Claude levi strauss biography pdf directory

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908–2009)

"Lévi-Strauss" redirects here. For the clothing manufacturer, keep an eye on Levi Strauss. For other uses, put under somebody's nose Levi Strauss (disambiguation).

Claude Lévi-Strauss (klawd LAY-vee STROWSS;^[2]French:[klodlevistʁos]; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009)^[3][4][5] was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was categorical in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology.^[6] Blooper held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France halfway 1959 and 1982, was elected pure member of the Académie française rip open 1973 and was a member submit the School for Advanced Studies inlet the Social Sciences in Paris. Powder received numerous honors from universities stand for institutions throughout the world.

Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had significance same structures as the "civilized" oriented and that human characteristics are representation same everywhere.^[7][8] These observations culminated funny story his famous book Tristes Tropiques (1955) which established his position as suspend of the central figures in nobleness structuralist school of thought. As ok as sociology, his ideas reached succeed many fields in the humanities, containing philosophy. Structuralism has been defined importation "the search for the underlying standards of thought in all forms subtract human activity."^[4] He won the 1986 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

Biography

Early life and education

Gustave Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in 1908 to French-Jewish (turned agnostic) parents who were living joist Brussels, where his father was crucial as a portrait painter at glory time.^[9][10][11] He grew up in Town, living on a street of class upscale 16th arrondissement named after glory artist Claude Lorrain, whose work settle down admired and later wrote about.^[12] By the First World War, from parentage 6 to 10, he lived manage his maternal grandfather, who was nobleness Rabbi of Versailles.^[9][13][14] Despite his god-fearing environment early on, Claude Lévi-Strauss was an atheist or agnostic, at least possible in his adult life.^[15][16]

From 1918 be determined 1925 he studied at Lycée Janson de Sailly high school, receiving far-out baccalaureate in June 1925 (age condemn 16).^[9] In his last year (1924), he was introduced to philosophy, containing the works of Marx and Philosopher, and began shifting to the public left (however, unlike many other socialists, he never became communist).^[17] From 1925, he spent the next two stage at the prestigious Lycée Condorcet expectation for the entrance exam to greatness highly selective École normale supérieure. Nonetheless, for reasons that are not all clear, he decided not to extract the exam. In 1926, he went to Sorbonne in Paris, studying batter and philosophy, as well as attractive in socialist politics and activism. Discern 1929, he opted for philosophy removal law (which he found boring), stomach from 1930 to 1931, put statesmanship machiavel aside to focus on preparing diplomat the agrégation in philosophy, in in a row to qualify as a professor. Prize open 1931, he passed the agrégation, close to in 3rd place, and youngest live in his class at age 22. Afford this time, the Great Depression abstruse hit France, and Lévi-Strauss found mortal physically needing to provide not only get to himself but his parents as well.^[17]

Early career

In 1935, after a few eld of secondary school teaching, he took up a last-minute offer to continue part of a French cultural film to Brazil in which he would serve as a visiting professor confront sociology at the University of São Paulo while his then-wife, Dina, served as a visiting professor of ethnology.

The couple lived and did their anthropological work in Brazil from 1935 to 1939. During this time, from the past he was a visiting professor an assortment of sociology, Claude undertook his only ethnographical fieldwork. He accompanied Dina, a enforced ethnographer in her own right, who was also a visiting professor drum the University of São Paulo, position they conducted research forays into position Mato Grosso and the Amazon Timber. They first studied the Guaycuru don BororóIndian tribes, staying among them go allout for a few days. In 1938, they returned for a second, more top half-year-long expedition to study the Nambikwara and Tupi-Kawahib societies. At this put on ice, his wife had an eye transmission that prevented her from completing significance study, which he concluded. This approach cemented Lévi-Strauss's professional identity as change anthropologist. Edmund Leach suggests, from Lévi-Strauss's own accounts in Tristes Tropiques, walk he could not have spent auxiliary than a few weeks in commoner one place and was never estimation to converse easily with any cue his native informants in their inherent language, which is uncharacteristic of anthropological research methods of participatory interaction get a message to subjects to gain a full awareness of a culture.

In excellence 1980s, he discussed why he became vegetarian in pieces published in Romance daily newspaper La Repubblica and added publications anthologized in the posthumous publication Nous sommes tous des cannibales (2013):

A day will come when the solution that to feed themselves, men draw round the past raised and massacred sustenance beings and complacently exposed their chopped flesh in displays shall no apprehensiveness inspire the same repulsion as depart of the travellers of the Sixteenth and 17th century facing cannibal slat of savage American primitives in Earth, Oceania, Asia or Africa.

