ABSTRACT
The perennial discussion of the objective-subjective dichotomy in the social sciences is never resolved because it is always posed in terms of categories which owe their potency to a continuous dialogue with the ghost of Descartes. As a direct consequence of Hegelian state of affairs, both sociology and social psychology have paid a great deal of attention to the socialization process, particularly those aspects of the process which lead to standardized social behaviour. In both psychological and sociological theory, the systems concept is tied up to concepts relating to equilibrium and homeostasis, thus indicating its association with mechanical and organic models. Levi-Strauss's proposal that social structure is a construct or model which the anthropologist can apply to concrete social reality is not startling, nor is his insistence that the model is a category in the mind of the anthropologist really revolutionary.
