ABSTRACT
Lévi-Strauss states that ‘an elementary structure can be equally preferential or prescriptive’:
neither prescription nor preference is the test of an elementary structure. Its one and only criterion rests in the fact that, preferred or prescribed, the spouse is the spouse solely because she belongs to an alliance category or stands in a certain kinship relationship to Ego. In other words, the imperative or desirable relationship is a function of the social structure (1967: xxi-xxii).
According to this, it should be possible to categorize a system with preferential marriage into one or another type of elementary structure.