Expatriation

Lévi-Strauss returned talk to France in 1939 to take allowance in the war effort and was assigned as a liaison agent infer the Maginot Line. After the Land capitulation in 1940, he was busy at a lycée in Montpellier, nevertheless then was dismissed under the Town racial laws (Lévi-Strauss's family, originally suffer the loss of Alsace, was of Jewish ancestry).^[18][19]

Around range time, he and his first partner separated. She stayed behind and attacked in the French resistance, while blooper managed to escape Vichy France wedge boat to Martinique,^[20] from where pacify was finally able to continue wandering. (Victor Serge describes conversations with Lévi-Strauss aboard the freighter Capitaine Paul-Lemerle strip Marseilles to Martinique in his Notebooks.).^[21]

In 1941, he was offered a affinity at the New School for Common Research in New York City president granted admission to the United States. A series of voyages brought him, via South America, to Puerto Law, where he was investigated by illustriousness FBI after German letters in crown luggage aroused the suspicions of institution agents. Lévi-Strauss spent most of probity war in New York City. In advance with Jacques Maritain, Henri Focillon, bracket Roman Jakobson, he was a foundation member of the École Libre nonsteroid Hautes Études, a sort of university-in-exile for French academics.

The war eld in New York were formative let slip Lévi-Strauss in several ways. His conjunction with Jakobson helped shape his take out outlook (Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss are accounted to be two of the vital figures on which structuralist thought silt based).^[22] In addition, Lévi-Strauss was besides exposed to the American anthropology espoused by Franz Boas, who taught finish equal Columbia University. In 1942, while obtaining dinner at the Faculty House disapproval Columbia, Boas died in Lévi-Strauss's arms.^[23] This intimate association with Boas gave his early work a distinctive Earth inclination that helped facilitate its approve in the U.S.

After a short stint from 1946 to 1947 reorganization a cultural attaché to the Gallic embassy in Washington, DC, Lévi-Strauss requited to Paris in 1948. At that time, he received his state degree from the Sorbonne by submitting, scam the French tradition, both a "major" and a "minor" doctoral thesis. These were La vie familiale et sociale des indiens Nambikwara (The Family stand for Social Life of the Nambikwara Indians) and Les structures élémentaires de numb parenté (The Elementary Structures of Kinship).^[24]: 234

Later life and death

In 2008, he became the first member of the Académie française to reach the age see 100 and one of the living authors to have his shop published in the Bibliothèque de aspire Pléiade. On the death of Maurice Druon on 14 April 2009, powder became the dean of the Académie, its longest-serving member.

He died deface 30 October 2009, at age 100.^[3] The death was announced four age later.^[3]

French PresidentNicolas Sarkozy described him trade in "one of the greatest ethnologists personal all time".^[25]Bernard Kouchner, the French Distant Minister, said Lévi-Strauss "broke with let down ethnocentric vision of history and persons ... At a time when amazement are trying to give meaning hurt globalization, to build a fairer champion more humane world, I would 1 Claude Lévi-Strauss's universal echo to resound more strongly".^[26] In a similar streak, a statement by Lévi-Strauss was examine on National Public Radio in birth remembrance produced by All Things Considered on 3 November 2009: "There remains today a frightful disappearance of extant species, be they plants or animals. And it's clear that the hardness of human beings has become thus great, if I can say in this fashion, that they have begun to miasma themselves. And the world which Funny am finishing my existence is rebuff longer a world that I like."^{[citation needed]}The Daily Telegraph said in sheltered obituary that Lévi-Strauss was "one attack the dominating postwar influences in Land intellectual life and the leading leading character of Structuralism in the social sciences".^[27] Permanent secretary of the Académie française Hélène Carrère d'Encausse said: "He was a thinker, a philosopher.... We last wishes not find another like him".^[28]

Career mushroom development of structural anthropology

The Elementary Structures of Kinship was published in 1949 and quickly came to be alleged as one of the most transfer anthropological works on kinship. It was even reviewed favorably by Simone bare Beauvoir, who saw it as untainted important statement of the position fall foul of women in non-Western cultures. A hurl on the title of Durkheim's esteemed Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Lévi-Strauss' Elementary Structures re-examined how masses organized their families by examining position logical structures that underlay relationships very than their contents. While British anthropologists such as Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown argued that kinship was based on globule from a common ancestor, Lévi-Strauss argued that kinship was based on grandeur alliance between two families that bacillary when women from one group mated men from another.^[29]

Throughout the late Forties and early 1950s, Lévi-Strauss continued observe publish and experienced considerable professional good. On his return to France, settle down became involved with the administration show consideration for the CNRS and the Musée lime l'Homme before finally becoming a academician (directeur d'études) of the fifth piece of meat of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, the 'Religious Sciences' section ring Marcel Mauss was previously professor, representation title of which chair he renamed "Comparative Religion of Non-Literate Peoples".

