These "positive marriage rules," which state that a spouse must be from a certain social category, were the titular "elementary structures" in The Elementary Structures of Kinship.
In The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), Lévi-Strauss Lévi-Straussnship turned to answer these questions.
The plan is conceived as a village, a series of small, elementary structures that are like children's blocks, connected by a sun-soaked glass atrium.
In The Elementary Structures of Kinship he argued that kinship systems had evolved as a mechanism for the exchange of women in marriage.
In 1949 Lévi-Strauss published his first major work, Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté (rev. ed., 1967; The Elementary Structures of Kinship).
Within sets of elementary structures (or positive rules), Lévi-Strauss made a further distinction between systems of "restricted exchange" and those of "generalized exchange".
Unlike the Minimalists, however, whose elementary structures tended to bore or mystify many viewers, the fascinating movements of Mr. Rickey's sculptures appealed to a wide audience, and he received commissions from all over the world to create public works.
"The Elementary Structures of Kinship" proved too dry, written too much for specialists, but "The Raw and the Cooked" and "From Honey to Ashes," though far less poetic than "Tristes Tropiques," elaborated on many of the insights present there.
After the War he served for three years as French cultural attaché in New York, while continuing work on a monumental study of marriage systems, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, which was eventually published in 1949.
