Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1908–2009)

JAMES J. FOX
Australian National University, Australia

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a major figure in anthropology. He was a French intellectual

of enormous erudition who developed a style of analysis that, for a period, became a
source of widespread inspiration and emulation. This form of analysis became known
as “structuralism.” Although the influence of structuralism centered on anthropology,
it extended more widely to other fields of inquiry.
Born on November 28, 1908, Lévi-Strauss came from a distinguished artistic family
originally from Alsace. During World War I, he lived with his maternal grandfather,
who was the rabbi of the Versailles synagogue. In Paris, he studied first at the Lycée
Janson-de-Sailly and then at the Lycée Condorcet. He began a study of law before being
admitted to the Sorbonne to study philosophy, placing third in his aggregation in 1931.
A turning point in his life was an invitation from Célestin Bouglé, the then director
of the École Normale Supérieure, inviting him to join a French mission to Brazil. From
1935 to 1938, he was professor of sociology at the University of São Paulo, during which
time he organized various expeditions to Mato Grosso and the Amazon. In 1939, he
resigned his position to be able to conduct more extended research among the Nam-
bikwara and other populations of Brazil’s interior.
On his return to France, Lévi-Strauss was mobilized to the front line but was then
released because of his Jewish heritage. For a time thereafter he taught in Montpellier,
in the south of France, but in 1941 he managed to flee to the United States, where he
took up a position at the New School for Social Research. At the New School, he met
the linguist Roman Jakobson, whose theories of structural analysis in linguistics had a
significant influence on him. In 1942, he became one of the founding members of the
École Libre des Hautes Études, which was a university in exile of outstanding French
intellectuals. He stayed on in the United States until 1947, serving as a cultural attaché
to the French Embassy in Washington, DC.
When he returned to France, Lévi-Strauss’s academic career involved a succession
of distinguished appointments. He submitted, defended, and was awarded his doctoral
degree in 1948. He became assistant director at the Musée de l’Homme from 1949 to
1950; then director of anthropological studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études
from 1950 to 1974. In 1959, he was elected to the chair of social anthropology at the
Collège de France, which he held from 1959 to 1982. In 1973, he became a member
of the Académie Française and in the same year received the Erasmus Prize. In 2009,
at the age of one hundred, he became dean of the Académie Française and its oldest
member. Throughout his career, he produced an array of notable publications, but, as

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan.

