A historical and cross cultural perspective.

1. Claude Levi Strauss
Jeevan Lal
University of Kerala
MVA Art History and Aesthetics.
RRV Centre of Excellence for Visual Arts Mavelikkara, Kerala.

2. Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) is one of
France’s foremost thinkers of the 20th century.
The celebrated philosopher and anthropologist is
one of the key figures of structuralism.

3. Diverse cultures shares more
similarities than differences.
Book-Structural Anthropology.

4. Claude Levi Strauss studied hundreds of myths and legends all around the
world, from that he found out that we as humans make sense of the
world, people and events by seeing and using binary opposites.

5. • He emphasised the importance of structuring oppositions in myth
systems and in language.
• He said that abiding structure of all meaning-making, not just narratives,
was a dependence on binary oppositions, or a conflict between two
qualities or terms.

7. Parallels of cultures of similarities than differences.
Because humans have many basic needs in common.
Peoples are governed by his own mind, This theory is
called structuralism.
Structuralism looks its particular manifestation of
culture.

8. Common mental needs, that is “reconciliation of
common binary opposites”
These binary opposites are the manifestations of
underlying rules they are governing social life.

9. He was a structuralist and anthropologist whose
work had a great influence on semiotics. (the study of
signs and symbols as elements of communicative
behaviour; the analysis of systems of communication, as
language, gestures, or clothing.)
Claude Levi Strauss

10. Symbolic Anthropology
1.Intrepretive Anthropology
2.Structural Anthropology
Levi-Straus’ Symbolic Anthropology
.Meaning is rational.
.Through characterized by approaches.
.Myth resolves binaries.

11. Meaning is rational.
. Totem, Kin relation, Magic, Myth etc have no independent values.
. You cannot stand with individual signs and construct meaning in a system.
. Start with system and then construct individual signs.
Myth
. Myths shows the structures of underlying human thoughts
. It is not immediately apparent
. It is contradictions/oppositions.
. Myths can overcomes contradictions/oppositions.
contradictions/oppositions.
All human thoughts are structured by contradictions/oppositions.
Eg. Day and night, Love and Hate, Nature and Culture.

13. Language.
Sintagmatic Relation.
Paradigmatic Relation.
How items can be combined
Eg. ‘The old Cat’ (not ‘the cat old’)
How items can be substituted
Eg. ‘the young cat’ (not ‘the young milk’)
Sintagmatic relation VS Paradigmatic relation
(Order) (Substitution)

14. Main Ideas and Concepts
Claude Levi-Strauss is best known for his theory of culture and
mind that revolutionized modern anthropology. He showed that
culture is a system with underlying structures that are common
to all societies regardless of their differences.
Through his analyses he showed that patterns of
structures including behavior and thought are universal to all
societies, and rejected the concept of primitive and modern
mind, arguing that all men have the same intellectual potential.
According to Levi-Strauss, all people think of the world
around them in terms of binary opposites such as up and
down, life and death, etc. and therefore every culture can be
understood in these terms.
Levi-Strauss’ ideas were heavily influenced by the so-called
structural linguistics, especially the work of the Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).

15. Notable Works
Levi-Strauss published his first work Gracchus Babeuf et le
communisme as early as 1926 but his most notable works were
published only from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. The most
important works by Claude Levi-Strauss include:
La Vie familiale et sociale des Indiens Nambikwara (1948)
Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté (“The Elementary
Structures of Kinship”; 1949)
Tristes Tropiques (“A World on the Wane”; 1955)
Anthropologie structurale (“Structural Anthropology”; 1958)
Le Totemisme aujourdhui (“Totemism”, 1962)
La Pensee sauvage (“The Savage Mind”; 1962)
Mythologiques I-IV (1964-1971)

16. Thank You
pn.jeevanart@gmail.com