Claude Lévi-Strauss
Anthropologist: no culture is the measure of the others, and believing in other people's barbarism is already a form of barbarism.
Life
French anthropologist (Brussels 1908 - Paris 2009), founder of structural anthropology. After time in Brazil, he studied kinship systems and myths. He shows that cultures follow common structures of the mind and refuses to rank societies on a scale of progress. Professor at the Collège de France, elected to the Académie française in 1973.
Main works
Travel account and meditation on the encounter of cultures.
Rejects the hierarchy of cultures and criticises ethnocentrism.
Shows that the thought of societies without writing is as rigorous as ours.
Lays the foundations of the structural method.
In his own words
« The barbarian is, first and foremost, the man who believes in barbarism. »
« We can understand, too, that natural species are chosen not because they are "good to eat" but because they are "good to think." »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceThe aim of the human sciences is to dissolve man and put culture back into nature, and life back into its physico-chemical conditions.
Lévi-Strauss, La Pensée sauvage (1962)
No culture is the measure of the others, so no society's moral code can claim to be the universal standard.
Lévi-Strauss, Race et histoire (1952)