Sunday, April 17, 2011

Claude Levi Strauss

Levi Strauss was a French social anthropologist. He was born in Brussels, in 1908. He studied philosophy and law in Paris. In 1934, he traveled to Brazil where, with field’s studies, analyzed the aboriginal communities of Mato Grosso and the Amazon.  Levi Strauss worked as a professor in a lot of universities and was awarded with de Honor’s Legion. 

His principal thoughts are that the different cultures, theirs behaviors, language and legends show the existence of common patterns in the whole human’s life. Strauss was very famous in the anthropology’s world and his most interesting books and essays are “Race and History” (1952), “Sad tropics” (1995) and the mythological that cover: “The naked man”, among others. Levi Strauss died in France on February 30th, 2009.

The principal reason why I like Levi Strauss is because he did a lot of field’s studies about aboriginal communities in the Amazonian jungle that consolidated his identity as a professional of the anthropology. Apart from that, he is a very good writer, in “The sad tropics”, he used the language, the philosophy and the ethnographic analysis in an exquisite way. Finally, he contributed to the struggle’s program against the racism.

To finish, I would like remember a very good phrase of Strauss:  “A ordered right Humanism , don`t start for itself, on the contrary, it placed the world in front of life, the life in front of man, the respect for the other in front of own love.”

1 comment:

  1. You have given some convincing reasons to support your choice. I can see that he was certainly an important element in the field of anthropology.

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