Claude Lévi-Strauss

In this wide-ranging work, the master of structural anthropology considers the many variations in a story that occurs in both North and South America, but especially among the Salish-speaking peoples of the Northwest Coast. He also shows how centuries of contract with Europeans have altered the tales. Levi-Strauss focuses on the opposition between Wild Cat and Coyote to explore the meaning and uses of gemellarity, or twinness, in Native American culture. The concept of dual organization that these tales exemplify is one of non-equivalence: everything has an opposite or other, with which it coexists in unstable tension. In contrast, Levi-Strauss argues, European notions of twinness - as in the myth of Castor and Pollux - stress the essential sameness of the twins. This fundamental cultural difference lay behind the fatal clash of European and Native American peoples. The Story of Lynx addresses and clarifies all the major issues that have occupied Levi-Strauss for decades, and is the only one of his books in which he explicitly connects history and structuralism. The result is a work that will appeal to those interested in American Indian mythology. It will be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the thought of one of the most important and influential minds of the twentieth century.

Over the course of a monumental career, Claude Levi-Strauss has interwoven artistic materials and themes into his seminal analyses of the "savage mind." In this work, the world's most famous anthropologist turns his attention entirely to the domain of aesthetics. In a series of brilliant but meticulous studies, the author ranges widely across the domains of painting, music, literature, and the plastic arts, his fertile mind opening more general, philosophical perspective. Look, Listen, Read is a truly original work, far removed from the intellectual fads that mark contemporary discussions on aesthetics, as Levi-Strauss advances into new territory even as he remains faithful to his structuralist inspiration. The book weaves a dense tissue of connections, correspondences, and principles, while at the same time remaining sensitive to the specificities of each of the beaux-arts. In a valedictory statement capping a lifetime's work, Levi-Strauss has made a major new contribution to our understanding of the place of art in human life, the nature of its appeal, the source of its creativity, and its universality.

Synthèse de réflexions éparpillées qui analyse les mythes qui s'organisent autour de la notion d'une impossible gémellité et les compare ensuite avec les contes populaires franco-canadiens que les Indiens ont incorporés à leurs traditions. Ces réflexions amènent à méditer sur la rencontre des deux mondes et à remonter aux sources philosophiques et éthiques du dualisme amérindien.

En esta obra, Claude Lévi-Strauss expone y lleva a la práctica el método estructural a cuyo desarrollo va íntimamente unido su nombre. Al abordar los grandes problemas de la antropología social -de las reglas del parentesco y del matrimonio a la prohibición del incesto y la exogamia, pasando por los ritos y prácticas de la magia-, el texto analiza los problemas metodológicos que plantea el estructuralismo, y define e ilustra la ambición del autor respecto a plantear un verdadero análisis científico de los fenómenos humanos sin traicionarlos, es decir, sin hacerles perder nada de su riqueza ni de los sutiles matices derivados de su diversidad. De ahí que, junto a aspectos de la realidad social -tan complejos que el observador debe contentarse con describirlos-, haya otros que el análisis estructural logra alcanzar y cuya regularidad pone de manifiesto. De este modo, la etnografía -ayudada por la historia, la lingüística, la sociología, la psicología y el psicoanálisis-contribuye a introducir métodos rigurosos al amparo de los cuales quizás un día las ciencias humanas logren la categoría de ciencias de pleno derecho.

An examination of the beliefs encompassed by totemism.

Lévi-Strauss is not only one of the extremely few scholars of sufficient distinction to be able to say, without presumption, what social anthropology is about; but he has also actually demonstrated...that he is pre-eminently worth listening to. He does not simply practice social anthropology, he makes exciting and original contributions to it. This book provides an introduction to his distinctive approach to anthropology as the study of a science of general principles. The now renowned "structural method," which has changed the face of social anthropology, views man and society in terms of universals--kinship, social organization, religion and mythology, and art.

The author demonstrates how each culture has its own system of the concepts and categories derived from experience and imposed by the surrounding natural world. Through the order in the naming of plants and animals, concepts of space and time, myths and rituals, primitive societies engage in a high level of abstract reasoning different from but not necessarily inferior to that involved in cultivated "systematic thought."