Claude Lévi-Strauss

Biography in a few words:

Claude Lévi-Strauss (born Nov. 28, 1908, Brussels, Belg.—died Oct. 30, 2009, Paris, France) was an anthropologist (duh) who lived in France and is recognized as one of the fathers of modern anthropology. He is most famous for his creation of structural anthropology, which claims that all cultures have rituals that serve the same structured purpose. Cultures are not as different in their intentions as they may seem to be when observing their practices. As a student of Ms. P you will learn about this in your discussions of rites of passage. He also did a lot of work with mythology, kinship, and the “Culinary Triangle”. Read some of his stuff cuz it is really good. Especially the one on food. Very applicable to my everyday life.

List of works:

The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949)

Tristes Tropiques (1955)

Structural Anthropology (1958)

The Savage Mind (1962)

The Raw and the Cooked (1964)

Mythologiques (1964)

L’origine des manières de table (1978)

The Way of the Masks (1982)

Le regard éloigné (1983)

Anthropology and Myth (1987)

Saudades do Brasil (1994)