Claude Lévi-Strauss Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Last year, at this conference, I discussed how distinctions between nature and culture, and humans and animals, can arise from the technical processes of food production (see "Food as an object of cultural technical study "). Drawing on the work of cultural techniques (e.g. Siegert 2015; Vismann 2013) and Levi-Strauss' The Raw and the Cooked (1970), I argued that the relationship between humans and food is primary to how the human understands itself and forms part of the ground of human ontological systems. I'd like to take this argument further today, to a system-level perspective of food production and beyond, to a posthuman future where food no longer resembles what we know it as today, and because of this, where the human as such arguably ceases to exist, as the ground upon which it has defined self and species is transcended. I'm responding both to fictional future food visions and aspirations towards technical solutions to our current food-related crises.

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- Future Studies, Anthropology, Media Studies, Cyborg Theory
- by Frithjof Nungesser and +1
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- Social and Cultural Anthropology, History of Social Sciences, Sociological Theory, Structuralism/Post-Structuralism

In Interpreting Ancient Egyptian Narratives, Martin Pehal applies structural analysis to four New Kingdom narrative compositions. The study explains the strong configurational character of ancient Egyptian (mythological) thought which has the ability to connect various ontological levels of human experience with the surrounding world into complex synchronic structures. These symbolical systems are shown to be mediating between the various cultural paradoxes which were inherent to ancient Egyptian society. Axial role in this process is attributed to the institution of positional kingship represented by the Pharaoh. Its transformative function is also put into relation to the special status of female characters who are shown to play the part of the “powerful powerless ones” further personifying the aspects of the mediating function of myth. Gradually, the study outlines a genuinely Egyptian “structural net” of basic mythemes and explains in what way it was possible for such a system to change and incorporate foreign mythological motifs especially from the Near East.

- by Martin Pehal
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- Religion, Ancient Egyptian Religion, Egyptology, Mythology
- by Anne Collinot
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- History of Science, History of Anthropology, Biography, Claude Lévi-Strauss

This essay analyzes the origin of sexuality and its relationship with the institution. The issue is addressed from the perspective of psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan), anthropology (Claude Lévi-Strauss) and philosophy (Foucault, Butler, Zupančič, Žižek). From the analysis of sexual difference as “real/impossible” a perspective comes to light: sex it is not a symbolic construct and not even an extra-symbolic reference, but what marks the irreducible (contradiction) limit of the symbolic order.

- by Enrico Redaelli
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- Anthropology, Philosophy, Sex and Gender, Sexuality

To look at the characters from the TV show Adventure Time as representing the archetype of the female hero. The characters Betty Grof and Marceline Abadeer are used as primary example to testify their mythological undertones using the... more

- by Shantanu Tilak
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- Psychoanalysis, Mythology, Media Studies, Material Culture Studies

L'essai « Des cannibales » prédomine depuis 40 ans la transmission des Essais. Le post colonialisme et le tournant éthique, alliés au consumérisme romantique de l'exotique y miroitent à merveille. Reste que Montaigne retrouve au Brésil l'idéal vaillant classique et non une hétéronomie quelconque. Politiquement l'essai est subversif et plein d'humour, mais il s'achève en postulant un abîme entre Amérindiens et Européens. Pour examiner son fonctionnement variable dans notre culture, nous revenons à l'anthropologie 'auto-iste' de Rousseau et son relais spirituel chez Lévi-Strauss. Nous proposons ensuite que, contrairement à Rousseau et Lévi-Strauss, Diderot, penseur de l'immanent et qui fut matérialiste, dialogique, et comique, présente au coeur du Supplément une analyse écologique précise, politiquement sophistiquée et exempte de fantasme ontologique. Au bout du compte, nous suggérons que Diderot fut le plus proche de Montaigne, et que tous deux proposent, en écho, un modèle pour une ethnographie matérialiste conséquente.

Este ensaio busca discutir o conceito de raça difundido pelo discurso da democracia racial brasileiro e o seu contra-discurso difundido pelos movimentos negros no Brasil que buscam em seu enfrentamento diário lutar por políticas de reparação racial no país. É uma espécie de manifesto político que toma Macunaíma, obra prima do Modernismo brasileiro, como símbolo de um contrapoder ou contra discurso daquilo que nós afro-latinos americanos não queremos ser ou do corpo que nos foi imposto e que não queremos ter, o corpo da servidão.