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2007
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he grew older, he could not but decry the sad destruction of the earth and its diver-
sity, a theme he had signaled in his early writings. Lévi-Strauss died on October 30,
2009.
Lévi-Strauss’s opus is daunting and remarkably varied, and extends well beyond any
simple labels. His career can best be charted by a consideration of the major works in
this formidable opus, each of which offered a distinct contribution to anthropology.
Lévi-Strauss’s first publication (in 1948) was a short monograph, La vie familiale et
sociale des Indiens Nambikwara (The Social and Family Life of the Nambikwara Indi-
ans), which compiled his ethnographic investigations on one of the indigenous groups,
the Nambikwara, on whom he had concentrated his attention while in Brazil. His first
major publication was his thesis, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (The Elemen-
tary Structures of Kinship), which appeared in 1949. This is a massive work, dedicated
to the founder of kinship studies, Lewis Henry Morgan, conceived on a grand scale and
executed with considerable flair across a range of issues. At its core is the application
of Marcel Mauss’s ideas of reciprocity and exchange, as developed in his Essai sur le
don (The Gift), published in 1925, intelligently applied to the structuring of various
forms of marriage. Lévi-Strauss begins with an interpretation of the incest prohibi-
tion as a positive rule to marry out and proceeds to define cross-cousin marriage as
an “elementary” structure of exchange, drawing a crucial distinction between systems
of “restricted exchange,” requiring immediate reciprocity, and systems of “generalized
exchange,” which depend on an extended and thereby delayed reciprocity.
He begins his analysis with the Australian marriage systems, basing his discussion
on the work of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. Most Australian systems, of which the Aranda
and Kariera are good examples, are characterized by restricted exchange. A significant
change, however, occurs at the northern end of Australia with the Murngin (Yolngu),
whose marriage system is supposedly based exclusively on matrilateral cross-cousin
marriage. This marriage system thus constitutes a structural transformation from
restricted to generalized exchange. From Australia, Lévi-Strauss directed his analysis
to Asia, focusing first on generalized exchange among societies in mainland Southeast
Asia (such as the Katchin [Jingpho], Kuki, Lakher [Mara], and various Naga groups
of Assam), then proceeding to forms of generalized exchange among the Gilyak of
Siberia before considering the possibility of restricted exchange in ancient China and
more briefly India.
In his conclusion, Lévi-Strauss identifies an axis of generalized exchange extending
from Burma to Eastern Siberia with a variety of mixed systems in between and forms
of restricted exchange in China. For him, “matrilateral marriage represents the most
lucid and fruitful of the simple forms of reciprocity” ([1949] 1969, 451). Finally,
after trumpeting the distinction between restricted and generalized exchange and
tracing the distribution of these forms of marriage in Australia, Asia, and elsewhere,
Lévi-Strauss goes on to suggest a transition from elementary forms to complex forms,
which, as it happens, constitute the majority of the world’s systems of kinship and
marriage.
Les structures élémentaires was a major comparative effort and established
Lévi-Strauss immediately in the front ranks of contemporary anthropologists. The
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book also prompted a considerable response that recognized his insights but ques-
tioned the ethnography of many of his case studies. The English translation of this
book, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969), is based on Lévi-Strauss’s revised
second French edition, which eliminated many of the points that provoked earlier
disagreements.
Compared with the technical demands of his Elementary Structures, Lévi-Strauss’s
Tristes tropiques, published in 1955, is an immediately accessible literary work—a
personal account of his discovery of anthropology as an intellectual discipline and his
anthropological efforts to begin to understand several Brazilian Indian societies—the
Bororo, Cadiveo, Nambikwara, and Tupi-Kawahib—whom he encountered during
his various expeditions to the interior of Brazil. Particularly revealing is his account
of his disillusionment with philosophy and how the study of geology, psychoanalysis,
and Marxism—what Lévi-Strauss called his “three mistresses”—all “showed that
understanding consists in the reduction of one kind of reality to another” ([1955] 1967,
61). Equally revealing is his explanation of what a comparative social understanding
requires. In his words, all human societies “choose certain combinations from a
repertory of ideas which it should be possible to reconstitute. For this one must make
an inventory of the customs that have been observed … [and] with all this one could
eventually establish a sort of periodic chart of chemical elements, analogous to that
devised by Mendeleier” ([1955] 1967, 160).
From the beginning, Lévi-Strauss’s methodology was elemental, combinatorial, nat-
uralistic, and, above all, cerebral. Anthropologie structurale (Structural Anthropology,
1963) consists of seventeen essays that can be considered to epitomize Lévi-Strauss’s
structuralist methodology. The collection includes papers originally published between
1945 and 1956. Among them one can discern a development in Lévi-Strauss’s method.
In “Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology” (1945), Lévi-Strauss relies on
simple valency markers (+/−) to structure his oppositions. In “The Structural Study of
Myth” (1955), he proposes an analytic stance, which would carry forward in his work,
that myth must be “treated as an orchestra score” ([1958] 1963, 213). His use of valency
markers (+/−) continues but these markers are now applied to specific binary cate-
gories (gods/men, fibers/sinews, etc.) that serve as the specific concrete operators in his
analysis.
Structuralism is thus a technique for tracing the transformation of relations between
symbolic entities. As such, it is concerned with meaning as a relational concept. How-
ever, for a methodology to claim to be universal, it must ultimately be replicable. Yet,
as critics have frequently noted, Lévi-Strauss’s scintillating forays in analysis reflect an
intellectual virtuosity that is difficult to repeat.
Le totémisme aujourd’hui (Totemism), published in 1962, and La pensée sauvage
(The Savage Mind), published in 1962, can be considered together. They were pub-
lished in the same year and were directed to an examination of the logic of complex
classification. In Totémisme, Lévi-Strauss endeavors to dispel a categorical illusion in
anthropology—the misconception that certain relations linking individuals, groups,
and their particular animal or vegetable species emblems constitute some unique form
of classificatory arrangement. In attacking such conceptual distortions, he engages
in an extended commentary on the diverse ethnographic approaches of generations
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of “Anglo-Saxon” anthropology from Fraser, Malinowski, and Radcliffe-Brown

