Claude Lvi-Strauss

This article is about the anthropologist. For the clothing wife, Dina, served as a visiting professor of ethnology.
manufacturer, see Levi Strauss.
The couple lived and did their anthropological work in
Brazil from 1935 to 1939. During this time, while he
Claude Lvi-Strauss (English /kld levi stras/;[1] was a visiting professor of sociology, Claude undertook
French: [klod levi stos]; 28 November 1908 30 his only ethnographic eldwork. He accompanied Dina,
October 2009)[2][3][4] was a French anthropologist and a trained ethnographer in her own right, who was also a
ethnologist whose work was key in the development of visiting professor at the University of So Paulo, where
the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology.[5] they conducted research forays into the Mato Grosso and
He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collge the Amazon Rainforest. They rst studied the Guaycuru
de France between 1959 and 1982 and was elected a and Bororo Indian tribes, staying among them for a few
member of the Acadmie franaise in 1973. He re- days. In 1938, they returned for a second, more than
ceived numerous honors from universities and institu- half-year-long expedition to study the Nambikwara and
tions throughout the world and has been called, alongside Tupi-Kawahib societies. At this time, his wife suered
James George Frazer and Franz Boas,[6] the father of an eye infection that prevented her from completing the
modern anthropology.[7]
study, which he concluded. This experience cemented
Lvi-Strauss argued that the savage mind had the same Lvi-Strausss professional identity as an anthropologist.
structures as the civilized mind and that human char- Edmund Leach suggests, from Lvi-Strausss own acacteristics are the same everywhere.[8][9] These observa- counts in Tristes Tropiques, that he could not have spent
tions culminated in his famous book Tristes Tropiques that more than a few weeks in any one place and was never
established his position as one of the central gures in the able to converse easily with any of his native informants
structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his in their native language, which is uncharacteristic of anthropological research methods of participatory interacideas reached into many elds in the humanities, including philosophy. Structuralism has been dened as the tion with subjects to gain a full understanding of a culture.
search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms In the 1980s, he suggested why he became vegetarian in
of human activity.[3]
pieces published in Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica
and other publications anthologized in the posthumous
book Nous sommes tous des cannibales (2013): A day
will come when the thought that to feed themselves, men
1 Biography
of the past raised and massacred living beings and complacently exposed their shredded esh in displays shall no
doubt inspire the same repulsion as that of the travellers
1.1 Early life, education, and career
of the 16th and 17th century facing cannibal meals of savClaude Lvi-Strauss was born to French Jewish parents age American primitives in America, Oceania or Africa.
who were living in Brussels at the time, where his father was working as a portrait painter.[10] He grew up in
Paris, living on a street of the upscale 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work
he admired and later wrote about.[11] During the First
World War, he lived with his maternal grandfather, who
was the rabbi of the synagogue of Versailles.[12] He attended the Lyce Janson de Sailly and the Lyce Condorcet.

1.2 Expatriation
Lvi-Strauss returned to France in 1939 to take part in
the war eort, and was assigned as a liaison agent to the
Maginot Line. After the French capitulation in 1940, he
was employed at a lyce in Montpellier, but then was dismissed under the Vichy racial laws. (Lvi-Strausss family, originally from Alsace, was of Jewish ancestry.) By
the same laws, he was denaturalized (stripped of French
citizenship). Around that time, his rst wife and he separated. She stayed behind and worked in the French resistance, while he managed to escape Vichy France by
boat to Martinique,[13] from where he was nally able to
continue traveling. In 1941, he was oered a position at
the New School for Social Research in New York City

At the Sorbonne in Paris, Lvi-Strauss studied law and

philosophy. He did not pursue his study of law, but
passed the agrgation in philosophy in 1931. In 1935, after a few years of secondary-school teaching, he took up
a last-minute oer to be part of a French cultural mission
to Brazil in which he would serve as a visiting professor
of sociology at the University of So Paulo while his then
1

1 BIOGRAPHY

and granted admission to the United States. A series of

voyages brought him, via South America, to Puerto Rico,
where he was investigated by the FBI after German letters
in his luggage aroused the suspicions of customs agents.
Lvi-Strauss spent most of the war in New York City.
Along with Jacques Maritain, Henri Focillon, and Roman
Jakobson, he was a founding member of the cole Libre
des Hautes tudes, a sort of university-in-exile for French
academics.
The war years in New York were formative for LviStrauss in several ways. His relationship with Jakobson
helped shape his theoretical outlook (Jakobson and LviStrauss are considered to be two of the central gures
on which structuralist thought is based).[14] In addition,
Lvi-Strauss was also exposed to the American anthropology espoused by Franz Boas, who taught at Columbia
University. In 1942, while having dinner at the Faculty
House at Columbia, Boas died of a heart attack in LviStrausss arms.[15] This intimate association with Boas
gave his early work a distinctive American inclination that
helped facilitate its acceptance in the U.S. After a brief
stint from 1946 to 1947 as a cultural attach to the French
embassy in Washington, DC, Lvi-Strauss returned to
Paris in 1948. At this time, he received his state doctorate from the Sorbonne by submitting, in the French tradition, both a major and a minor doctoral thesis. These
were The Family and Social Life of the Nambikwara Indians (La vie familiale et sociale des indiens Nambikwara)
and The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Les structures
lmentaires de la parent).[16]:234

1.3

Structural anthropology

The Elementary Structures of Kinship was published the

next year and quickly came to be regarded as one of
the most important anthropological works on kinship.
It was even reviewed favorably by Simone de Beauvoir,
who viewed it as an important statement of the position
of women in non-Western cultures. A play on the title of Durkheims famous Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Elementary Structures re-examined how people
organized their families by examining the logical structures that underlay relationships rather than their contents. While British anthropologists such as Alfred Reginald Radclie-Brown argued that kinship was based on
descent from a common ancestor, Lvi-Strauss argued
that kinship was based on the alliance between two families that formed when women from one group married
men from another.[17]

which chair he renamed Comparative Religion of NonLiterate Peoples.