This paper is an exploration of how language perpetuates culture through the act of mythmaking in the character Kwan from Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses. I view the ghosts within this text as distancing mechanisms, becoming conduits for trauma, in order for fears and desires to be discussed. The ghosts in this novel are members of the uncanny, allowing enough distance from reality for secrets to be revealed. Lies transform into truth, myths into facts, through Kwan and her yin eyes. The yin world is examined in this paper as an object of the imaginary, created as an explanation for moments of the sublime. By viewing the ghosts through this lense, and by recognizing the fear and desires the ghosts reveal, one can come to a better understanding of Tan’s representation of rural Chinese and urban American cultures. Little exists in terms of scholarship on The Hundred Secret Senses, despite the worth this text holds. By adopting an anthropological approach one can understand the value in her representations of language and culture.

Un revenant c'est, anthropologiquement, un disparu qui revient pour réclamer son dû. C’est, en ce sens, le symptôme d’un malaise que la communauté ne peut plus retenir ni contenir : celle-ci est sommée, par l’apparition, d’intégrer symboliquement, suivant un ensemble réglé de rituels et un effort collectif de remémoration, ses réquisits. Or si la cohésion sociale risque sans cesse d’être entamée par ces fantômes inquiétants et impérieux qui travaillent souterrainement les fondements de la société, c’est peut-être parce qu’ils sont eux-mêmes le signe d’une corrosion déjà entamée. La revenance perturbe notre rapport au temps, ce rapport que l’historicisme voudrait identique au « cadre homogène et vide » de l’histoire sans mémoire. C’est une présence souterraine toujours agissante qui oblige les vivants à restituer la part des morts mais aussi à tenir les promesses dont ceux-ci ont été frustrés.

- by Marc Berdet and +1
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- Georges Didi-Huberman, Ghosts, Cultural History Of Ghosts, Waste recycling

Апстракт: Истраживањем пракси и дискурса, који окружују производњу, потрошњу, припрему, послуживање и конзумацију хране настојаћемо да разоткријемо односе моћи и начине на које се концептуализовао род у руралној Шумадији у 19. и почетком 20. века. Бинарне опозиције између природе и културе, отвореног и затвореног, те мушког и женског као историјски и културно конструисане додатно ће расветлити институционализацију и структуру мушке превласти. Док производне и потрошачке праксе показују међузависност родова уз симболично преимућство мушкараца у отвореним и јавним просторима (надмоћ над Природом и у друштвеном домену), припрема, послуживање и конзумација хране као културни процеси везани за кућну сферу подразумевали су поредак у којем је владало апсолутно првенство мушкараца у односу на жене. Ипак, жене су суверено владале простором „млекара“ омогућујући деци привилегован приступ млечним производима. Историјска анализа неочекивано је показала да је кување као знаковита женска радња могло привремено да падне на мушка плећа не доводећи у питање институционалне основе мушке владавине.

- by Danijela Velimirovic
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- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Food Studies, Food & Culture, Traditional Food
- by Léa Silveira
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- Philosophy, Jean Piaget, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida
- by Huon Wardle
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- Jamaica, Jamaica (Anthropology), Claude Lévi-Strauss, Money

Lévi-Strauss's work appears to exhibit a paradoxical, trademark contrast: on the one hand, a positive and reasonably confident approach to the restricted domain of anthropological research, particularly in his constant defence of the Structuralist method; on the other, a more pessimistic, gloomy, almost nihilistic approach in the existential domain and in his general worldview. By focusing on certain biographical events and recasting some of his writings, this paper aims to shed new light on the renowned French anthropologist's expectations and dejections, trying to show how this lifelong tension can be coherently articulated with Lévi-Strauss thinking and work.

