Assignment 4: Claude Levi-Strauss

Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist who was born on November 28, 1908 in Brussels, Belgium. He died in 2009 one month before his 101^st birthday, he lived for almost the entire 20^th century and has therefore seen numerous changes in the world and how people live. Shortly after high school Levi-Strauss became active in the socialist party and an avid fan of Marxist thought. He went on to study philosophy and law at the University of Paris and is know as the father of structural anthropology.  

Structural anthropology is defined as the theory that there are unobservable social structures that generate observable social phenomena. Levi-Strauss focused mythology and the idea that a myth is made up of all of its different versions, which have a common pattern. He claimed that myth was a language and developed a system to analyze myths. The principle of opposition, his most known principle, states “ mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution.”  Graber speaks of how Levi-Strauss’ theories analyze value but not his actual position on the idea of value. His works discussed the problem that arose when two different people or cultures tried to understand the value the other placed on certain ideas or items. Other areas he studied included the differences of “Hot and Cold Societies”. His interest in this subject could be a result of his socialist ideas and life during the two world wars.