While Lvi-Strauss was well known in academic circles,
in 1955 he became one of Frances best known intellectuals by publishing Tristes Tropiques in Paris that year
by Plon (and translated into English in 1973, published
by Penguin). Essentially, this book was a memoir detailing his time as a French expatriate throughout the
1930s, and his travels. Lvi-Strauss combined exquisitely
beautiful prose, dazzling philosophical meditation, and
ethnographic analysis of the Amazonian peoples to produce a masterpiece. The organizers of the Prix Goncourt,
for instance, lamented that they were not able to award
Lvi-Strauss the prize because Tristes Tropiques was nonction.
Lvi-Strauss was named to a chair in social anthropology
at the Collge de France in 1959. At roughly the same
time he published Structural Anthropology, a collection
of his essays which provided both examples and programmatic statements about structuralism. At the same time as
he was laying the groundwork for an intellectual program,
he began a series of institutions to establish anthropology
as a discipline in France, including the Laboratory for Social Anthropology where new students could be trained,
and a new journal, l'Homme, for publishing the results of
their research.
In 1962, Lvi-Strauss published what is for many people his most important work, La Pense Sauvage, translated into English as The Savage Mind. The French title
is an untranslatable pun because the word pense means
both thought and "pansy", while sauvage has a range of
meanings dierent from English savage. Lvi-Strauss
supposedly suggested that the English title be Pansies
for Thought, borrowing from a speech by Ophelia in
Shakespeare's Hamlet (ACT IV, Scene V). French editions of La Pense Sauvage are often printed with an image of wild pansies on the cover.
The Savage Mind discusses not just primitive thought,
a category dened by previous anthropologists, but also
forms of thought common to all human beings. The rst
half of the book lays out Lvi-Strausss theory of culture
and mind, while the second half expands this account into
a theory of history and social change. This latter part of
the book engaged Lvi-Strauss in a heated debate with
Jean-Paul Sartre over the nature of human freedom. On
the one hand, Sartres existentialist philosophy committed
him to a position that human beings fundamentally were
free to act as they pleased. On the other hand, Sartre also
was a leftist who was committed to ideas such as that individuals were constrained by the ideologies imposed on
them by the powerful. Lvi-Strauss presented his structuralist notion of agency in opposition to Sartre. Echoes
of this debate between structuralism and existentialism
eventually inspired the work of younger authors such as
Pierre Bourdieu.

Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lvi-Strauss

continued to publish and experienced considerable professional success. On his return to France, he became
involved with the administration of the CNRS and the
Muse de l'Homme before nally becoming professor
(directeur d'tudes) of the fth section of the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes, the 'Religious Sciences section
Now a worldwide celebrity, Lvi-Strauss spent the secwhere Marcel Mauss was previously professor, the title of

3
ond half of the 1960s working on his master project, a
four-volume study called Mythologiques. In it, he followed a single myth from the tip of South America and
all of its variations from group to group north through
Central America and eventually into the Arctic Circle,
thus tracing the myths cultural evolution from one end of
the Western Hemisphere to the other. He accomplished
this in a typically structuralist way, examining the underlying structure of relationships among the elements of
the story rather than by focusing on the content of the
story itself. While Pense Sauvage was a statement of
Lvi-Strausss big-picture theory, Mythologiques was an
extended, four-volume example of analysis. Richly detailed and extremely long, it is less widely read than the
much shorter and more accessible Pense Sauvage, despite its position as Lvi-Strausss masterwork.

2009, he became the Dean of the Acadmie, its longestserving member.

He died on 30 October 2009, a few weeks before his
101st birthday.[2] The death was announced four days
later.[2] French President Nicolas Sarkozy described him
as one of the greatest ethnologists of all time.[20]
Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, said
Lvi-Strauss broke with an ethnocentric vision of history and humanity [...] At a time when we are trying
to give meaning to globalisation, to build a fairer and
more humane world, I would like Claude Lvi-Strausss
universal echo to resonate more strongly.[7] In a similar vein, a statement by Lvi-Strauss was broadcast on
National Public Radio in the remembrance produced by
All Things Considered on November 3, 2009: There is
today a frightful disappearance of living species, be they
plants or animals. And its clear that the density of human
beings has become so great, if I can say so, that they have
begun to poison themselves. And the world in which I am
nishing my existence is no longer a world that I like.
The Daily Telegraph said in its obituary that Lvi-Strauss
was one of the dominating postwar inuences in French
intellectual life and the leading exponent of Structuralism in the social sciences.[21] Permanent secretary of the
Acadmie franaise Hlne Carrre d'Encausse said: He
was a thinker, a philosopher [...] We will not nd another
like him.[22]