Althusser builds on Marx's principle of revolution by explaining the functioning of the state and ideology. Contradictions in the society are when the class struggles are possible. When there is a contradiction between the owners of means of production and the relations of production, the owners of the previous means of production will do everything possible to keep the relations of production same in order to have the power to influence other classes in the society. This is why Althusser says that there is a need to constantly reproduce the relations of production. This contradiction can be seen in the events preceding the French Revolution where differences between the landowners and the industrialists surfaced which eventually led to a confrontation. Althusser distinguishes between the base and the superstructure of a capitalist mode of production. The base is the economic base which is also the infrastructure and the superstructure is a set of apparatuses used by the state to enforce their hegemony (In my opinion, he is describing Gramsci's hegemony in terms of how the state uses it). Althusser speaks of Ideology as a structure under which the various state apparatuses operate at the superstructure level. The state here has been equated to power in the sense that a certain class or a class alliance seizes the state power. The apparatuses could be further divided into two types: the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus. The repressive state apparatus are primarily violent mechanisms which operate in the public domain. Examples would include the army, the police etc. The ideological state apparatus contributes to influencing individuals by influencing ideas (at the very base) which ensure the reproduction of the ideology and is mostly in the private domain. For example, the education system, the family, the social media etc. In Althusser's opinion, education is the most influential of the ISAs. Saussure breaks down language to a series of signs which are determined by the sound image and the concept it is referring to. He uses the terms signifier and signified to refer to them respectively. The relation of the signifier to the signified is created by an associative bond in our brains. For instance, for the sound image " tree " the concept that it invokes (it could vary from the cherry blossom tree with pink leaves to a banyan tree with green leaves depending on the individual) shows the relation in between the signifier and the signified. Saussure then points highlights the arbitrariness which exists in the functioning of the sign. The meaning is not naturally fixed. This is because the signifier is different for each individual who performs the task of attaching meaning to objects. This indicates that the meaning of the object lies with the signifier (sound image) and the individual who attaches it to the signified (the concept). Two other concepts are brought into the picture; langue and parole. Langue refers to the underlying rules and the deeper organization of language. The langue helps an individual interpret the world. The underlying rules of a language tend be relatively fixed (by social forces) and it is usually out of the power of the individual to change this deeper structure of language. Parole on the other hand would be the acts performed and the statements made at an individual level. Parole is the manifestation of the pre-existing langue. The dominant agent of change according to Saussure would be the structure that is a result of the Adheip Rashada (12060321002) Critical Ideas of the 20 th Century Assignment

- by Etienne Helmer
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- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roger Caillois, Universalism, Particularism v.s Universalism

Die Sache der Reziprozität findet sich in alltäglichen Phänomenen wie dem des Grüßens und des Sich-Verabschiedens, des Dankens und des Schenkens. Um sie auf den Begriff zu bringen, wird ihr in diesem Lehrbuch zunächst exemplarisch nachgespürt, indem Protokolle der alltäglichen Phänomene mit der Objektiven Hermeneutik analysiert werden. So wird ein erster Begriff struktureller Reziprozität entwickelt. Mit diesem Begriff im Gepäck wird sodann eine Reise durch die Explikationen von Reziprozität durch M. Mauss, C. Lévi-Strauss und M. Hénaff unternommen. Sie entwickeln anhand ethnographischen Materials und philosophischer Reflexionen Begriffe von Gabe und generalisiertem Tausch. Diese Begrifflichkeit wird nach einer Re-Analyse des Materials und nach argumentativer Überprüfung der Reflexionen mit den zuvor gewonnenen Erkenntnissen konfrontiert. So wird ein empirisch gesättigter und theoretisch plausibler Begriff der strukturellen Reziprozität gewonnen. Im Verlauf der Darstellung wird immer wieder auf leicht zugängliche Phänomene hingewiesen, die den Lesern des Lehrbuchs Forschungsmöglichkeiten zur Prüfung und Anreicherung der Argumentation bieten.

- by Thomas Loer
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- Gift Exchange, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Reciprocity
- by Maitrayee Misra
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- Mythology And Folklore, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Amitav Ghosh

Claude Lévi-Strauss apostó, a lo largo de su obra, por la unidad de la especie humana, lo cual conlleva preguntas éticas sobre la diversidad cultural. El siguiente trabajo recoge algunas de las ideas más importantes del etnólogo respecto... more

- by Sofía Reding-Blase
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- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Humanismo, Ética, Antropología Social