While Lévi-Strauss was well known in learned circles, in 1955 he became companionship of France's best-known intellectuals by promulgating Tristes Tropiques in Paris that origin by Plon (best-known translated into Forthrightly in 1973, published by Penguin). Largely, this book was a memoir enumeration his time as a French deport throughout the 1930s and his voyage. Lévi-Strauss combined exquisitely beautiful prose, blinding philosophical meditation, and ethnographic analysis take up the Amazonian peoples to produce spiffy tidy up masterpiece. The organizers of the Prix Goncourt, for instance, lamented that they were not able to award Lévi-Strauss the prize because Tristes Tropiques was nonfiction.^{[citation needed]}

Lévi-Strauss was named to copperplate chair in social anthropology at dignity Collège de France in 1959. Mine roughly the same time he publicised Structural Anthropology, a collection of consummate essays that provided both examples take precedence programmatic statements about structuralism. At prestige same time as he was finding the groundwork for an intellectual promulgation, he began a series of institutions to establish anthropology as a domain in France, including the Laboratory supportive of Social Anthropology where new students could be trained, and a new chronicle, l'Homme, for publishing the results abide by their research.

The Savage Mind

In 1962, Lévi-Strauss published what is for numerous people his most important work, La Pensée Sauvage, translated into English hoot The Savage Mind (and later little Wild Thought). The French title survey an untranslatable pun, as the term pensée means both 'thought' and 'pansy', while sauvage has a range promote to meanings different from English 'savage'. Lévi-Strauss supposedly suggested that the English inscription be Pansies for Thought, borrowing let alone a speech by Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act IV, Scene V). Nation editions of La Pensée Sauvage pour out often printed with an image reproduce wild pansies on the cover.

The Savage Mind discusses not just "primitive" thought, a category defined by prior anthropologists, but also forms of nursing common to all human beings. Influence first half of the book lays out Lévi-Strauss's theory of culture survive mind, while the second half expands this account into a theory assault history and social change. This plaster part of the book engaged Lévi-Strauss in a heated debate with Jean-Paul Sartre over the nature of living soul freedom. On the one hand, Sartre's existentialist philosophy committed him to cool position that human beings fundamentally were free to act as they satisfied. On the other hand, Sartre too was a leftist who was perpetual to ideas such as that females were constrained by the ideologies necessary on them by the powerful. Lévi-Strauss presented his structuralist notion of intercession in opposition to Sartre. Echoes search out this debate between structuralism and existentialism eventually inspired the work of minor authors such as Pierre Bourdieu.

Mythologiques

Now a worldwide celebrity, Lévi-Strauss spent depiction second half of the 1960s mode of operation on his master project, a four-volume study called Mythologiques. In it, forbidden followed a single myth from excellence tip of South America and scream of its variations from group forget about group north through Central America stall eventually into the Arctic Circle, in this manner tracing the myth's cultural evolution deviate one end of the Western Section to the other. He accomplished that in a typically structuralist way, examining the underlying structure of relationships amid the elements of the story relatively than focusing on the content be incumbent on the story itself. While Pensée Sauvage was a statement of Lévi-Strauss's big-picture theory, Mythologiques was an extended, four-volume example of analysis. Richly detailed weather extremely long, it is less at large read than the much shorter celebrated more accessible Pensée Sauvage, despite fraudulence position as Lévi-Strauss's masterwork.

Lévi-Strauss complete the final volume of Mythologiques infant 1971. On 14 May 1973, take steps was elected to the Académie française, France's highest honour for a writer.^[30] He was a member of cover up notable academies worldwide, including the Inhabitant Academy of Arts and Letters. Presume 1956, he became foreign member read the Royal Netherlands Academy of Covered entrance and Sciences.^[31] He then became neat member of the American Philosophical Theatre company in 1960 and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1967.^[32] He received the Erasmus Prize copy 1973, the Meister-Eckhart-Prize for philosophy attach 2003, and several honorary doctorates take the stones out of universities such as Oxford, Harvard, Altruist, and Columbia. He also was rank recipient of the Grand-croix de chilling Légion d'honneur, was a Commandeur director l'ordre national du Mérite, and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. Carry 2005, he received the XVII Premi Internacional Catalunya (Generalitat of Catalonia). Funding his retirement, he continued to display occasional meditations on art, music, logic, and poetry.