2 Theories
Claude Lvi-Strauss, receiving the Erasmus Prize (1973)

Lvi-Strauss completed the nal volume of

Mythologiques in 1971. On 14 May 1973, he was
elected to the Acadmie franaise, Frances highest
honour for a writer.[18] He was a member of other
notable academies worldwide, including the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1956, he became
foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of
Arts and Sciences.[19] He received the Erasmus Prize in
1973, the Meister-Eckhart-Prize for philosophy in 2003,
and several honorary doctorates from universities such
as Oxford, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. He also was
the recipient of the Grand-croix de la Lgion d'honneur,
was a Commandeur de l'ordre national du Mrite,
and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 2005,
he received the XVII Premi Internacional Catalunya
(Generalitat of Catalonia). After his retirement, he
continued to publish occasional meditations on art,
music, philosophy, and poetry.

1.4

Later life and death

In 2008, he became the rst member of the Acadmie

franaise to reach the age of 100 and one of the few living
authors to have his works published in the Bibliothque
de la Pliade. On the death of Maurice Druon on 14 April

2.1 Summary
Lvi-Strauss sought to apply the structural linguistics
of Ferdinand de Saussure to anthropology.[23] At the
time, the family was traditionally considered the fundamental object of analysis, but was seen primarily as
a self-contained unit consisting of a husband, a wife,
and their children. Nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles,
and grandparents all were treated as secondary. LviStrauss argued that, however, akin to Saussures notion
of linguistic value, families acquire determinate identities
only through relations with one another. Thus he inverted
the classical view of anthropology, putting the secondary
family members rst and insisting on analyzing the relations between units instead of the units themselves.[24]
In his own analysis of the formation of the identities
that arise through marriages between tribes, Lvi-Strauss
noted that the relation between the uncle and the nephew
was to the relation between brother and sister, as the relation between father and son is to that between husband
and wife, that is, A is to B as C is to D. Therefore, if we
know A, B, and C, we can predict D, just as if we know A
and D, we can predict B and C. The goal of Lvi-Strausss
structural anthropology, then, was to simplify the masses
of empirical data into generalized, comprehensible relations between units, which allow for predictive laws to be

identied, such as A is to B as C is to D.[24]

Similarly, Lvi-Strauss identied myths as a type of
speech through which a language could be discovered.
His work is a structuralist theory of mythology which
attempted to explain how seemingly fantastical and arbitrary tales, could be so similar across cultures. Because he believed there was not one authentic version
of a myth, rather that they were all manifestations of the
same language, he sought to nd the fundamental units
of myth, namely, the mytheme. Lvi-Strauss broke each
of the versions of a myth down into a series of sentences,
consisting of a relation between a function and a subject.
Sentences with the same function were given the same
number and bundled together. These are mythemes.[25]
What Lvi-Strauss believed he had discovered when he
examined the relations between mythemes was that a
myth consists of juxtaposed binary oppositions. Oedipus,
for example, consists of the overrating of blood relations
and the underrating of blood relations, the autochthonous
origin of humans and the denial of their autochthonous
origin. Inuenced by Hegel, Lvi-Strauss believed that
the human mind thinks fundamentally in these binary oppositions and their unication (the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad), and that these are what make meaning possible. Furthermore, he considered the job of myth to
be a sleight of hand, an association of an irreconcilable
binary opposition with a reconcilable binary opposition,
creating the illusion, or belief, that the former had been
resolved.[25]

2.2

Anthropological theories

Lvi-Strausss theory is set forth in Structural Anthropology (1958). Briey, he considers culture a system of symbolic communication, to be investigated with methods
that others have used more narrowly in the discussion of
novels, political speeches, sports, and movies.

THEORIES

Behind this approach was an old idea, the view that civilization developed through a series of phases from the
primitive to the modern, everywhere in the same manner. All of the activities in a given kind of society would
partake of the same character; some sort of internal logic
would cause one level of culture to evolve into the next.
On this view, a society can easily be thought of as an organism, the parts functioning together as do the parts of
a body.
In contrast, the more inuential functionalism of
Bronisaw Malinowski described the satisfaction of individual needs, what a person derived by participating in a
custom.
In the United States, where the shape of anthropology
was set by the German-educated Franz Boas, the preference was for historical accounts. This approach had
obvious problems, which Lvi-Strauss praises Boas for
facing squarely.
Historical information seldom is available for non-literate
cultures. The anthropologist lls in with comparisons to
other cultures and is forced to rely on theories that have
no evidential basis whatsoever, the old notion of universal stages of development or the claim that cultural resemblances are based on some unrecognized past contact
between groups. Boas came to believe that no overall pattern in social development could be proven; for him, there
was no single history, only histories.
There are three broad choices involved in the divergence
of these schoolseach had to decide what kind of evidence to use; whether to emphasize the particulars of a
single culture or look for patterns underlying all societies;
and what the source of any underlying patterns might be,
the denition of a common humanity.
Social scientists in all traditions relied on cross-cultural
studies. It always was necessary to supplement information about a society with information about others. So
some idea of a common human nature was implicit in
each approach.

