Claude Levi-Strauss

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Penguin Books, 1992 - History - 425 pages
First published in 1955, Claude Levi-Strauss's accounts of his researches among the peoples of the Amazon is a fascinating study and influential in understanding the organization of human society. He writes of myths and superstitions, modern cities and ancient villages, and each page is packed with anecdotes and observations. Photos & illus. throughout.

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Contents

The Making of an Anthropologist
7
Setting
17
The West Indies
29
Copyright

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About the author (1992)

Claude Levi-Strauss, a French anthropologist, was the founder of structural anthropology. This theoretical position assumes that there are structural propensities in the human mind that lead unconsciously toward categorization of physical and social objects, hence such book titles as The Raw and the Cooked (1964) and such expositions of his work by others as The Unconscious in Culture and Elementary Structures Reconsidered. According to Levi-Strauss, the models of society that scholars create are often dual in nature:status-contract (Maine): Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft (Tonnies); mechanical-organic solidarity (Durkheim); folk-urban (Redfield); universalism-particularism (Parsons); and local-cosmopolitan (Merton). Levi-Strauss's writings---some of which have been described by Clifford Geertz as "theoretical treatises set out as travelogues"---have been enormously influential throughout the scholarly world. George Steiner has described him, along with Freud (see also Vol. 5) and Marx (see also Vol. 4), as one of the major architects of the thought of our times. Levi-Strauss died October 30, 2009.

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