Anthropological theories

Lévi-Strauss sought count up apply the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure to anthropology.^[33] At depiction time, the family was traditionally reputed the fundamental object of analysis however was seen primarily as a introverted unit consisting of a husband, well-organized wife, and their children. Nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all were treated as secondary. Lévi-Strauss argued ensure akin to Saussure's notion of highfalutin value, families acquire determinate identities exclusive through relations with one another. Nonstandard thusly, he inverted the classical view show signs of anthropology, putting the secondary family personnel first and insisting on analyzing interpretation relations between units instead of rank units themselves.^[34]

In his own analysis admire the formation of the identities delay arise through marriages between tribes, Lévi-Strauss noted that the relation between leadership uncle and the nephew was damage the relation between brother and suckle, as the relation between father nearby son is to that between lay by or in and wife,^[35] that is, A equitable to B as C is dressingdown D. Therefore, if we know Well-ordered, B, and C, we can forecast D.^{[clarification needed]} An example of that law is illustrated in the delineate. The four relation units are forceful with A to D. Lévi-Strauss distinguished that if A is positive, Inexpert is negative, and C is dissenting, then it can inferred that Series is positive, thereby satisfying the ambit 'A is to B as Proverb is to D'; in this briefcase, the relations are contrasting. The end of Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology, then, was to simplify the masses of practical data into generalized, comprehensible relations halfway units, which allow for predictive earmark to be identified, such as Top-notch is to B as C enquiry to D.^[34]

Lévi-Strauss's theory is set regarding in Structural Anthropology (1958). Briefly, blooper considers culture a system of gaudy communication, to be investigated with customs that others have used more critically in the discussion of novels, civic speeches, sports, and movies. His premises makes the best sense when divergent against the background of an beforehand generation's social theory. He wrote turn this relationship for decades.

A decision for "functionalist" explanations dominated the community sciences from the turn of rank 20th century through the 1950s, which is to say that anthropologists prosperous sociologists tried to state the objective of a social act or origination. The existence of a thing was explained, if it fulfilled a process. The only strong alternative to range kind of analysis was a in sequence explanation, accounting for the existence clean and tidy a social fact by stating happen as expected it came to be.

The sense of social function developed in four different ways, however. The English anthropologist Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, who had pass on and admired the work of decency French sociologist Émile Durkheim, argued renounce the goal of anthropological research was to find the collective function, much as what a religious creed advocate a set of rules about accessory did for the social order orang-utan a whole. Behind this approach was an old idea, the view go wool-gathering civilization developed through a series panic about phases from the primitive to righteousness modern, everywhere in the same method. All of the activities in orderly given kind of society would go fifty-fifty of the same character; some collection of internal logic would cause upper hand level of culture to evolve run over the next. On this view, copperplate society can easily be thought catch sight of as an organism, the parts running together as do the parts drug a body. In contrast, the solon influential functionalism of Bronisław Malinowski averred the satisfaction of individual needs, what a person derived by participating knock over a custom.

In the United States, where the shape of anthropology was set by the German-educated Franz Boas, the preference was for historical money. This approach had obvious problems, which Lévi-Strauss praises Boas for facing square. Historical information seldom is available assimilate non-literate cultures. The anthropologist fills compile with comparisons to other cultures promote is forced to rely on theories that have no evidential basis, nobleness old notion of universal stages entity development or the claim that ethnic resemblances are based on some unobserved past contact between groups. Boas came to believe that no overall representation in social development could be proven; for him, there was no unmarried history, only histories.

There are leash broad choices involved in the difference of these schools; each had emphasize decide:

1. what kind of evidence border on use;
2. whether to emphasize the particulars be beaten a single culture or look perform patterns underlying all societies; and
3. what grandeur source of any underlying patterns puissance be, the definition of common humanity.

Social scientists in all traditions relied verbal abuse cross-cultural studies,^{[citation needed]} as it was always necessary to supplement information scale a society with information about barrenness. Thus, some idea of a prosaic human nature was implicit in command approach. The critical distinction, then, remained twofold:

• Does a social fact be seen because it is functional for magnanimity social order, or because it court case functional for the person?
• Do uniformities perimeter cultures occur because of organizational necessarily that must be met everywhere, be because of the uniform needs pan human personality?

For Lévi-Strauss, the choice was for the demands of the public order. He had no difficulty transferral out the inconsistencies and triviality considerate individualistic accounts. Malinowski said, for model, that magic beliefs come into entity when people need to feel clean sense of control over events like that which the outcome is uncertain. In influence Trobriand Islands, he found proof motionless this claim in the rites neighbouring abortions and weaving skirts. But intrude the same tribes, there is inept magic attached to making clay ceramics even though it is no work up certain a business than weaving. Tolerable, the explanation is not consistent. Besides, these explanations tend to be ragged in an ad hoc, superficial come into being – one postulates a trait watch personality when needed. However, the recognised way of discussing organizational function sincere not work either. Different societies strength have institutions that were similar wrench many obvious ways and yet, served different functions. Many tribal cultures category the tribe into two groups significant have elaborate rules about how prestige two groups may interact. However, correctly what they may do—trade, intermarry—is distinctive in different tribes; for that issue, so are the criteria for individual the groups. Nor will it activities to say that dividing in brace is a universal need of organizations, because there are a lot go along with tribes that thrive without it.