His reasoning makes best sense when contrasted against

the background of an earlier generations social theory. The critical distinction, then, remained: does a social fact
exist because it is functional for the social order, or beHe wrote about this relationship for decades.
cause it is functional for the person? Do uniformities
A preference for functionalist explanations dominated across cultures occur because of organizational needs that
the social sciences from the turn of the twentieth century must be met everywhere, or because of the uniform needs
through the 1950s, which is to say that anthropologists of human personality?
and sociologists tried to state the purpose of a social act
or institution. The existence of a thing was explained, if For Lvi-Strauss, the choice was for the demands of the
it fullled a function. The only strong alternative to that social order. He had no diculty bringing out the inconkind of analysis was historical explanation, accounting for sistencies and triviality of individualistic accounts. Mathe existence of a social fact by stating how it came to be. linowski said, for example, that magic beliefs come into
being when people need to feel a sense of control over
The idea of social function developed in two dierent events when the outcome was uncertain. In the Trobriand
ways, however. The English anthropologist Alfred Regi- Islands, he found the proof of this claim in the rites surnald Radclie-Brown, who had read and admired the rounding abortions and weaving skirts. But in the same
work of the French sociologist mile Durkheim, argued tribes, there is no magic attached to making clay pots even
that the goal of anthropological research was to nd the though it is no more certain a business than weaving. So,
collective function, such as what a religious creed or a set the explanation is not consistent. Furthermore, these exof rules about marriage did for the social order as a whole.

2.2

Anthropological theories

planations tend to be used in an ad hoc, supercial way far more dicult to understand than the original data and
one postulates a trait of personality when needed.
is based on arbitrary abstractions (empirically, fathers are
But the accepted way of discussing organizational func- older than sons, but it is only the researcher who declares
tion didn't work either. Dierent societies might have that this feature explains their relations). Furthermore,
institutions that were similar in many obvious ways and it doesn't explain anything. The explanation it oers is
yet, served dierent functions. Many tribal cultures di- tautologicalif age is crucial, then age explains a relationvide the tribe into two groups and have elaborate rules ship. And it does not oer the possibility of inferring the
about how the two groups may interact. But exactly what origins of the structure.
they may dotrade, intermarryis dierent in dierent A proper solution to the puzzle is to nd a basic unit of
tribes; for that matter, so are the criteria for distinguish- kinship which can explain all the variations. It is a clusing the groups.
ter of four rolesbrother, sister, father, son. These are
Nor will it do to say that dividing-in-two is a universal the roles that must be involved in any society that has an
need of organizations, because there are a lot of tribes incest taboo requiring a man to obtain a wife from some
man outside his own hereditary line. A brother may give
that thrive without it.
away his sister, for example, whose son might reciproFor Lvi-Strauss, the methods of linguistics became a cate in the next generation by allowing his own sister to
model for all his earlier examinations of society. His marry exogamously. The underlying demand is a continanalogies usually are from phonology (though also later ued circulation of women to keep various clans peacefully
from music, mathematics, chaos theory, cybernetics, and related.
so on).
Right or wrong, this solution displays the qualities of
A really scientic analysis must be real, simplifying, structural thinking. Even though Lvi-Strauss frequently
and explanatory, he writes.[26] Phonemic analysis reveals speaks of treating culture as the product of the axioms
features that are real, in the sense that users of the lan- and corollaries that underlie it, or the phonemic dierguage can recognize and respond to them. At the same ences that constitute it, he is concerned with the objective
time, a phoneme is an abstraction from languagenot a data of eld research. He notes that it is logically possible
sound, but a category of sound dened by the way it is for a dierent atom of kinship structure to existsister,
distinguished from other categories through rules unique sisters brother, brothers wife, daughterbut there are no
to the language. The entire sound-structure of a language real-world examples of relationships that can be derived
may be generated from a relatively small number of rules. from that grouping. The trouble with this view has been
In the study of the kinship systems that rst concerned shown by the Australian anthropologist Augustus Elkin,
him, this ideal of explanation allowed a comprehensive who insisted on the point that in a four class marriage
organization of data that partly had been ordered by other system, the preferred marriage was with a classicatory
researchers. The overall goal was to nd out why fam- mother' s brothers daughter and never with the true one.
ily relations diered among various South American cul- Lvi-Strausss atom of kinship structure deals only with
tures. The father might have great authority over the son consanguineal kin. There is a big dierence between the
in one group, for example, with the relationship rigidly re- two situations, in that the kinship structure involving the
stricted by taboos. In another group, the mothers brother classicatory kin relations allows for the building of a syswould have that kind of relationship with the son, while tem which can bring together thousands of people. LviStrausss atom of kinship stops working once the true Mothe fathers relationship was relaxed and playful.
BrDa is missing. Lvi-Strauss also developed the concept
A number of partial patterns had been noted. Relations of the house society to describe those societies where the
between the mother and father, for example, had some domestic unit is more central for social organization than
sort of reciprocity with those of father and sonif the the descent group or lineage.
mother had a dominant social status and was formal with
the father, for example, then the father usually had close The purpose of structuralist explanation is to organize real
relations with the son. But these smaller patterns joined data in the simplest eective way. All science, he says,
is either structuralist or reductionist. In confronting such
together in inconsistent ways.
matters as the incest taboo, one is facing an objective limit
One possible way of nding a master order was to rate of what the human mind has accepted so far. One could
all the positions in a kinship system along several dimen- hypothesize some biological imperative underlying it, but
sions. For example, the father was older than the son, the so far as social order is concerned, the taboo has the eect
father produced the son, the father had the same sex as of an irreducible fact. The social scientist can only work
the son, and so on; the matrilineal uncle was older and of with the structures of human thought that arise from it.
the same sex, but did not produce the son, and so on. An
exhaustive collection of such observations might cause an And structural explanations can be tested and refuted. A
mere analytic scheme that wishes causal relations into exoverall pattern to emerge.
istence is not structuralist in this sense.
But for Lvi-Strauss, this kind of work was considered
analytical in appearance only. It results in a chart that is Lvi-Strausss later works are more controversial, in part

