Claude Lévi-Strauss Life, Work, and Theories

Claude Là ©vi-Strauss (November 28, 1908 – October 30, 2009) was a French anthropologist and one of the most prominent social scientists of the twentieth century. He is best known as the founder of structural anthropology and for his theory of structuralism. Là ©vi-Strauss was a key figure in the development of modern social and cultural anthropology, and was widely influential outside of his discipline. Fast Facts: Claude Là ©vi-Strauss Occupation: AnthropologistBorn: November 28, 1908 in Brussels, BelgiumEducation: University of Paris (Sorbonne)Died: October 30, 2009 in Paris, FranceKey Accomplishments: Developed the influential concept of structural anthropology as well as new theories of myth and kinship. Life and Career Claude Là ©vi-Strauss was born to a Jewish French family in Brussels, Belgium and later raised in Paris. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. Several years after his graduation, the French Ministry of Culture invited him to take a position as a visiting professor of sociology at the University of Sà £o Paolo in Brazil. After moving to Brazil in 1935, Là ©vi-Strauss held this teaching position until 1939. In 1939, Là ©vi-Strauss resigned to conduct anthropological fieldwork in indigenous communities in the Mato Grasso and Brazilian Amazon regions, launching the beginning of his research on and with indigenous groups of the Americas. The experience would have a profound affect on his future, paving the way for a groundbreaking career as a scholar. He achieved literary fame for his 1955 book Tristes Tropiques, which chronicled part of his time in Brazil. Claude Là ©vi-Strauss’ academic career began to take off as Europe spiraled into World War II and he was fortunate to escape France for the U.S., thanks to a teaching post at the New School for Research in 1941. While in New York, he joined a community of French intellectuals who successfully found refuge in the U.S. amidst the fall of their home country and the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe. Là ©vi-Strauss remained in the U.S. until 1948, joining a community of fellow Jewish scholars and artists escaping persecution that included linguist Roman Jakobson and Surrealist painter Andrà © Breton. Là ©vi-Strauss helped found the École Libre des Hautes Études (French School for Free Studies) with fellow refugees, and then served as a cultural attachà © to the French embassy in Washington, DC. Là ©vi-Strauss returned to France in 1948, where he received his doctorate from the Sorbonne. He quickly established himself within the ranks of French intellectuals, and he was the director of studies at the École des Hautes Études at the University of Paris from 1950 to 1974. He became the chair of Social Anthropology at the famed Collà ¨ge de France in 1959 and held the position until 1982. Claude Là ©vi-Struass died in Paris in 2009. He was 100 years old. Structuralism Là ©vi-Strauss formulated his famous concept of structural anthropology during his time in the U.S. Indeed, this theory is unusual in anthropology in that it is inextricably linked to the writing and thinking of one scholar. Structuralism offered a new and distinctive way to approach the study of culture, and built on the scholarly and methodological approaches of cultural anthropology and structural linguistics. Là ©vi-Strauss held that the human brain was wired to organize the world in terms of key structures of organization, which enabled people to order and interpret experience. Since these structures were universal, all cultural systems were inherently logical. They simply used different systems of understanding to explain the world around them, resulting in the stunning diversity of myths, beliefs, and practices. The anthropologist’s task, according to Là ©vi-Strauss, was to explore and explain the logic within a particular cultural system. Structuralism used the analysis of cultural practices and beliefs, as well as the fundamental structures of language and linguistic classification, to identify the universal building blocks of human thought and culture. It offered a fundamentally unifying, egalitarian interpretation of people across the world and from all cultural backgrounds. At our core, Là ©vi-Strauss argued, all people use the same basic categories and systems of organization to make sense of the human experience. Là ©vi-Strauss