For Lévi-Strauss, the methods of linguistics became a model for all his before examinations of society. His analogies as is usual are from phonology (though also late from music, mathematics, chaos theory, cybernetics, and so on). "A really wellordered analysis must be real, simplifying, wallet explanatory," he writes.^[36]Phonemic analysis reveals character that are real, in the consciousness that users of the language stare at recognize and respond to them. Fall back the same time, a phoneme decline an abstraction from language – beg for a sound, but a category acquire sound defined by the way hold back is distinguished from other categories twig rules unique to the language. Excellence entire sound structure of a slang may be generated from a to some extent small number of rules.

In depiction study of the kinship systems put off first concerned him, this ideal sell explanation allowed a comprehensive organization cherished data that partly had been textbook by other researchers. The overall unbiased was to find out why consanguinity relations differed among various South Dweller cultures. The father might have just in case authority over the son in tighten up group, for example, with the delight rigidly restricted by taboos. In other group, the mother's brother would conspiracy that kind of relationship with authority son, while the father's relationship was relaxed and playful.

A number grow mouldy partial patterns had been noted. Relatives between the mother and father, give reasons for example, had some sort of switch with those of father and son– if the mother had a central social status and was formal competent the father, for example, then authority father usually had close relations be infatuated with the son. But these smaller cipher joined in inconsistent ways. One potential way of finding a master systematize was to rate all the positions in a kinship system along very many dimensions. For example, the father was older than the son, the churchman produced the son, the father confidential the same sex as the rarity, and so on; the matrilineal penman was older and of the identical sex, but did not produce loftiness son, and so on. An thorough collection of such observations might prod an overall pattern to emerge.

However, for Lévi-Strauss, this kind of rip off was considered "analytical in appearance only". It results in a chart walk is far more difficult to furry than the original data and comment based on arbitrary abstractions (empirically, fathers are older than sons, but be a triumph is only the researcher who declares that this feature explains their relations). Furthermore, it does not explain anything. The explanation it offers is tautological—if age is crucial, then age explains a relationship. And it does shed tears offer the possibility of inferring class origins of the structure.

A accountable solution to the puzzle is come into contact with find a basic unit of lineage which can explain all the mutability. It is a cluster of quadruplet roles – brother, sister, father, phenomenon. These are the roles that oxidize be involved in any society lapse has an incest taboo requiring trim man to obtain a wife exaggerate some man outside his own transferrable line.^{[clarification needed]} A brother may scan away his sister, for example, whose son might reciprocate in the uproot generation by allowing his sister be familiar with marry exogamously. The underlying demand disintegration a continued circulation of women add up keep various clans peacefully related.

Right or wrong, this solution displays integrity qualities of structural thinking. Even in spite of Lévi-Strauss frequently speaks of treating polish as the product of the axioms and corollaries that underlie it, nature the phonemic differences that constitute launch, he is concerned with the sane data of field research. He transcribe that it is logically possible chaste a different atom of kinship remake to exist–sister, sister's brother, brother's helpmate, daughter – but there are cack-handed real-world examples of relationships that gaze at be derived from that grouping. Nobleness trouble with this view has bent shown by Australian anthropologist Augustus Elkin, who insisted on the point guarantee in a four-class marriage system, magnanimity preferred marriage was with a classificatory mother's brother's daughter and never organize the true one. Lévi-Strauss's atom decay kinship structure deals only with bloodrelated kin. There is a big discrepancy between the two situations, in lapse the kinship structure involving the classificatory kin relations allows for the assets of a system which can deliver together thousands of people. Lévi-Strauss's grain of kinship stops working once say publicly true MoBrDa is missing.^{[clarification needed]} Lévi-Strauss also developed the concept of rank house society to describe those societies where the domestic unit is complicate central to the social organization rather than the descent group or lineage.

The purpose of structuralist explanation is nominate organize real data in the simplest effective way. All science, he says, is either structuralist or reductionist.^[37] Invoice confronting such matters as the incest taboo, one is facing an neutral limit of what the human moral fibre has accepted so far. One could hypothesize some biological imperative underlying away, but so far as social command is concerned, the taboo has probity effect of an irreducible fact. Magnanimity social scientist can only work decree the structures of human thought delay arise from it. And structural espouse can be tested and refuted. Calligraphic mere analytic scheme that wishes causal relations into existence is not structuralist in this sense.

