Books by Claude Levi-Strauss

Frontmatter -- Préface De La Première Édition -- Préface De La Deuxième Édition -- Introduction -- Chapitre I. Nature Et Culture -- Chapitre II. Le Problème De L'inceste -- Première Partie. L'échange Restreint -- I. Les Fondements De L'échange -- Chapitre III. L'univers Des Règles -- Chapitre IV. Endogamie et exogamie -- Chapitre V. Le Principe De Réciprocité -- Chapitre VI. L'organisation Dualiste -- Chapitre VII. L'illusion Archaïque -- Chapitre VIII. L'alliance Et La Filiation -- Chapitre IX. Le Mariage Des Cousins -- Chapitre X. L'échange Matrimonial -- II. L'Australie -- Chapitre XI. Les Systèmes Classiques -- Chapitre XII. Le Système Murngin -- Chapitre XIII. Régimes Harmoniques Et Régimes Dysharmoniques -- Chapitre XIV. Appendice A La Première Partie -- Deuxième Partie. L'échange Généralisé -- I. Formule Simple De L'échange Généralisé -- Chapitre XV. Les Donneurs De Femmes -- Chapitre XVI. L'échange Et L'achat -- Chapitre XVII. Limites Externes De L'échange Généralisé -- Chapitre XVIII. Limites Internes De L'échange Généralisé -- II. Le Système Chinois -- Chapitre XIX. La Théorie De Granet -- Chapitre XX. L'Ordre Tchao Mou -- Chapitre XXI. Le Mariage Matrilatéral -- Chapitre XXII. Le Mariage Oblique -- Chapitre XXIII. Les Systèmes Périphériques -- III. L'Inde -- Chapitre XXIV. L'os Et La Chair -- Chapitre XXV. Clans Et Castes -- Chapitre XXVI. Les Structures Asymétriques -- Chapitre XXVII. Les Cycles De Réciprocité -- Conclusion -- Chapitre XXVIII. Passage Aux Structures Complexes -- Chapitre XXIX. Les Principes De La Parenté -- Index Alphabétique -- Tables Des Figures -- Table Des Matières

"e;Levi-Strauss continues his assault on the myth of the primitice as savage by turning to the phenomena of totemism an totoemix classification ... to show, contrary to this myth, that primitive thought rests upon a rich and complex conceptual structure."e; Commentary

Professor Levi-Strauss's first major work, Les Structures elementaires de la Parente, has acquired a classic reputation since its original publication in 1949; and it has become the constant focus of academic debate about central theoretical concerns in social anthropology. It is, however, a long and difficult book for many students to read in French, and its arguments have consequently become known, even among professional anthropologists, largely through critical analysis. It was republished in a revised French edition in 1967 with a new foreword by the author, and it is this text with his further emendations that has been used in this translation.Levi-Strauss applies his intellectual powers to the perennial problem of incest, which he elucidates by means of the concept of exchange as formulated by Marcel Mauss in his famous analysis of the gift (Essai sur le don, 1925). He distinguishes two elementary modes of exchange which govern not only the conventional variety of goods and services but also the transfer of women in marriage: these are ';restricted' and ';generalized' exchange. With a mass of ethnographic evidence he demonstrates how the formidable intricacy of marriage customs, comprising moral and jural ideas and institutions (which appear to be essentially arbitrary), can be seen as local and historical rules of exchange.Charles Levi-Strauss traces these rules throughout a vast range of simple societies, chiefly in Australia and mainland Southeast Asia but also in the Americas, in Oceania, and in other parts of the world. To this survey he adds two extended sections on the great civilizations of China and India. He continues with a briefer consideration of the passage from elementary to complex structures, with particular reference to African societies, and concludes with a stimulating chapter on the principles of kinship, exchange as the universal basis for marriage prohibitions, and the formal relations between the sexes as part of a universe of communication.Although much of the work is technical, consisting of detailed analyses of types of social organization with which social anthropologists will be most familiar, it also contains much that will be of interest to psychologists, linguists, and philosophers, and to all who are interested in the possibility and the technique of the structural analysis of human activity. After the successes, moreover, of Levi-Strauss's subsequent booksnotably Structural Anthropology, Tristes Tropiques, Totemism, and The Savage Mindthis new edition of the work which founded his present outstanding reputation will have additional value as a further means of contact with one of the original minds of this century.The translation has been made by James Harle Bell and John Richard von Sturmer, of the University of New England, Australia, and by Rodney Needham, of the University of Oxford. Dr. Needham also acted as general editor and supplied the work with a new general index. He is the translator of Levi-Strauss's Le Totemisme aujourd'hui and author of Structure and Sentiment (1962) and numerous papers which have contributed to the recognition of Professor Levi-Strauss's work in the English-speaking world.

On Christmas Eve 1951, Santa Claus was hanged and then publicly burned outside of the Cathedral of Dijon in France. That same decade, ethnologists began to study the indigenous cultures of central New Guinea, and found men and women affectionately consuming the flesh of the ones they loved. "e;Everyone calls what is not their own custom barbarism,"e; said Montaigne. In these essays, Claude Levi-Strauss shows us behavior that is bizarre, shocking, and even revolting to outsiders but consistent with a people's culture and context. These essays relate meat eating to cannibalism, female circumcision to medically assisted reproduction, and mythic thought to scientific thought. They explore practices of incest and patriarchy, nature worship versus man-made material obsessions, the perceived threat of art in various cultures, and the innovations and limitations of secular thought. Levi-Strauss measures the short distance between "e;complex"e; and "e;primitive"e; societies and finds a shared madness in the ways we enact myth, ritual, and custom. Yet he also locates a pure and persistent ethics that connects the center of Western civilization to far-flung societies and forces a reckoning with outmoded ideas of morality and reason.

This first English translation of lectures Claude Lévi-Strauss delivered in Tokyo in 1986 synthesizes his ideas about structural anthropology, critiques his earlier writings on civilization, and assesses the dilemmas of cultural and moral relativism, including economic inequality, religious fundamentalism, and genetic and reproductive engineering.

Tristes Tropiques begins with the line 'I hate travelling and explorers', yet during his life Claude Levi-Strauss travelled from wartime France to the Amazon basin and the dense upland jungles of Brazil, where he found 'human society reduced to its most basic expression'. His account of the people he encountered changed the field of anthropology, transforming Western notions of 'primitive' man. Tristes Tropiques is a major work of art as well as of scholarship. It is a memoir of exquisite beauty and a masterpiece of travel writing: funny, discursive, movingly detailing personal and cultural loss, and brilliantly connecting disparate fields of thought. Few books have had as powerful and broad an impact.

In addresses written for a wide general audience, one of the twentieth century's most prominent thinkers, Claude Levi-Strauss, here offers the insights of a lifetime on the crucial questions of human existence.

"Levi-Strauss continues his assault on the myth of the primitice as savage by turning to the phenomena of totemism an totoemix classification ... to show, contrary to this myth, that primitive thought rests upon a rich and complex conceptual structure." - Commentary