concept of structural anthropology aimed to unify – at the level of thought and interpretation – the experiences of cultural groups living in highly variable contexts and systems, from the indigenous community he studied in Brazil to the French intellectuals of World War II era New York. The egalitarian principles of structuralism were an important intervention in that they recognized all people as fundamentally equal, regardless of culture, ethnicity, or other socially constructed categories. Theories of Myth   Là ©vi-Strauss developed a deep interest in Native American beliefs and oral traditions during his time in the U.S. The anthropologist Franz Boas and his students had pioneered ethnographic studies of the indigenous groups of North America, compiling vast collections of myths. Là ©vi-Strauss, in turn, sought to synthesize these in a study spanning the myths from the Arctic to the tip of South America. This culminated in  Mythologiques  (1969, 1974, 1978, and 1981), a four-volume study in which Là ©vi-Strauss argued that myths could be studied to reveal the universal oppositions – such as dead versus living or nature versus culture – that organized human interpretations of and beliefs about the world. Là ©vi-Strauss posited structuralism as an innovative approach to the study of myths. One of his key concepts in this regard was the  bricolage, borrowing from the French term to refer to a creation that draws from a diverse assortment of parts. The  bricoleur, or the individual engaged in this creative act, makes use of what is available. For structuralism, bricolage  and  bricoleur  are used to show the parallels between Western scientific thought and indigenous approaches. Both are fundamentally strategic and logical, they simply make use of different parts.  Là ©vi-Strauss elaborated on his concept of the  bricolage  with respect to the anthropological study of myth in his seminal text,  The Savage Mind  (1962). Theories of Kinship Là ©vi-Strauss’ earlier work focused on kinship and social organization, as outlined in his 1949 book  The Elementary Structures of Kinship.  He sought to understand how categories of social organization, such as kinship and class, were formed. These were social and cultural phenomena, not natural (or pre-ordained) categories, but what caused them? Là ©vi-Strauss’ writings here centered on the role of exchange and reciprocity in human relationships. He was also interested in the power of the incest taboo to push people to marry outside of their families and the subsequent alliances that emerged. Rather than approaching the incest taboo as biologically-based or assuming that lineages should be traced by familial descent, Là ©vi-Strauss focused instead on the power of marriage to create powerful and lasting alliances between families. Criticism Like any social theory, structuralism had its critics. Later scholars broke with the rigidity of Là ©vi-Strauss’ universal structures to take a more interpretative (or hermeneutic) approach to cultural analysis. Similarly, the focus on underlying structures potentially obscured the nuance and complexity of lived experience and daily life. Marxist thinkers also criticized the lack of attention to material conditions, such as economic resources, property, and class. Structuralism is curious in that, although it was widely influential in multiple disciplines, it was not typically adopted as a strict method or framework. Rather, it offered a new lens with which to examine social and cultural phenomena. Sources Bloch, Maurice.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Claude Là ©vi-Strauss Obituary.† The Guardian.  November 3, 2009.Harkin, Michael.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Claude Là ©vi-Strauss.† Oxford Bibliographies.  September 2015.Là ©vi-Strauss, Claude.  Tristes Tropiques.  Translated by John Russell. Hutchinson Company, 1961.  Là ©vi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke G. Schoepf. Basic Books, Inc., 1963.Là ©vi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. The  University of Chicago Press, 1966.Là ©vi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Translated by J.H. Bell, J.R. VonSturmer, and Rodney Needham. Beacon Press, 1969.Rothstein, Edward.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Claude Là ©vi-Strauss, 100, Dies; Altered Western Views of ‘The Primitive.’† The New York Times.  November 4, 2009.