because they impinge on the subject matter of other

scholars. He believed that modern life and all history was
founded on the same categories and transformations that
he had discovered in the Brazilian back countryThe Raw
and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, The Naked Man (to
borrow some titles from the Mythologiques). For instance
he compares anthropology to musical serialism and defends his philosophical approach. He also pointed out
that the modern view of primitive cultures was simplistic
in denying them a history. The categories of myth did not
persist among them because nothing had happenedit was
easy to nd the evidence of defeat, migration, exile, repeated displacements of all the kinds known to recorded
history. Instead, the mythic categories had encompassed
these changes.
He argued for a view of human life as existing in two
timelines simultaneously, the eventful one of history and
the long cycles in which one set of fundamental mythic
patterns dominates and then perhaps another. In this respect, his work resembles that of Fernand Braudel, the
historian of the Mediterranean and 'la longue dure,' the
cultural outlook and forms of social organization that
persisted for centuries around that sea. He is right in
that history is dicult to build up in non literate society, nevertheless, Jean Guiarts anthropological and Jos
Garangers archeological work in central Vanuatu, bringing to the fore the skeletons of former chiefs described
in local myths, who had thus been living persons, shows
that there can be some means of ascertaining the history of some groups which otherwise would be deemed
a-historical. Another issue is the experience that the same
person can tell one a myth highly charged in symbols, and
some years later a sort of chronological history claiming
to be the chronic of a descent line (from examples in the
Loyalty islands and New Zealand), the two texts having in
common that they each deal in topographical detail with
the land-tenure claims of the said descent line (see Douglas Oliver on the Siwai in Bougainville). Lvi-Strauss
would agree to these aspects be explained inside his seminar, but would never touch them on his own. The anthropological data content of the myths was not his problem.
He was only interested with the formal aspects of each
story, considered by him as the result of the workings of
the collective unconscious of each group, which idea was
taken from the linguists, but cannot be proved in any way
although he was adamant about its existence and would
never accept any discussion on this point.

2.3

The structuralist approach to myth

Lvi-Strauss sees a basic paradox in the study of myth.

On one hand, mythical stories are fantastic and unpredictable: the content of myth seems completely arbitrary.
On the other hand, the myths of dierent cultures are surprisingly similar:
On the one hand it would seem that in the

THEORIES

course of a myth anything is likely to happen.

[] But on the other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding similarity
between myths collected in widely dierent regions. Therefore the problem: If the content of
myth is contingent [i.e., arbitrary], how are we
to explain the fact that myths throughout the
world are so similar?[26]:208
Lvi-Strauss proposed that universal laws must govern
mythical thought and resolve this seeming paradox, producing similar myths in dierent cultures. Each myth
may seem unique, but he proposed it is just one particular instance of a universal law of human thought. In
studying myth, Lvi-Strauss tries to reduce apparently
arbitrary data to some kind of order, and to attain a level
at which a kind of necessity becomes apparent, underlying the illusions of liberty.[27] Laurie suggests that for
Levi-Strauss, 'operations embedded within animal myths
provide opportunities to revolve collective problems of
classication and hierarchy, marking lines between the
inside and the outside, the Law and its exceptions, those
who belong and those who do not'.[28]
According to Lvi-Strauss, mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their
resolution.[26]:224 In other words, myths consist of:
1. elements that oppose or contradict each other and
2. other elements that mediate, or resolve, those oppositions.
For example, Lvi-Strauss thinks the trickster of many
Native American mythologies acts as a mediator. LviStrausss argument hinges on two facts about the Native
American trickster:
1. the trickster has a contradictory and unpredictable
personality;
2. the trickster is almost always a raven or a coyote.
Lvi-Strauss argues that the raven and coyote mediate
the opposition between life and death. The relationship
between agriculture and hunting is analogous to the opposition between life and death: agriculture is solely concerned with producing life (at least up until harvest time);
hunting is concerned with producing death. Furthermore,
the relationship between herbivores and beasts of prey
is analogous to the relationship between agriculture and
hunting: like agriculture, herbivores are concerned with
plants; like hunting, beasts of prey are concerned with
catching meat. Lvi-Strauss points out that the raven and
coyote eat carrion and are therefore halfway between herbivores and beasts of prey: like beasts of prey, they eat
meat; like herbivores, they don't catch their food. Thus,
he argues, we have a mediating structure of the following type":[26]:224

