Structural Anthropology - The Leiden School

The Leiden School

Much earlier, and some 450 miles north of Paris, a specific type of applied anthropology emerged at Leiden University, Netherlands, which focused frequently on the relationship between apparent cultural phenomena and subsurface structures found in the numerous cultures in the Indonesian archipelago: Batak, Minangkabau, Moluccas, etc., though it was primarily aimed at training governors for colonial Indonesia. This type of anthropology, developed by the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century anthropologists, was eventually called "de Leidse Richting," or "de Leidse School," and a continuous flow of researchers was educated in this type of anthropology. It was this type of anthropological theory which attracted students and researchers alike; those interested in a type of anthropology that was holistic, that was broad and deep at the same time, that related economic circumstances with mythological and spatial classifications or cognitive subsurface structures, and that explored the relationship between the botanical world and religious, symbolic systems. This was long before what became internationally known as structuralism. From the "Leiden" perspective much research was done for many decades, thus influencing successive generations of anthropologists educated at Leiden University. The most recent chairs were held by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong (chair: 1922-1956, + 1964) - who coined the concept of the Field of Ethnological Study in 1935 - and later his nephew P.E. de Josselin de Jong (chair: 1956-1987, + 1999).