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| Steve Hayes... |
 Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:58 pm |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/03/AR2009110301477.html
CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS, 100
Renowned anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss dies at 100
Anthropologist's work bridged academic disciplines
By Alexander F. Remington
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Claude Lévi-Strauss, 100, who was one of the preeminent anthropologists of
the 20th century and whose erudite, often mind-bendingly labored studies of
indigenous Brazilian tribes led to influential theories about human behavior
and culture, has died. News reports said that he died Oct. 30 [2009] of
cardiac arrest at his home in Paris.
Along with writers Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux, Mr. Lévi-Strauss was
considered one of the towering French intellectuals of the last century. He
wrote four volumes centered on mythology among indigenous tribes in the
Americas in addition to books including "Tristes Tropiques" (1955), which
mingled sociological findings with memoir and travelogue.
"Tristes Tropiques," sometimes translated as "A World on the Wane," follows
Mr. Lévi-Strauss's travels through Brazil in the 1930s. It was praised by
eminent American anthropologist Clifford Geertz as "surely one of the finest
books ever written by an anthropologist."
"Tristes" and later titles such as "La Pensée Sauvage" (1962), "The Savage
Mind," set out to show that there is little distinction between civilized
and primitive societies. Mr. Lévi-Strauss preferred to call the latter,
often dismissed as groups of savages, "societies without writing."
Mr. Lévi-Strauss said his life's work, which gained greater prominence in
the 1960s and 1970s, was "an attempt to show that there are laws of mythical
thinking as strict and rigorous as you would find in the natural sciences."
Philippe Descola, chairman of anthropology at the Collège de France, told
the New York Times that Mr. Lévi-Strauss was "one of the great intellectual
heroes of the 20th century. . . . He gave a proper object to anthropology:
not simply as a study of human nature, but a systematic study of how
cultural practices vary, how cultural differences are systematically
organized."
Descola said that rather than search for commonalities, Mr. Lévi-Strauss did
not think all cultures had to be seen through Western lenses. His work
inspired the opening in 2006 of the Musée du Quai Branly, a Paris museum
featuring the art of indigenous peoples.
In a long career, Mr. Lévi-Strauss popularized a social science theory known
as structuralism. It is a philosophical method of approaching anthropology
that identifies behavioral codes crucial to the functioning of any society,
even those considered primitive.
His mid-1960s essay "Le Triangle Culinaire" ("The Culinary Triangle") viewed
cultural development through the lens of food. He examined, for example, how
Amazon people instinctively made distinctions between roasting and boiling.
"Boiling provides a means of complete conservation of the meat and its
juices, whereas roasting is accompanied by destruction and loss," he wrote.
"Thus one denotes economy; the other prodigality; the latter is
aristocratic, the former plebian."
Mr. Lévi-Strauss's method of thinking intruded into many branches of
academia, notably philosophy, comparative religion and comparative
literature. His reputation as a theorist bounced in and out of favor.
Cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago said
that Mr. Lévi-Strauss's theories come down to this: Logically deduce all the
possible ways in which people can behave. Observe which behaviors are
exhibited. Then try to explain why some behaviors exist and other logically
possible behaviors are never seen. The answers form a grammar, or structure,
upon which all cultures are based.
Claude Gustave Lévi-Strauss was born in Brussels on Nov. 28, 1908, to a
French Jewish family. His father was a painter, and his great-grandfather
was composer Isaac Strauss.
After attending the Sorbonne, he taught at a French high school until a
chance conversation with a former professor in 1934 led to a journey to
Brazil.
For much of World War II, Mr. Lévi-Strauss taught at the New School for
Social Research in New York. He became acquainted with linguist Roman
Jakobson, whose theories on the structure of language influenced Mr.
Lévi-Strauss's structuralist principles.
After the war, he was a cultural official at the French Embassy in
Washington, then returned to teaching, first at the Sorbonne and later at
the Collège de France. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1973, he became a member
of the French Academy, his country's elite society of literary and
scientific figures.
His marriages to Dina Dreyfus and Rose-Marie Ullmo ended in divorce.
Survivors include his third wife, Monique Roman, whom he married in 1954; a
son from his second marriage, Laurent; and a son from his third marriage,
Matthieu.
"I feel like a very humble craftsman," Mr. Lévi-Strauss told The Washington
Post in 1978. "I'm just working in my workshop on very particular questions
which can hopefully make a little more rigorous some of the human sciences.
Nothing I'm doing is going to particularly ease mankind's problems. I'm a
theoretician."
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk |
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