It was as though the actual outcome of the process of putting phenomena beside each other and questioning their relationships turned out to be the discovery of distinctive traits. The comparison led to contrasts and oppositions, more than analogies or universals. The reasons for this result are threefold. Correctly understood, this method of analyzing narratives or social phenomena requires a sharp attention to transformations. Transformations create entities that oppose each other, both within a culture and, above all, between or among different cultures.
Tradition implies diversification and an obsession with specificity.
This might sound surprising to those who identify structural analysis with a generic formalism. But its real concern has always been the explanation of particular phenomena within and through their own ethnographic context. Let's read Aelian, Aristotle, and Theophrastus to learn what this plant used to mean for the Greeks - for them specifically and , maybe, exclusively. This is why structural analysis, has so much to do with erudition. The second reason concerns historical psychology.