Lévi-Strauss's later scrunch up are more controversial, in part owing to they impinge on the subject substance of other scholars. He believed make certain modern life and all history were founded on the same categories viewpoint transformations that he had discovered induce the Brazilian backcountry—The Raw and rendering Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, Loftiness Naked Man (to borrow some adornments from the Mythologiques). For instance, of course compares anthropology to musical serialism bracket defends his "philosophical" approach. He too pointed out that the modern call of primitive cultures was simplistic conduct yourself denying them a history. The categories of myth did not persist in the middle of them because nothing had happened–it was easy to find the evidence ship defeat, migration, exile, and repeated displacements of all the kinds known hitch recorded history. Instead, the mythic categories had encompassed these changes.

He argued for a view of human existence as existing in two timelines in a trice, the eventful one of history with the addition of the long cycles in which individual set of fundamental mythic patterns dominates and then perhaps another. In that respect, his work resembles that vacation Fernand Braudel, the historian of character Mediterranean and 'la longue durée,' goodness cultural outlook and forms of communal organization that persisted for centuries roughly that sea. He is right slot in that history is difficult to assemble up in a non-literate society, on the contrary, Jean Guiart's anthropological and José Garanger's archaeological work in central Vanuatu, transferral to the fore the skeletons atlas former chiefs described in local erudition, who had thus been living citizens, shows that there can be insufferable means of ascertaining the history pleasant some groups which otherwise would facsimile deemed a historical. Another issue problem the experience that the same track down can tell one a myth warmly charged in symbols, and some maturity later a sort of chronological representation claiming to be chronic of neat descent line (e.g., in the Nationalism islands and New Zealand), the figure texts having in common that they each deal in topographical detail co-worker the land-tenure claims of the put into words descent line (see Douglas Oliver delicate the Siwai in Bougainville). Lévi-Strauss would agree to these aspects be explained inside his seminar but would not under any condition touch them on his own. Birth anthropological data content of the mythos was not his problem. He was only interested in the formal aspects of each story, considered by him as the result of the activity of the collective unconscious of rant group, which idea was taken hold up the linguists, but cannot be unadulterated in any way although he was adamant about its existence and would never accept any discussion on that point.

Structuralist approach to myth

Main article: Structuralist theory of mythology

Similar to rule anthropological theories, Lévi-Strauss identified myths restructuring a type of speech through which a language could be discovered. Empress work is a structuralist theory presentation mythology which attempted to explain establish seemingly fantastical and arbitrary tales could be so similar across cultures. As he had the belief that near was no one "authentic" version deserve a myth, rather that they were all manifestations of the same idiolect, he sought to find the cardinal units of myth, namely, the mytheme. Lévi-Strauss broke each of the versions of a myth down into expert series of sentences, consisting of fastidious relation between a function and unornamented subject. Sentences with the same appear in were given the same number elitist bundled together. These are mythemes.^[38]

What Lévi-Strauss believed he had discovered when without fear examined the relations between mythemes was that a myth consists of juxtaposed binary oppositions. Oedipus, for example, consists of the overrating of blood liaison and the underrating of blood intercourse, the autochthonous origin of humans, esoteric the denial of their autochthonous fountain-head. Influenced by Hegel, Lévi-Strauss believed think about it the human mind thinks fundamentally accomplish these binary oppositions and their undividedness (the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad), final that these are what makes gathering possible.^[39] Furthermore, he considered the help of myth to be a dexterity of hand, an association of blueprint irreconcilable binary opposition with a harmonizable binary opposition, creating the illusion, enhance belief, that the former had back number resolved.^[38]

Lévi-Strauss sees a basic paradox encompass the study of myth. On put off hand, mythical stories are fantastic captain unpredictable: the content of myth seems completely arbitrary. On the other relieve, the myths of different cultures sort out surprisingly similar:^[36]: 208

On the one hand walk off would seem that in the trajectory of a myth anything is doable to happen. ... But on nobleness other hand, this apparent arbitrariness decline belied by the astounding similarity in the middle of myths collected in widely different nethermost reaches. Therefore the problem: If the capacity of myth is contingent [i.e., arbitrary], how are we to explain class fact that myths throughout the artificial are so similar?

Lévi-Strauss proposed that popular laws must govern mythical thought become more intense resolve this seeming paradox, producing analogous myths in different cultures. Each legend may seem unique, but he wishedfor it is just one particular matter of a universal law of possibly manlike thought. In studying myth, Lévi-Strauss tries "to reduce apparently arbitrary data quality some kind of order, and cause somebody to attain a level at which swell kind of necessity becomes apparent, rudimentary the illusions of liberty."^[40] Laurie suggests that for Levi-Strauss, "operations embedded heart animal myths provide opportunities to solve collective problems of classification and degrees, marking lines between the inside stall the outside, the Law and well-fitting exceptions, those who belong and those who do not."^[41]

According to Lévi-Strauss, "mythical thought always progresses from the intuit of oppositions toward their resolution."^[36]: 224 Upgrade other words, myths consist of:

1. elements that oppose or contradict each upset and
2. other elements that "mediate", or reprimand, those oppositions.

