Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss (/klɔːd ˈleɪvi ˈstraʊs/ klawd LAY-vee STROWSS, French: [klod levi stʁos]; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982, was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973 and was a member of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He received numerous honours from universities and institutions throughout the world.
Claude Lévi-Strauss | |
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Lévi-Strauss in 2005 | |
| Born | 28 November 1908 Brussels, Belgium |
| Died | 30 October 2009 (aged 100) Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Education | University of Paris (DrE, 1948) |
| Spouses | Rose Marie Ullmo
(m. 1946; div. 1954)Monique Roman (m. 1954) |
| School | Structuralism |
| Institutions | École pratique des hautes études (later École des hautes études en sciences sociales) Collège de France |
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| Part of a series on the |
| Anthropology of kinship |
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Social anthropology Cultural anthropology |
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| Anthropology |
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Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere. These observations culminated in his famous book Tristes Tropiques (1955) which established his position as one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his ideas reached into many fields in the humanities, including philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as "the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity." He won the 1986 International Nonino Prize in Italy.