Claude Lévi-Strauss

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Claude Lévi-Strauss
Lévi-Strauss in November 2005
Born28 November 1908
Brussels, Belgium
Died30 October 2009(2009-10-30) (aged 100)[1]
Paris, France
Era20th century philosophy
RegionWestern Philosophy
SchoolStructuralism
Main interests
Anthropology
Society
Kinship
Linguistics
Notable ideas
Structuralism
Mythography
Culinary triangle
Bricolage

Claude Lévi-Strauss (pronounced [klod levi stʁos]; 28 November 1908[1] – 30 October 2009)[1] was a French anthropologist. He was born to French Jewish parents in Brussels. He grew up in Paris. He came up with structural anthropology, which is the idea that people think about the world in terms of opposites—such as high and low, inside and outside, life and death—and that every culture can be understood in terms of these opposites. "From the very start," he wrote, "the process of visual perception makes use of binary oppositions." [Structuralism and Ecology, 1972]

Important works[change | change source]

  • Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, ed. *Rodney Needham, trans. J. H. Bell, J. R. von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham, 1969)
  • Race et histoire (1952, UNESCO; Extract Archived 2009-02-13 at the Wayback Machine from "Race and History" – in English; see also The Race Question, UNESCO, 1950)
  • Tristes tropiques (1955, trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman, 1973) – also translated as A World on the Wane
  • Anthropologie structurale (1958, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, 1963)
  • Le Totemisme aujourdhui (1962, Totemism, trans. Rodney Needham, 1963)
  • La Pensée sauvage (1962, The Savage Mind, 1966)
  • Mythologiques I-IV (trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman
    • Le Cru et le cuit (1964, The Raw and the Cooked, 1969)
    • Du miel aux cendres (1966, From Honey to Ashes, 1973)
    • L'Origine des manières de table, 1968, The Origin of Table Manners, 1978
    • L'Homme nu (1971, The Naked Man, 1981)
  • Anthropologie structurale deux (1973, Structural Anthropology, Vol. II, trans. M. Layton, 1976)
  • La Voie des masques (1972, The Way of the Masks, trans. Sylvia Modelski, 1982)
  • Paroles donnés (1984, Anthropology and Myth: Lectures, 1951–1982, trans. Roy Willis, 1987)
  • Le Regard éloigne (1983, The View from Afar, trans. Joachim Neugroschel and Phoebe Hoss, 1985)
  • La Potière jalouse (1985, The Jealous Potter, trans. Bénédicte Chorier, 1988)
  • Histoire de lynx (1991)
  • Regarder, écouter, lire (1993, Look, Listen, Read trans. Brian Singer, 1997)

References[change | change source]

Other websites[change | change source]

Video[change | change source]