In emblematic works of Brazilian literature, one finds significant traces of approaches to reality that gained prominence in anthropology as important alternatives to modern naturalism. One of these approaches is Amerindian perspectivism, the other we will here call "analogism", with reference to one of the central axes of Philippe Descola's quadripartite structural typology — a recent attempt to construct a synthesis in anthropology through a critical reassessment of Lévi-Strauss. We will start by presenting Descola's typology (with emphasis on the issue of analogism) and Amerindian Perspectivism, also included in it, so that we can proceed to analyze, with the help of these categories, Sousa Andrade's Guesa and Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma. Just by itself, Amerindian perspectivism is a prominent current in the ethnographic studies of the last decades, directly connected to the autochthonous cultures of Amazonia. The identification of a significant concurrence between perspectivism and analogism in Brazilian literature is an original investigative hypothesis proposed by us. Through this hypothesis we seek to highlight certain peculiarities of Brazilian literature against the broader horizon of Latin-American culture in its global context, thus also continuing an endeavor in cultural criticism originally pursued by the concretist poets, in particular Haroldo de Campos.

- by Silvia Nagy-Zekmi
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- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pueblo mapuche, Claude Levi Strauss
- by Federico Luisetti
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- Cultural History, Cultural Studies, History of Ideas, Genealogy

In this paper (published five years after I wrote it) I attempt to show that, through his reading of Proudhon in The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), Lévi-Strauss aimed at solving the well-known dilemma put forth by Hobbes and Rousseau: was there at the dawn of humanity human competition, or peaceful commonality? With this purpose, I analyse two key passages in chs. 3 and 21 of Lévi-Strauss’s doctoral dissertation which heretofore have not received due attention. Read side by side, these passages prove, first, that Lévi-Strauss was deeply familiar with Proudhon’s thought. Secondly, they show that Proudhon’s ideas influenced his own concepts considerably, to the point that their respective views can be said to intertwine. Lastly, they make patent that Proudhon’s influence on the founder of structural anthropology touches on the very fundamental problem to which the latter consecrated his life and career as an anthropologist. Additionally, I provide some insights into Lévi-Strauss’s early writings, his reading of Mauss, and the work of Pierre Clastres.

- by Carlos Segovia
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- Anthropology, Political Philosophy, Social Sciences, Political Theory

Book review for Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy

Claude Lévi-Strauss holds that history and anthropology difffer in their choice of complementary perspectives: history organizes its data in relation to conscious expressions of social life, while anthropology proceeds by examining its unconscious foundations. For R. G. Collingwood historical science discovers not only pure facts but considers a whole series of thoughts constituting historical life. Also Lévi-Strauss sees this: "To understand history it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they have come to be." However, Lévi-Strauss does not perceive the double-sense of history, which can fĳirst be a record of historical "conscious" facts and second, a chain of unconscious or half-conscious acts. Like Lévi-Strauss, Charles Bally has derived the main theses of his theory from Saussure. However, contrary to Lévi-Strauss, Bally does not fĳind structures at the inside of the phenomena but at their outside: "Our attention is drawn to the expressive side and not to the interior side of the facts of language." Bally calls those structures not "history" but "style." In Roland Barthes's attempt to establish a structuralist system of fashion we can fĳind a defĳinition of style very similar to Bally's. In the end, however, none of these thinkers addresses the fact that unconscious relations within historical life are constantly interlocked with conscious elements.

Os ateliers, seminários e encontros realizados com Claude Ledoux se inscreveram no âmbito de atividades acadêmicas desenvolvidas na Unicamp e na Usp na área de Análise Musical e compreenderam: Reflexão sobre a Análise Musical relacionada a tradições populares; Impacto do conhecimento de tradições populares no ato da composição musical; Claude Debussy e as tradições do Sudeste Asiático; Ligeti e a influência de músicas subsaarianas; Feldmann, tradições do Oriente-Médio e filosofias orientais; Scelsi, Murail e Harvey: interesse mutuo em músicas tibetanas, mongólicas e outros rituais budistas; Eötvös e Kurtag em relação às tradições da Europa Central; Claude Ledoux: influência das músicas da Índia do Norte e Indonésia; Relações com etnomusicologia e improvisação musical em extensão às reflexões analíticas; Levy Strauss e a Sinfonia de Berio; Relação entre música e texto em Berio e Kurt Schwitters.

- by José Augusto Mannis
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- Popular Music, Oral Tradition In Popular Music, Popular Culture, Edgar Morin

This chapter outlines the development of kinship studies in anthropology from their beginning to our days. It reviews classic debates on descent and marriage, the role of gender studies in rethinking kinship categories and the more recent contributions approaching the subject from the perspective of the body, aesthetics and new reproductive technologies. In doing so the chapter provides a critical approach to assess the fundamental and ongoing contribution of the kinship studies to the discipline of anthropology.

