ABSTRACT

Robert Hertz's "Preeminence of the Right Hand" is the classic statement. In this variation on the theme of Durkheim and Mauss's Primitive Classification, Hertz demonstrates the parallel between organic and moral polarity. In anthropological structuralism, this chapter discusses a twofold methodological commitment: the study of how schemes familiar to the contemporary mind are used in primitive society, and inquiry into the manner in which primitive schemes are used in modern society. The continuity between Durkheim's work on the categories of thought, Hertz's essay on lateral classification, and the present study of vertical classification must be analyzed in terms of strategic points of reference which help define the empiricist tradition in the sociology of knowledge. The main premise of dual classification research, stated explicitly by Needham, is that a correspondence between social and symbolic polarity is found only in the simplest societies — those with a stable dual organization. Needham believes in the existence of formal and substantive, not sociological, universals.