For example, Lévi-Strauss thinks loftiness trickster of many Native American mythologies acts as a "mediator". Lévi-Strauss's cause hinges on two facts about blue blood the gentry Native American trickster:

1. the trickster has a contradictory and unpredictable personality;
2. the troubler is almost always a raven publicize a coyote.

Lévi-Strauss argues that the sable and coyote "mediate" the opposition 'tween life and death. The relationship betwixt agriculture and hunting is analogous make longer the opposition between life and death: agriculture is solely concerned with forging life (at least up until vintage time); hunting is concerned with radio show death. Furthermore, the relationship between herbivores and beasts of prey is in agreement to the relationship between agriculture charge hunting: like agriculture, herbivores are think about with plants; like hunting, beasts healthy prey are concerned with catching sustenance. Lévi-Strauss points out that the coal-black and coyote eat carrion and bear out therefore halfway between herbivores and livestock of prey: like beasts of objective, they eat meat; like herbivores, they do not catch their food. Nonstandard thusly, he argues, "we have a mediating structure of the following type":^[36]: 224

By over herbivore traits with traits of cattle of prey, the raven and wolf somewhat reconcile herbivores and beasts try to be like prey: in other words, they arbitrate the opposition between herbivores and neat of prey. As we have this opposition ultimately is analogous skin the opposition between life and complete. Therefore, the raven and coyote one of these days mediate the opposition between life splendid death. This, Lévi-Strauss believes, explains reason the coyote and raven have froward personalities when they appear as picture mythical trickster:

The trickster is marvellous mediator. Since his mediating function occupies a position halfway between two arctic terms, he must retain something an assortment of that duality—namely an ambiguous and point in the right direction character.^[36]: 226

Because the raven and coyote restore harmony between profoundly opposed concepts (i.e., life captain death), their own mythical personalities have to reflect this duality or contradiction: boring other words, they must have trim contradictory, "tricky" personality.

This theory contemplate the structure of myth helps cooperate Lévi-Strauss's more basic theory about human being thought. According to this more unembellished theory, universal laws govern all areas of human thought:

If it were possible to prove in this point, too, that the apparent arbitrariness give evidence the mind, its supposedly spontaneous sense of inspiration, and its seemingly untrammelled inventiveness [are ruled by] laws not operational at a deeper level...if the mortal mind appears determined even in say publicly realm of mythology, a fortiori launch must also be determined in conclusion its spheres of activity.^[40]

Out of scale the products of culture, myths sound the most fantastic and unpredictable. So, Lévi-Strauss claims, that if even fabled thought obeys universal laws, then all human thought must obey universal lyrics.

The Savage Mind: bricoleur and engineer

Lévi-Strauss developed the comparison of the Bricoleur and Engineer in The Savage Mind.

Bricoleur has its origin in high-mindedness old French verb bricoler, which elementary referred to extraneous movements in urgent games, billiards, hunting, shooting and travelling, but which today means do-it-yourself effects or repairing things with the gear and materials on hand, puttering outer shell tinkering as it were. In juxtaposing to the true craftsman, whom Lévi-Strauss calls the Engineer, the Bricoleur in your right mind adept at many tasks and draw off putting preexisting things together in advanced ways, adapting his project to splendid finite stock of materials and go on a goslow.

The Engineer deals with projects be thankful for their entirety, conceiving and procuring numerous the necessary materials and tools make haste suit his project. The Bricoleur approximates "the savage mind" and the Deviser approximates the scientific mind. Lévi-Strauss says that the universe of the Bricoleur is closed, and he often equitable forced to make do with some is at hand, whereas the nature of the Engineer is open deceive that he is able to write new tools and materials. However, both live within a restrictive reality, post so the Engineer is forced realize consider the preexisting set of shorten and practical knowledge, of technical pitch, in a similar way to birth Bricoleur.

Criticism

Lévi-Strauss's theory on the instigate of the Trickster has been criticized on a number of points wishy-washy anthropologists.

Stanley Diamond notes that stretch the secular civilized often consider nobility concepts of life and death divulge be polar, primitive cultures often look out over them "as aspects of a only condition, the condition of existence."^[42]: 308 Field remarks that Lévi-Strauss did not open such a conclusion by inductive formula, but simply by working backwards flight the evidence to the "a priori mediated concepts"^[42]: 310 of "life" and "death", which he reached by assumption duplicate a necessary progression from "life" get through to "agriculture" to "herbivorous animals", and deviate "death" to "warfare" to "beasts go in for prey". For that matter, the wolf is well known to hunt mull it over addition to scavenging and the forage also has been known to have some bearing on as a bird of prey, esteem contrast to Lévi-Strauss's conception. Nor does that conception explain why a huntsman such as a bear would not under any condition appear as the Trickster. Diamond just starting out remarks that "the Trickster names 'raven' and 'coyote' which Lévi-Strauss explains gather together be arrived at with greater conservation on the basis of, let coherent say, the cleverness of the animals involved, their ubiquity, elusiveness, capacity disapproval make mischief, their undomesticated reflection admire certain human traits."^[42]: 311 Finally, Lévi-Strauss's psychiatry does not appear to be hale of explaining why representations of interpretation Trickster in other areas of illustriousness world make use of such animals as the spider and mantis.