2.3

The structuralist approach to myth

7
2.3.1

By uniting herbivore traits with traits of beasts of prey,

the raven and coyote somewhat reconcile herbivores and
beasts of prey: in other words, they mediate the opposition between herbivores and beasts of prey. As we have
seen, this opposition ultimately is analogous to the opposition between life and death. Therefore, the raven and
coyote ultimately mediate the opposition between life and
death. This, Lvi-Strauss believes, explains why the coyote and raven have a contradictory personality when they
appear as the mythical trickster:
The trickster is a mediator. Since his mediating function occupies a position halfway between two polar terms, he must retain something of that dualitynamely an ambiguous
and equivocal character.[26]:226
Because the raven and coyote reconcile profoundly opposed concepts (i.e., life and death), their own mythical
personalities must reect this duality or contradiction: in
other words, they must have a contradictory, tricky personality.
This theory about the structure of myth helps support
Lvi-Strausss more basic theory about human thought.
According to this more basic theory, universal laws govern all areas of human thought:
If it were possible to prove in this instance,
too, that the apparent arbitrariness of the mind,
its supposedly spontaneous ow of inspiration,
and its seemingly uncontrolled inventiveness
[are ruled by] laws operating at a deeper level
[] if the human mind appears determined
even in the realm of mythology, a fortiori it
must also be determined in all its spheres of
activity.[27]

The Savage Mind: bricoleur and engineer

Lvi-Strauss developed the comparison of the Bricoleur

and Engineer in The Savage Mind. Bricoleur has its
origin in the old French verb bricoler, which originally referred to extraneous movements in ball games, billiards,
hunting, shooting and riding, but which today means doit-yourself building or repairing things with the tools and
materials on hand, puttering or tinkering as it were. In
comparison to the true craftsman, whom Lvi-Strauss
calls the Engineer, the Bricoleur is adept at many tasks
and at putting preexisting things together in new ways,
adapting his project to a nite stock of materials and
tools. The Engineer deals with projects in their entirety,
conceiving and procuring all the necessary materials and
tools to suit his project. The Bricoleur approximates the
savage mind and the Engineer approximates the scientic mind. Lvi-Strauss says that the universe of the
Bricoleur is closed, and he often is forced to make do
with whatever is at hand, whereas the universe of the Engineer is open in that he is able to create new tools and
materials. But both live within a restrictive reality, and so
the Engineer is forced to consider the preexisting set of
theoretical and practical knowledge, of technical means,
in a similar way to the Bricoleur.

2.3.2 Criticism
Lvi-Strausss theory on the origin of the Trickster has
been criticized on a number of points by anthropologists.
Stanley Diamond notes that while the secular civilized
often consider the concepts of life and death to be polar, primitive cultures often see them as aspects of a
single condition, the condition of existence.[29]:308 Diamond remarks that Lvi-Strauss did not reach such a
conclusion by inductive reasoning, but simply by working
backwards from the evidence to the "a priori mediated
concepts[29]:310 of life and death, which he reached
by assumption of a necessary progression from life to
agriculture to herbivorous animals, and from death
to warfare to beasts of prey. For that matter, the coyote is well known to hunt in addition to scavenging and
the raven also has been known to act as a bird of prey,
in contrast to Lvi-Strausss conception. Nor does that
conception explain why a scavenger such as a bear would
never appear as the Trickster. Diamond further remarks
that the Trickster names 'raven' and 'coyote' which LviStrauss explains can be arrived at with greater economy
on the basis of, let us say, the cleverness of the animals involved, their ubiquity, elusiveness, capacity to make mischief, their undomesticated reection of certain human
traits.[29]:311 Finally, Lvi-Strausss analysis does not appear to be capable of explaining why representations of
the Trickster in other areas of the world make use of such
animals as the spider and mantis.

Out of all the products of culture, myths seem the most

fantastic and unpredictable. Therefore, Lvi-Strauss
claims, if even mythical thought obeys universal laws, Edmund Leach wrote that The outstanding characteristhen all human thought must obey universal laws.
tic of his writing, whether in French or English, is that it is

dicult to understand; his sociological theories combine

baing complexity with overwhelming erudition. Some
readers even suspect that they are being treated to a condence trick.[30] Sociologist Stanislav Andreski criticized
Lvi-Strausss work generally, arguing that his scholarship was often sloppy and moreover that much of his
mystique and reputation stemmed from his threatening
people with mathematics, a reference to Lvi-Strausss
use of quasi-algebraic equations to explain his ideas.[31]
Camille Paglia dismissed Lvi-Strauss as overrated, commenting that When as a Yale graduate student I ransacked that great temple, Sterling Library, in search of
paradigms for reintegrating literary criticism with history, I found literally nothing in Lvi-Strauss that I felt
had scholarly solidity.[32] Drawing on post-colonial approaches to anthropology, Timothy Laurie has suggested
that Lvi-Strauss speaks from the vantage point of a
State intent on securing knowledge for the purposes of, as
he himself would often claim, salvaging local cultures...
but the salvation workers also ascribe to themselves legitimacy and authority in the process.[33]

