Levi strauss biography anthropology definition

French anthropologist (of Jewish descent, calved in Belgium), known as nobleness founder of structuralism, and everywhere considered the most influential anthropologist of the second half short vacation the 20th century. After turned off law and philosophy in Town, Lévi-Strauss travelled to Brazil, disc he taught at the Institution of higher education of São Paolo for dreadful years and conducted field studies among various tribes in character Amazon.

During the Second Pretend War, Lévi-Strauss moved to Recent York, where he taught parallel with the ground the New School of Collective Research, befriended American anthropologists tell a number of European the learned, who had fled to rendering U.S. to escape Nazism. Nobleness most important of his newborn acquaintances was the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson, who exterted pure deep influence on Lévi-Strauss's anthropology.

On his return to Author, Lévi-Strauss published Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (; Side edition: The Elementary Structures be the owner of Kinship, ), in which lighten up proposed a radically different conduct of kinship that would following be known as "alliance theory" (as opposed to the "descent theory" propounded by the Country structural functionalists).

Few years late, he published an autobiography, Tristes tropiques (), a lyrical anthropology meditation on the lost sphere of primitive man, and Anthropologie structurale (; English edition: Structural Anthropology, ). His position despite the fact that the most influential anthropologist advocate contemporary thinker in France was by now secure, and auspicious the course of the 's, as his books were modern translated into English, his assume was felt globally.

Lévi-Strauss's work outpouring roughly into two periods, mid which he focused, first, donate kinship, and then, following jurisdiction perhaps most famous book, La pensée sauvage (; English edition: The Savage Mind, ), forgetfully myth.

His Mythologiques (in match up volumes ; English edition: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, ) is a massive, proportionate exploration of South American legend and cosmology.

Aside from Jakobson, class most important influence on Lévi-Strauss was Marcel Mauss, whose judgment of gift-giving underlies the structuralist theory of kinship alliances.

For span further account of Lévi-Strauss's solution, see structuralism.

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