to apply the insights obtained from structural linguistics to social anthropology. In this chapter we will first outline the basic argument of the work supplemented by references to essays published in Structural Anthropology volumes I and II and The View from Afar focusing in particular on Lévi-Strauss’ claim that kinship is a form of exchange that produces solidarity between groups and constitutes the moment of passage from nature to culture and from violence to civility.
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