- by Paolo Fortis and +2
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- Aesthetics, Social Anthropology, Kinship (Anthropology), Social and Cultural Anthropology

Mann sostiene que el Estado es esencialmente una arena, de lo cual se originan sus mecanismos y poderes autónomos. Se opone a la reducción de vincularlo con grupos económicos, ideológicos o militaristas, ya que es ontológicamente distinto, dada su territorialidad, institucionalidad, centralización, y necesidad social de reglas monopolísticas referidas a la vida y propiedad. A diferencia de los actores de la sociedad civil, se encuentra limitado y centralizado territorialmente. Su poder se manifiesta de manera despótica, oscilante a través de la historia, e infraestructural, de penetración creciente a lo largo de los siglos, de cuya combinación surgen los Estados feudal, burocrático, imperial, y autoritario. Con respecto al poder infraestructural se da una dialéctica con la sociedad civil, ya que en base a ella se promueven o retrasan uno al otro. Sin embargo, los Estados y su territorialidad han moldeado a sus sociedades al punto de crear las sociedades estatales, antes inexistentes. Donde los Estados son fuertes, las sociedades están relativamente territorializadas y
centralizadas. De ahí el protagonismo de los Estados a la hora de analizar a la sociedad.

- by Tomás Estanislao Dardanelli
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- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michael Mann, Max Weber, Filosofía Política

https://www.cairn.info/revue-la-linguistique-2020-1-page-3.htm
This article explores the question of historicity in the anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss from the viewpoint of his relationship to the Jakobsonian functionalist epistemology of linguistics. Faced with the difficulties of contemporary anthropology in theorizing the structure/event couple (American diffusionism vs. English functionalism), Lévi-Strauss finds resources in linguistic functionalism to think about the articulation between synchrony and diachrony in symbolic structures (kinship, totemic systems, mythology). Nevertheless, the concept of the symbolic unconscious that Lévi- Strauss constructed on this basis implies a series of displacements of the functional framework which require further study.

- by Hugo Dumoulin
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- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Linguistique, Histoire, Structuralisme

Telif hakkı nedeniyle Youtube'tan kaldırılan videoların altyazıları

- by Murat Erşen
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- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Milan Kundera

The present study has a twofold purpose: Firstly, it is an analysis of the Karbalā´ Drama—i.e. the death of Ḥusayn b. `Alī in the hands of an army which had been sent out by the Umayyad authorities, at Karbalā´ in 60/680—as it is retold by the Muslim jurist and historiographer Abū Ja`far Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923). Despite its importance, especially to Shī`ite Islam, this text as such has received relatively little attention among scholars of Islam. In this study, the Karbalā´ Drama is regarded as a myth and the method used to analyze it is inspired by the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lévi-Straussian structuralism has probably never before been applied to early Arabic material to the extent that it is used here. The second purpose of the study, then, is to investigate to what extent and in what mode such a method is applicable to this material.
A portion of the text, called the “Text of Reference,” has been selected and thoroughly analyzed. In that analysis, a number of structural features such as codes, oppositions, mediations, and transformations has been identified and made the basis for a more cursory study of the rest of the story. An important structural feature that is detected in this way is the way the argument of the story is forwarded. By the transformation of metaphors into metonyms, the story attempts to make arbitrary relationships look natural and intrinsic. Such a relationship is that between water and blood—two liquids which are at times shed, at times withheld in the story. Husayn takes a mediating position in that he gives his water and his blood. He acts as mediator both in a negative sense (he establishes the basic Islamic opposition of good and evil), and in a positive sense (as religious guide he acts as a bridge between them).

- by Torsten Hylén
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- Shi'ism, Islam, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Early Islamic History
- by Bojan Baskar
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- Anthropology, Travel Writing, Ethnography, Social and Cultural Anthropology
- by Tolga Ulusoy
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- Anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss

Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Way of the Masks (La Voie des Masques) provides an accessible introduction to his structuralism, including the concepts of opposition and diacritical meaning. The essay seeks to show how diacritical meaning on the axis of structure can emerge out of dialogue on the axis of history. Lévi-Strauss is thus linked to Bakhtin and Bourdieu.

- by trevor pateman
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- Claude Lévi-Strauss