A sad day for Anthropology: Levi-Strauss Passes at 100

last updated: 17 Nov 2009- 13:30

“Nec minus ergo ante haec quam tu cecidere, cadentque”

Claude Lévi-Strauss

We are way beyond Levi-Strauss’ structuralism but who can deny the role he played and nostalgia of the discipline that he was the one that went beyond the disciplinary boundaries and actually shaped all social sciences. Prof. Levi-Strauss seems to be the last anthropologist that occupied the very center of global intellectual production for a long time. Now that anthropology misses its golden years, the passing of Levi-Strauss becomes even a sadder case…

Claude Lévi-Strauss: à la prochaine fois

Almost one year ago we celebrated the remarkable 100th birthday of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Today we learn that his body has died. In the meantime, we continue to work with what he has left us, as can be seen in the latest posts on this blog concerning his vision of a future anthropology, as seen back from the 1960s. One of the statements he produced at the time continues to be one of the leading mottos behind this project. I look forward to continue grappling with his work. No goodbyes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, rather à la prochaine fois.

Remembering Claude Lévi-Strauss

The Internet is now full of the news that Lévi-Strauss has passed away, including an obituary at the New York Times and a collection of links at the AAA blog. Our blog?whose name is inspired by Lévi-Strauss?has discussed him in the past including some thoughts about his legacy on his 100th birthday. Many people have already shared their memories of him but what are we who never met him supposed to remember of his legacy? Perhaps it is time to be overly schematic and pare down the paeans to something more manageable for those who may be reading the news but find much of the veneration impenetrable. What, specifically, has Lévi-Strauss taught us? These are, to me, the things to take away from Lévi-Strauss?s writings:

Interpreter of myth…the French social anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and …
Brisbane Times
Claude Levi-Strauss, the social anthropologist, was one of the dominating postwar influences in French intellectual life and the leading exponent of …

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss remembered
CNN International
(CNN) — Anyone who has taken an anthropology course has probably heard of Claude Levi-Strauss, who died recently at age 100

My Teacher, Claude Lévi-Strauss

from American Anthropological Association by Brian

Richard Price

Richard Price has kindly provided us with a brief account of the impact that Levi-Strauss had upon his life and growth as an anthropologist. Price is currently the Duane A. and Virginia S. Dittman Professor of Anthropology, American Studies, and History at the College of William & Mary:

Claude Lévi-Strauss en images

Au revoir Lévi-Strauss

Additional coverage of Lévi-Strauss

Claude’s Gone
Forbes
Within anthropology itself, there was the high-calorie, low-protein diet of deconstruction, now in hindsight as inexplicable as hoola-hoop contests.

Lévi-Strauss, New Yorker
City Journal
His influence has been felt all over the world in the study of culture and anthropology. So many obituaries have been published by now that we don’t need

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Two-Part Harmonies
New York Times
Millions of words have been written trying to explain or apply the theories of the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss since the

[a very substantive piece:]

Thinking through Claude Lévi-Strauss

from Neuroanthropology by gregdowney

Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1908-2009

Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the true giants of anthropology, passed away this past week on 30 October, just shy of 101 years old.

Claude Levi-Strauss

from An Eye on the Culture Wars by Dr. K

I told my students at the beginning of this semester that they should email Claude Levi-Strauss. My suggestion was that they tell him that his theories on mythology were still among the most relevant we could use as we were studying American mainstream movies as a form of mythology.

Psychoanalytic metaphors and mythical medical realities in Claude Lévi-Strauss?s contribution to medical anthropology

from Somatosphere by Kalman Applbaum

There are few subject areas in anthropology untouched by the seminal thought of the late Professor Claude Lévi-Strauss. Though he published only two or three essays concerned expressly with medical subject matter, his theorization in those places of the role of myth and shamanistic authority in symbolic/magical healing opened up questions with lasting significance. I would like to briefly review his ideas with the aim of proposing an alternative reading of them, particularly as they may be applied to contemporary debates in psychiatric anthropology.

Anthropologist Levi-Strauss dies
BBC News
One of the most influential French intellectuals of the 20th Century, he founded the structuralist school of anthropology in the 1950s

One Hundred Years of Fortitude
Harvard Crimson
Describing his first brush with Anglo-American anthropology after a cloistered education at the Sorbonne, Lévi-Strauss wrote that: ?My mind escaped from the

Claude Lévi-Strauss: ‘Neolithic’ & A Man of Science
The Moderate Voice
Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died on October 30th (aged 100), made the study of anthropology as fashionable as philosophy and poetry.

A true savant, full of equipoise
Economic Times
Claude Lévi-Strauss, the influential French anthropologist who died recently at 100, bemoaned passing of the traditional world. ?We live in a world where I

Astonishing Anthropologist
Times of India
More than a week after his death in Paris at the age of 100, Claude Levi-Strauss, the internationally-acclaimed anthropologist, continues to receive wide

Columbia anthro dept. remembers Claude Lévi-Strauss
CU Columbia Spectator
As a graduate student of anthropology at Columbia in the 1970s, Scott Atran was responsible for organizing a meeting of the minds at the

Lévi-Strauss, the total anthropologist Boston Globe Likewise, ?Claude Lévi-Strauss has invented the profession of the anthropologist as a total occupation, one involving a spiritual commitment like that of