Dracula-Nosferatu Comparison Essay - 650 Words

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Essay on Disingenuous Advertising in the American Food Industry free essay sample

Western consumers are amongst the most ignorant and not to mention, rash consumers on the planet. Sadly, American consumers are the poster children for such blind purchasing. How often do you see a quite rotund individual in line at a fast food restaurant, ordering up a triple-stacker bacon cheeseburger, a large fry, and a Diet Coke? Such a meal is no less a contributor to said individual’s slow culinary suicide, than the same order of food with a non-diet variety of soda. The problem is that we love to subliminally associate positive words with positive choices. Doing so causes us to feel better about the decisions we make, especially in the respect of food. This poses quite a serious problem; because the use of positive-word-association in food advertising, many Americans have succeeded in lulling themselves into a false sense of security without even knowing it. Just like the vast predominance of voters go to the polls and vote ignorantly, American consumers of food do the same in the products and brands that they decide to patronize. Despite all this, two conclusions must not be rashly drawn. One: the epidemic of obesity and consumer ignorance, while is largely to blame on the carelessness of consumers, is also partially due to food producers’ mega-capitalistic approach in marketing that has driven them to do literally anything within legal limits to promote their product(s) and ensure that the abovementioned goods are by and large able to deceive the majority of the American consumer base. Two: while one might be tempted to label the widespread deception in marketing as â€Å"false† advertising, this is almost never the case. Food companies (well, all companies, really) are bound by law to not make false claims about the product(s) they sell. So, to remove this barrier, culinary-consumerism based companies tell the one positive thing about their product in giant bold print on the front of their merchandise, while leaving the more undesirable facts printed on the back (or even better, the bottom) of their goods in miniscule print. The old saying, â€Å"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.† is of no greater truth than in this arena (except, of course, for labyrinthine legal documents, which I have found, generally consist exclusively of small print). Bags of potato chips, boxes of doughnuts, and packets of gum and breath mints, all proudly display claims such as: â€Å"NO TRANS FAT!† or â€Å"ONLY 120 calories per serving!† or â€Å"SUGAR FREE!† What these companies fail to mention up front is that while that box of Krispy Kremes ® is trans fat free, each Original Glazed ® doughnut inside packs in a hip widening and artery clogging 200 calories and 12 grams of fat. That bag of chips that claims to have only 120 calories per serving, doesn’t have a single calorie more; the catch is that a serving size is four chips, so by the time you’ve had your snack of say 25 chips or so, you’ve enjoyed 720 satisfying calories and enough sodium to last for 2 days. Oh, and what about that innocent pack of gum, you ask? Well, as you might have guessed by now, it is, in fact, completely sugar free, but veiled in the superfluity of multisyllabic words that comprise the ingredient list, is an ingredient that is above the suspicion of the average consumer: gum base. Well, thanks to woefully lax standards of identity (set, interestingly enough, by the USDA), the words â€Å"gum base† are allowed to mask the fact that the aforementioned component consists of multiple ingredients in and of itself. To list just a few: petroleum, lanolin, glycerin, polyethylene, polyvinyl acetate, petroleum wax, stearic acid, and latex (a possible allergen). Within this list we find even more confounding words, hidden in which are things such as crushed insects, animal fat-derived gelatin, and powder from marble and horse hooves to coat the gum and prevent if from sticking to its wrapper. This poses a serious problem for vegan consumers who could very easily unknowingly purchase products such as the latter and inadvertently be supporting the slaughter and use of animals. Regardless of dietary lifestyle, I feel that most individuals, if they knew what some of the foods they ate contained, would have a serious â€Å"ew factor† to deal with in any future consumption of such. What does all this say? Two things: One, American consumers are abysmally uneducated and apathetic about the ingredients/nutritional value of the majority of the foods they consume on a regular basis. Secondly, the government of this nation (and others as well), specifically the USDA needs to set higher standards for how food products can be advertised. Deceptive advertising is just as wrong as false advertising and should be put to a stop nationwide. ALL ingredients and the source of origin should be required on ALL food packaging made in the United States, of made internationally for consumption here. The USDA should necessitate listing of ALL SPECIFIC food allergens on food packaging as well as information regarding if the product in question is vegan, kosher, etc. This great nation has often found itself last in many arenas throughout history. Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807, while it took us decades before we were able to. We are still the only nation in the Western civilized world without universal healthcare. We are sole country in the west that still uses the death penalty and, aside from Mexico, are still the only ones without full and equal rights for LGBTQA individuals. We need to embrace progressive change instead of succumbing to it. If we lead the way in the regulation of misleading advertisement in the food industry, other nations would follow in the domino effect that we have seen quite often throughout recent history.