Works
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Gracchus Babeuf et le communisme, L'glantine, 1926.
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. La Vie familiale et sociale des
Indiens Nambikwara, Paris, Socit des amricanistes, 1948.
Lvi-Strauss, Claude (1949), Needham, Rodney,
ed., Les Structures lmentaires de la parent [The
Elementary Structures of Kinship] (in French), J.
H. Bell, J. R. von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham,
Translators (1969 ed.), Traviston (1970 paperback)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Race et histoire (1952,
UNESCO; Extract from Race and History in English; see also The Race Question, UNESCO, 1950)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques (1955,
trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman,
1973) also translated as A World on the Wane
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Anthropologie structurale
(1958, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, 1963)

INTERVIEWS

Du miel aux cendres (1966, From Honey to

Ashes, 1973)
L'Origine des manires de table (1968, The
Origin of Table Manners, 1978)
L'Homme nu (1971, The Naked Man, 1981)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Anthropologie structurale
deux (1973, Structural Anthropology, Vol. II, trans.
Monique Layton, 1976)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. La Voie des masques (1972,
The Way of the Masks, trans. Sylvia Modelski,
1982)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude (2005), Myth and Meaning,
First published 1978 by Routledge & Kegan Paul,
U.K, Taylor & Francis Group, ISBN 0-415-255481, retrieved 5 November 2010 Paperback ISBN 0415-25394-2; Master e-book ISBN 0-203-16472-5;
Adobe e-Reader Format ISBN 0-203-25895-9
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Paroles donns (1984, Anthropology and Myth: Lectures, 19511982, trans.
Roy Willis, 1987)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Le Regard loign (1983, The
View from Afar, trans. Joachim Neugroschel and
Phoebe Hoss, 1985)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. La Potire jalouse (1985, The
Jealous Potter, trans. Bndicte Chorier, 1988)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude (1996), The Story of Lynx,
Originally published 1991 as Histoire de Lynx,
Catherine Tihanyi (Translator), University of
Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-47471-2, retrieved 5
November 2010 Paperback ISBN 0-226-47472-0
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Regarder, couter, lire (1993,
Look, Listen, Read, trans. Brian Singer, 1997)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Saudades do Brasil, Paris,
Plon, 1994
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Le Pre Nol supplici, PinBalma, Sables, 1994
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. LAnthropologie face aux
problmes du monde moderne, Paris: Seuil, 2011
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. LAutre face de la lune, Paris:
Seuil, 2011

Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Le Totemisme aujourdhui

(1962, Totemism, trans. Rodney Needham, 1963)
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. La Pense sauvage (1962, The
Savage Mind, 1966)

4 Interviews

Lvi-Strauss, Claude. Mythologiques IIV (trans.

John Weightman and Doreen Weightman)

De prs et de loin, interviewed by Didier Eribon (1988, Conversations with Claude Lvi-Strauss,
trans. Paula Wissing, 1991)

Le Cru et le cuit (1964, The Raw and the

Cooked, 1969)

Loin du Brsil, interviewed by Vronique Mortaigne,

Paris, Chandeigne, 2005

9
Jean-Louis de Rambures, Comment travaillent les
crivains, Paris 1978 (interview with C. LviStrauss)

[16] Moore, Jerry D. (2004). Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Rowman
Altamira.

See also
Alliance theory

[17] Boon and Schneider

Comparative mythology

[18] Claude Lvi-Strauss. Acadmie franaise. Archived

from the original on 31 March 2012.

Evolutionary Principle
List of important publications in anthropology
Little Arpad

[15] Silverman, Sydel (2004). Totems and Teachers: Key Figures in the History of Anthropology. Rowman Altamira.
p. 16.

[19] Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 - 2009)". Royal Netherlands

Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 26 July 2015.
[20] Anthropologist Levi-Strauss dies. BBC. 3 November
2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.

Notes

[1] "Lvi-Strauss. Random House Websters Unabridged

Dictionary.
[2] Rothstein, Edward (3 November 2009). Claude LviStrauss dies at 100. The New York Times. Retrieved 4
November 2009.
[3] Doland, Angela (4 November 2009). Anthropology giant Claude Levi-Strauss dead at 100. Seattle Times. Associated Press. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
[4] Claude Levi-Strauss, Scientist Who Saw Human Doom,
Dies at 100. Bloomberg. 3 November 2009. Retrieved
3 November 2009.
[5] Briggs, Rachel; Meyer, Janelle. Structuralism. Anthropological Theories: A Guide Prepared By Students For Students. Dept. of Anthropology, University of Alabama.
Retrieved 22 April 2015.

[21] Claude Lvi-Strauss. The Daily Telegraph. 3 November

2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
[22] Davies, Lizzy (3 November 2009). French anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss dies aged 100. The Guardian.
Retrieved 3 November 2009.
[23] Moore, Jerry D. (2009). Claude Levi-Strauss: Structuralism. Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek, California: Altamira. pp. 231247.
[24] Phillips, John W. Structural Linguistics and Anthropology. National University of Singapore.
[25] Lvi-Strauss, Claude, The Structural Study of Myth (PDF),
republished online at UCSC.edu
[26] Lvi-Strauss, Claude (1958), Structural Anthropology

[6] Pinker, Steven. (2003) The Blank Slate. p. 22.

