Claude Levi-Strauss: The Anthropologist as Hero.

Abstract

The popularity of Levi-Strauss, words of editors of this collection of current essays and reviews, resides in his seeming rejection of history and humanism, his refusal to see Western civilization as privileged and unique, his view of human mind as programmed, his emphasis on form over content, and his insistence that savage mind is not inferior to civilized.This collection includes articles on Levi-Strauss' works and essays discussing this controversial anthropologist/ethnologist's place realm of contemporary thought and philosophy.Levi-Strauss is perhaps best known for his doctrine of which he has defined, at one point, as the search for unsuspected harmonies...[and] discovery of a system of relations latent a series of objects. The doctrine of structuralism is used by Levi-Strauss as skeleton key to study of development of human culture all its variety and its origins. He applies its framework his study of economics, social customs, language, mythology, and though he's an exact observer and tireless collector of facts, his overall view presents all culture as a kind of language to be decoded and interpreted based on inherent, preformed laws within structure of mind.The contributors to this volume include George Steiner, a discussion of philosophical and historical implications of Levi-Strauss' work; Susan Sontag, who focuses on anthropologist's antihistorical approach and its relatedness to what she terms intellectual homelessness portrayed modern literature; Peter Caw, who has contributed an essay on outgrowths of Levi-Strauss' writings and application of structuralism to other fields; and Robert L. Zimmerman and Lionel Abel, whose essays trace relevance of Levi-Strauss canon to humanities.Edmund Leach, Francis Huxley, H. Stuart Hughes, Sanche de Gramont, Hugo G. Nutini, Bob Scholte, Colin M. Turnbull, Robert F. Murphy, and Editors of Time are also represented.

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