to Boas, Lowie, and Kroeber to Stanner, Strehlow, Elkin, Firth, Fortes, and even
Evans-Pritchard. For a work that some might say involved “beating a dead horse,” this
book is an intellectual tour de force.
Lévi-Strauss even enlists both Rousseau and Compte in support of his basic argu-
ment. La pensée sauvage resumes the argument begun in Totémisme. (Key chapters are
“The Logic of Totemic Classification” and “Totem and Caste.”) A profusion of detailed
ethnographic examples of systems of complex classification, drawn from around the
world, are stunningly arrayed to support his argument that “the savage mind” is intel-
lectually and sophisticatedly engaged with understanding the world: it distinguishes,
analyses, and classifies, making use of specific “concrete” operators whose logic is pro-
ductive and transformative. In Lévi-Strauss’s words, “The savage mind totalizes” (245).
His efforts at interpretation constitute a “science of the concrete” and are ultimately
intended to “legitimate the principles of savage thought” ([1962] 1964, 269). The final
chapter of the volume takes issue with Sartre’s Critique de la raison dialectique (Critique
of Dialectical Reason, 1960) by asking whether the savage mind engages in dialectic
reasoning as well as analytical reasoning.
In all of Lévi-Strauss’s work, there is a considerable degree of intellectual play. His
French can be elusive and often his allusions and plays on words are not carried over
into English. A striking example of this occurs on the cover of the French edition of
La pensée sauvage, which is illustrated with a large colored drawing of a “wild pansy”
(pansée sauvage).
Lévi-Strauss’s Mythologiques (The Science of Mythology), published in four volumes
in French (1964–71), can best be regarded as an orchestral creation that takes as its
score all of the American Indian mythologies of South and North America. Volume
one (Le cru et la cuit [The Raw and the Cooked]) is the overture to this grand
symphony. It begins with the examination of a Bororo myth (M 1) on “the origin
of water” and then goes on to examine an aria of Gé myths on “the origin of fire”;
it carries on, by the final chorus, to M 137. Still focused on South America, volume
two (Du miel aux cendres [From Honey to Ashes]) proceeds to M 353; volume three
(L’origine des manières de table [The Origin of Table Manners]) ventures into North
America and carries its myth analysis to M 528; and, finally, volume four (L’homme
nu [The Naked Man]) moves through a host of North American myths, particularly
from the Northwest Coast, before returning to a final Apinayé myth, M 813 on
“the putrefied man.” This numbering of myths does not give an adequate idea of
the full extent of the myths that Lévi-Strauss analyzes. Many of the myths under
consideration have numerous alternative versions: M 682 has alternate versions a–e,
as do M 687 and M 752. The intricacy of this analysis is enormous and demanding
since it does not follow a linear progression. Lévi-Strauss regularly shifts his attention
to myths that he has previously considered in earlier volumes. His technical analysis
retains his basic valencies (+/−) but expands to include notions of “conjunction,”
“disjunction,” “identity,” “difference,” and, his most frequently used opposition, that
of “inversion.” In addition to the recurrent binary operators such as male/female,
night/day, and sun/moon, many of Lévi-Strauss’s specific concrete operators are as
startling as the myths from which they derive: raw/cooked, boiled/rotten, fetus/penis,
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and hummingbird/woodpecker. Throughout the Mythologiques, fire, and with it

cooking, is the transformative means that marks the transition from nature to culture.
Besides the myths themselves, the most engaging feature of Lévi-Strauss’s presentation
is the detailed ethnographic and ecological commentary that accompanies his myth
analysis.
After the appearance of the first volume of the Mythologiques, Lévi-Strauss postponed
any attempt to explain his work until the end of his efforts. The final volume, however,
leaves much unexplained. He argues tentatively that his work was only possible because
all the myths of the Americas constitute a single myth told and retold over millennia.
What one is to make of the work as a whole is by no means clear.
Lévi-Strauss’s Mythologiques is his masterwork and the culminating effort of a long
intellectual trajectory. Although he continued to produce important work after this, his
Mythologiques is his grand monument. He published a second volume of Anthropologie
structurale in 1973. He also published a study of the art and traditions of the Indians
of the Northwest Coast, La voie des masques (The Way of the Masks) in 1975, a subject
of continuing interest from the very beginning of his career, as well as two shorter,
more focused works: La potière jalousie (The Jealous Potter), published in 1985, and
Histoire de lynx (The Story of Lynx), published in 1991. All three of these studies can be
considered spin-offs from the Mythologiques. Another work, Le regard éloigné (A View
from Afar), published in 1983, offers retrospective reflections on his work, beginning
with a return to his earlier study, Race et historie (Race and History), published
in 1952.
Lévi-Strauss’s work is among the most extensive, intellectually versatile, and sub-
tly sophisticated of any anthropologist who has contributed to the discipline. For this
reason, it is too early to venture a proper assessment of his achievement. It can be
said, however, that all of his varied studies highlighted the central value of ethnogra-
phy, and his influence, particularly in France, contributed to the continuing pursuit of
high-quality ethnographic research within the field of anthropology.
His principal publications include:

1948. La vie familiale et sociale des Indiens Nambikwara [The Social and Family Life of
the Nambikwara Indians]. Paris: Société des Américanistes.
1949. Les structures élémentaires de la parenté. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
1952. Race et historie. Paris: UNESCO.
1955. Tristes tropiques. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1958. Anthropologie structurale. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1962. La pensée sauvage. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1962. Le totémisme aujourd’hui. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
1963. Structural Anthropology. Basic Books.
1964. Le cru et la cuit. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1964. Totemism. London: Merlin Press.
1964–71. Mythologiques. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1966. Du miel aux cendres. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1967. Les structures élémentaires de la parenté. Paris: Mouton. [New edition with cor-
rections.]
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1967. Tristes tropiques. New York: Atheneum. [Also under the title World on the Wane.]
1968. L’origine des manières de table. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1968. The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press. [Translation of the
1967 edition.]
1970. The Raw and the Cooked. London: Jonathan Cape.
1971. L’homme nu. Paris: Librairie Plon
1973. Anthropology structurale II. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1973. From Honey to Ashes. London: Jonathan Cape.
1975. La voie des masques. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1977. Structural Anthropology II. London: Allen Lane.
1978. The Origin of Table Manners. London: Jonathan Cape.
1981. The Naked Man. London: Jonathan Cape.
1983. Le regard éloigné. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1983. The Way of the Masks. London: Jonathan Cape.
1985. A View from Afar. Oxford: Blackwell.
1985. La potière jalousie. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1988. The Jealous Potter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1991. Histoire de lynx. Paris: Librairie Plon.
1995. The Story of Lynx. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

SEE ALSO: Alliance Theory (Marriage Systems); Animism; Anthropology, Public

Perceptions of; Anthropology: Scope of the Discipline; Art, Anthropology of; Avun-
culate; Brazil, Anthropology in; Built Environment; Categories and Taxonomies;
Clash of Civilizations, The, Anthropology and; Consciousness; Culture, Concept
of; Descent; Dumont, Louis (1911–98); Elementary Structures of Kinship, The / Les
structures élémentaires de la parenté; Embodied Learning; Ethnology; Ethnomycology;
European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA); France, Anthropology in;
Functionalism; Gell, Alfred (1945–97); Gender and Kinship; Gender, Structuralist
Theories of; Godelier, Maurice (b. 1934); Goody, Jack (1919–2015); Iconography
and Style; Inbreeding Avoidance, Evolutionary Mechanisms of; Incest, Theoretical
Perspectives on; India, Anthropology in; Initiation; Kinship Systems; Leach, Edmund
(1910–89); Lévi-Strauss: Exchange of Women (Theory and Critiques); Lévy-Bruhl,
Lucien (1857–1939); Marriage; Material Culture; Mauss, Marcel (1872–1950); Milita-
rization; Morgan, Lewis Henry (1818–81); Myth; Nature, Concepts of; Nature/Culture
Distinction; Needham, Rodney (1923–2006); Norway, Anthropology in; Oral Lit-
eratures; Philosophical Anthropology; Poland, Anthropology in; Psychoanalytic
Anthropology; Race and Racisms; Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1881–1955); Reciprocity;
Religion, Symbolist versus Intellectualist Approaches to; Religious Experience and
Phenomenology; Ritual and Cognition; Sacred Time; Sahlins, Marshall (b. 1930);
Social and Cultural Anthropology; States; Structural Functionalism; Structuralism
(Linguistic Anthropology); Totemism; Tristes tropiques; Tylor, Edward (1832–1917);
UNESCO, Place of Anthropology in; United Kingdom, Anthropology in
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REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Leach, Edmund. 1970. Claude Lévi-Strauss. New York: Viking.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1949) 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Rev. ed. Translated by
James Harle Bell, John Richard von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham. Boston: Beacon Press.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1955) 1967. Tristes tropiques. Translated by John Russell. New York:
Atheneum.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1958) 1963. Structural Anthropology. Translated by Claire Jacobson and
Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1962) 1964. Totemism. Translated by Rodney Needham. London: Merlin
Press.
Wiseman, Boris, ed. 2009. The Cambridge Companion to Lévi-Strauss. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.