[27] The Raw and the Cooked, p. 10
[7] Death of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
Euronews. 3 November 2009. Retrieved 3 November
2009.
[8] (Portuguese) "Claude Lvi-Strauss - Biograa". Uol Educao Brasil. Access date: December 9, 2009.
[9] Ashbrook, Tom (November 2009).
Strauss". On Point

"Claude Levi-

[10] Conversation with Jean Jos Marchand

[28] Laurie, Timothy (2015), Becoming-Animal Is A Trap

For Humans, Deleuze and the Non-Human eds. Hannah
Stark and Jon Roe.
[29] Diamond, Stanley (1974). In Search of the Primitive. New
Brunswick: Transaction Books. ISBN 0-87855-045-3.
[30] Leach, Edmund (1974), Claude Levi-Strauss (Revised
ed.), New York: Viking Press, p. 3

[11] Wiseman, p. 6
[12] Catherine Clment raconte le grand ethnologue qui fte
ses 99 ans, interview, Le Journal du Dimanche, 25
November 2007
[13] Jennings, Eric (June 2002). Last Exit from Vichy
France: The Martinique Escape Route and the Ambiguities of Emigration. The Journal of Modern History. 74
(2): 289324. doi:10.1086/343409.
[14] Johnson, C. (2003). Claude Levi-Strauss: The Formative
Years. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1, 92, 172.

[31] Andreski, Stanislav (1972). The Social Sciences as Sorcery, Deutsch, p. 85

[32] Paglia, Camille (10 November 2009). Pelosis victory for
women. Salon.com. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
[33] Laurie, Timothy (2012), Epistemology as Politics and
the Double-Bind of Border Thinking: Lvi-Strauss,
Deleuze and Guattari, Mignolo, Portal: Journal of
Multidisciplinary International Studies, 9 (2): 120,
doi:10.5130/portal.v9i2.1826

10

References
Boon, James, and David Schneider. Kinship visa-vis Myth Contrasts in Levi-Strauss Approaches to
Cross-Cultural Comparison. American Anthropologist, New Series 76.4(1974): 799817
Doja, Albert (2008):
Claude Lvi-Strauss
at his Centennial: toward a future anthropology, Theory, Culture & Society, 25(7-8):
321340,
doi:10.1177/0263276408097810
(http://archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00405936).
Doja, Albert (2010):
Claude Lvi-Strauss
(1908-2009): The apotheosis of heroic anthropology, Anthropology Today, 26(5): 18
23,
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8322.2010.00758.x
(http://archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00523837).
Leach,
Edmund,
Lvi-Strauss
(1970)
Fontana/Collins ISBN 0-00-632255-7 Chapter
excerpt from book
Wiseman, Boris. Introducing Lvi-Strauss. Totem
Books, 1998.
Wiseman, Boris, ed. The Cambridge Companion to
Lvi-Strauss. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Further reading

EXTERNAL LINKS

Wilcken, Patrick (2011), Claude Lvi-Strauss: The

Poet in the Laboratory, London, UK: Bloomsbury,
ISBN 978-0-7475-8362-2, retrieved 20 November
2011

9 External links
Prole of Lvi-Strauss in The Nation
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 Lvi-Strauss
Strauss.html Overview, in The Johns Hopkins Guide
to Literary Theory (subscriber access only)
Excerpts from La Pense Sauvage
Erlanger, Steven (28 November 2008). 100thBirthday Tributes Pour in for Lvi-Strauss. The
New York Times. Paris. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
Documentaire 52': About Tristes Tropiques, 1991
Super 16 Film
Claude Lvi-Strauss, Obituary, The Economist, 12
November 2009

Main article: List of important publications in anthropology

Lecture: The Birth of Historical Societies (Hitchcock Lectures), 3 and 4 October 1984, UC Berkeley
(audio le)

Doran, Robert (2013), editor: Rethinking Claude

Lvi-Strauss: 1908-2009, Yale French Studies 123.

Linguistic and Commodity Exchanges Examines the

structural dierences between barter and monetary
commodity exchanges and oral and written linguistic
exchanges

Dick, Marcus (2008), Welt, Struktur, Denken.

Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Claude LviStrauss, Wrzburg, Germany: Knigshausen &
Neumann, ISBN 978-3-8260-4018-4, retrieved 25
April 2011
Hna, Marcel (Translated by Mary Baker) (1998),
Claude Lvi-Strauss and the Making of Structural
Anthropology, Originally published 1991 as Claude
Lvi-Strauss, Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, ISBN 0-8166-2760-6, retrieved 5
November 2010 Paperback ISBN 0-8166-2761-4
Pace, David (1983), Claude Levi-Strauss: The
Bearer of Ashes, Boston, Massachusetts & London,
UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ISBN 0-7100-92970, retrieved 5 November 2010
Taylor, Mark Kline (1986), Beyond Explanation:
Religious Dimensions in Cultural Anthropology, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, ISBN 086554-165-5, retrieved 5 November 2010

Philippe Descola, Claude Lvi-Strauss: a Career

Spanning a Century, in The Letter of the Collge de
France n4, 2009, p. 36.
Claude Lvi-Strauss: Tristes Tropiques, in English,
translated by John Russell, 1961
Claude Lvi-Strauss, social constructivism and syllables across languages
Claude Lvi-Strauss and his Mythologiques An
interdisciplinary internet project by scholars of the
University of Hildesheim (Germany): http://www.
mythologica.eu

11

10
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