Edmund Leach wrote that "The outstanding explicit of his writing, whether in Land or English, is that it practical difficult to understand; his sociological theories combine baffling complexity with overwhelming learnedness. Some readers even suspect that they are being treated to a colour trick."^[43] Sociologist Stanislav Andreski criticized Lévi-Strauss's work generally, arguing that his reconsideration was often sloppy and moreover put off much of his mystique and reliable stemmed from his "threatening people rule mathematics", a reference to Lévi-Strauss's maintain of quasi-algebraic equations to explain her highness ideas.^[44] Drawing on postcolonial approaches expect anthropology, Timothy Laurie has suggested delay "Lévi-Strauss speaks from the vantage synchronize of a State intent on having knowledge for the purposes of, orang-utan he himself would often claim, salvaging local cultures...but the salvation workers too ascribe to themselves legitimacy and power in the process."^[45]

Personal life

He married Dina Dreyfus in 1932. They later divorced. He was then married to Cardinal Marie Ullmo from 1946 to 1954. They had one son, Laurent. Diadem third and last wife was Monique Roman; they were married in 1954. They had one son, Matthieu.^[46]

Honours stall tributes

Works

• 1926. Gracchus Babeuf et le communisme. L'églantine.
• 1948. La Vie familiale et sociale des Indiens Nambikwara. Paris: Société nonsteroidal Américanistes.
• 1949. Les Structures élémentaires de coryza parenté
  • The Elementary Structures of Kinship, translated by J. H. Bell, J. Notice. von Sturmer, and R. Needham. 1969.^[47]
• 1952. Race et histoire, (as part clasp the series The Race Question consign Modern Science). UNESCO.^[48]
• 1955. "The Structural Discover of Myth." Journal of American Folklore 68(270):428–44.^[38]
• 1955. Tristes Tropiques ['Sad Tropics'],
  • A World on the Wane, translated gross J. Weightman and D. Weightman. 1973.
• 1958. Anthropologie structurale
  • Structural Anthropology, translated by Apophthegm. Jacobson and B. G. Schoepf. 1963.
• 1962. Le Totemisme aujourdhui
  • Totemism, translated by Heed. Needham. 1963.
• 1962. La Pensée sauvage
• 1964–1971. Mythologiques I–IV, translated by J. Weightman squeeze D. Weightman.
  • 1964. Le Cru relate to le cuit (The Raw and glory Cooked, 1969)
  • 1966. Du miel aux cendres (From Honey to Ashes, 1973)
  • 1968. L'Origine des manières de table (The Derivation of Table Manners, 1978)
  • 1971. L'Homme nu (The Naked Man, 1981)
• 1973. Anthropologie structurale deux
  • Structural Anthropology, Vol. II, translated mass M. Layton. 1976
• 1972. La Voie nonsteroid masques
  • The Way of the Masks, translated by S. Modelski, 1982.
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude (2005), Myth and Meaning, First published 1978 by Routledge & Kegan Paul, U.K, Taylor & Francis Group, ISBN , retrieved 5 November 2010
• 1978. Myth and Meaning. UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.^[49]
• 1983. Le Regard éloigné
• 1984. Paroles donnés
  • Anthropology and Myth: Lectures, 1951–1982, translated by R. Willis. 1987.
• 1985. La Potière jalouse
  • The Jealous Potter, translated by B. Chorier. 1988.
• 1991. Histoire de Lynx
  • The Story of Lynx, translated by C. Tihanyi. 1996.^[50]
• 1993. Regarder, écouter, lire
  • Look, Listen, Read, translated by Bungling. Singer. 1997.
• 1994. Saudades do Brasil. Paris: Plon.
• 1994. Le Père Noël supplicié. Pin-Balma: Sables Éditions.
• 2011. L'Anthropologie face aux problèmes du monde moderne. Paris: Seuil.
• 2011. L'Autre face de la lune, Paris: Seuil.

Interviews

• 1978. "Comment travaillent les écrivains," interviewed vulgar Jean-Louis de Rambures. Paris.
• 1988. "De près et de loin," interviewed by Didier Eribon (Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss, trans. Paula Wissing, 1991)
• 2005. "Loin du Brésil," interviewed by Véronique Mortaigne, Paris, Chandeigne.

See also

References