Claude Lévi-Strauss

**Claude Lévi-Strauss** (; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) 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

- _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  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)

## Other websites

- Various excerpts from _Structural Anthropology_ at marxists.org
- Extract  from "Race and History" (1952 – see also _The Race Question_, 1950, UNESCO)
- List of works by Claude Lévi-Strauss
- Lecture: The Birth of Historical Societies (Hitchcock Lectures), October 3 and 4, 1984, UC Berkeley (online audio file)
- Strauss.html Overview, in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory (subscriber access only)
- Claude Lévi Strauss' profile on the Académie française site
- Linguistic and Commodity Exchanges   Examines the structural differences between barter and monetary commodity exchanges and oral and written linguistic exchanges.
- http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/bib/info/levstcld066savamind.html Excerpts from La Pensee Sauvage

### Video

- Documentaire 52': About "Tristes Tropiques"  1991 – Film Super 16

## Infobox (philosopher)

- **region**: Western Philosophy
- **era**: 20th century philosophy
- **color**: #B0C4DE
- **image**: Levi-strauss 260.jpg
- **caption**: Lévi-Strauss in November 2005
- **name**: Claude Lévi-Strauss
- **birth date**: 28 November 1908
Brussels, Belgium
- **death date**:
Paris, France
- **school tradition**: Structuralism
- **main interests**: Anthropology
Society
Kinship
Linguistics
- **notable ideas**: Structuralism
Mythography
Culinary triangle
Bricolage
- **influences**: Ferdinand de Saussure, Saussure
Roman Jakobson, Jakobson
Franz Boas, Boas
Marcel Mauss, Mauss
Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Trubetzkoy
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau
Karl Marx, Marx
Émile Durkheim, Durkheim
Sigmund Freud, Freud
Hegel
- **influenced**: Michel Foucault, Foucault
Gilles Deleuze, Deleuze
Jacques Derrida, Derrida
Jacques Lacan, Lacan
Judith Butler, Butler
 Jean Piaget, Piaget
Jean Baudrillard, Baudrillard
Pierre Bourdieu, Bourdieu
Louis Althusser, Althusser
Edmund Leach, Leach
Howard Gardner, Gardner