[size=18pt]Obituary: Claude Levi-Strauss[/size]


Levi-Strauss is regarded as a giant of 20th Century social sciences
[/b]Claude Levi-Strauss, who died a few weeks short of his 101st birthday, was widely regarded as a founder of modern anthropology and one of France's foremost thinkers.
He introduced structuralism to anthropology, [b]an approach that seeks to identify common patterns of behaviour and thought in all human societies.

The latter led to a series of works entitled Mythologies, in which Levi-Strauss found common threads underlying seemingly arbitrary myths across cultures.
By then Levi-Strauss was a worldwide celebrity and taught in the prestigious College de France.
He would later become a member of the Academie Francaise, the ultimate accolade for a French intellectual.

Although not best-known for his sense of humour, Levi-Strauss did remark on the US garment company of the same name.
"That unfortunate homonymy has never ceased to haunt me - like a ghost" he once wrote. "Not a year goes by without my receiving an order for jeans - usually from Africa."

Paying tribute to Levi-Strauss, French President Nicolas Sarkozy described him as a "very great scholar, always open to the world, who created modern anthropology".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8341489.stm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Lévi-Strauss

Claude Lévi-Strauss (French pronunciation: [klod levi stʁos]; (Brussels, 28 November 1908 – Paris, 30 October 2009) [1][2][3][4] was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, known as the "father of modern anthropology".[5] He was also one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought where his ideas reached into fields including the humanities and philosophy, although he rejected the title of "father" of structuralism. Structuralism has been defined as "the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity."[2]

Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of UNESCO's cultural section, stated that his theories "changed the way people perceived each other, striking down such divisive concepts as race and opening the way for a new vision based on recognition of the common bond of humanity."

Similarly, Lévi-Strauss identified myths as a type of speech through which a language could be discovered. This theory attempted to explain how seemingly fantastical and arbitrary tales could be so similar across cultures. Because he believed there was not one “authentic” version of a myth, rather that they were all manifestations of the same language, he sought to find the fundamental units of myth, namely, the mytheme. Lévi-Strauss broke each of the versions of a myth down into a series of sentences, consisting of a relation between a function and a subject. Sentences with the same function were given the same number and bundled together. These are mythemes.[13]

[size=18pt]The structuralist approach to myth[/size]

Lévi-Strauss sees a basic paradox in the study of myth. On one hand, mythical stories are fantastic and unpredictable: thus, the content of myth seems completely arbitrary. On the other hand, myths from different cultures are surprisingly similar:
On the one hand it would seem that in the course of a myth anything is likely to happen. […] But on the other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding similarity between myths collected in widely different regions. Therefore the problem: If the content of myth is contingent [i.e., arbitrary], how are we to explain the fact that myths throughout the world are so similar?[14]

Lévi-Strauss proposed that universal laws must govern mythical thought and resolve this seeming paradox, producing similar myths in different cultures. Each myth may seem unique, but he proposed it is actually just one particular instance of a universal law of human thought. In studying myth, Lévi-Strauss tries "to reduce apparently arbitrary data to some kind of order, and to attain a level at which a kind of necessity becomes apparent, underlying the illusions of liberty".[15]

According to Lévi-Strauss, "mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution".[16]
In other words, myths consist of
elements that oppose or contradict each other and
other elements that "mediate", or resolve, those oppositions.
For example, Lévi-Strauss thinks the trickster of many Native American mythologies acts as a "mediator".
Lévi-Strauss's argument hinges on two facts about the Native American trickster:
the trickster has a contradictory and unpredictable personality;
the trickster is almost always a raven or a coyote.
Lévi-Strauss argues that the raven and coyote "mediate" the opposition between life and death. The relationship between agriculture and hunting is analogous to the opposition between life and death: agriculture is solely concerned with producing life (at least up until harvest time); hunting is concerned with producing death. Furthermore, the relationship between herbivores and beasts of prey is analogous to the relationship between agriculture and hunting: like agriculture, herbivores are concerned with plants; like hunting, beasts of prey are concerned with catching meat. Lévi-Strauss points out that the raven and coyote eat carrion and are therefore halfway between herbivores and beasts of prey: like beasts of prey, they eat meat; like herbivores, they don't catch their food. Thus, he argues, "we have a mediating structure of the following type":[16]




By uniting herbivore traits with traits of beasts of prey, the raven and coyote somewhat reconcile herbivores and beasts of prey: in other words, they mediate the opposition between herbivores and beasts of prey. As we have seen, this opposition is ultimately analogous to the opposition between life and death. Therefore, the raven and coyote ultimately mediate the opposition between life and death. This, Lévi-Strauss believes, explains why the coyote and raven have a contradictory personality when they appear as the mythical trickster:
The trickster is a mediator. Since his mediating function occupies a position halfway between two polar terms, he must retain something of that duality—namely an ambiguous and equivocal character.[17]
Because the raven and coyote reconcile profoundly opposed concepts (i.e., life and death), their own mythical personalities must reflect this duality or contradiction: in other words, they must have a contradictory, "tricky" personality.
This theory about the structure of myth helps support Lévi-Strauss's more basic theory about human thought. According to this more basic theory, universal laws govern all areas of human thought:
If it were possible to prove in this instance, too, that the apparent arbitrariness of the mind, its supposedly spontaneous flow of inspiration, and its seemingly uncontrolled inventiveness [are ruled by] laws operating at a deeper level […] if the human mind appears determined even in the realm of mythology, a fortiori it must also be determined in all its spheres of activity.[15]
Out of all the products of culture, myths seem the most fantastic and unpredictable. Therefore, Lévi-Strauss claims, if even mythical thought obeys universal laws, then all human thought must obey universal laws.

That trickster things really irks a lot of traditional people.  I think generally anthropologists are beginning to annoy them.  I remember talking to a babalawo once and we were talking about Esu.  He said," Esu is Esu, Not Satan, Not Trickster, Esu is Esu".  In other words he was saying that the only way to understand Esu is within the context of Yoruba Thought in which he has arisen and not be casting him in the light of other cultures or thought systems. 

However I think that today, on the day of his death, it is worth our while to read up on this Great, though flawed, Intellect of our modern age.  His work will help many of those trying to come to terms with religion to better understand what they are up against.

That trickster things really irks a lot of traditional people. I think generally anthropologists are beginning to annoy them. I remember talking to a babalawo once and we were talking about Esu. He said," Esu is Esu, Not Satan, Not Trickster, Esu is Esu". In other words he was saying that the only way to understand Esu is within the context of Yoruba Thought in which he has arisen and not be casting him in the light of other cultures or thought systems.

However I think that today, on the day of his death, it is worth our while to read up on this Great, though flawed, Intellect of our modern age. His work will help many of those trying to come to terms with religion to better understand what they are up against.

Very enlightening , I can't agree less . Same goes with ekwensu in the igbo tradition; always taken out of the context of its domain. But yet, one should not underestimate the importance of analogy, without which one cannot see the whole picture. Objects might not share equality but they may be equivalent.

"Not a year goes by without my receiving an order for jeans - usually from Africa."

funny

most people insisting esu is not satan are either ignorant of what esu entails, or are babalawos as mentioned.

.

Ta ta. . . another thread WAY beyond Davidylan's comprehension. . .

man he makes reliable jeans