CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS

by Edmund Leach ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1970

You should not always believe what is said!"" Leach expostulates at one point; he thinks Levi-Strauss, the French doyen of ""structuralist"" social anthropology, overindulges in armchair theorizing. But, given his fundamental reservations, Leach (an eminent Cambridge anthropologist) goes easy and concentrates on conveying what is said. Levi-Strauss, he explains, has tried to uncover universally-shared modes of human thought behind manifold cultural surfaces. Leach places this effort in the Frazer tradition (himself an adherent of a contrasting Malinowski tradition). Levi-Strauss's conviction that these universals are found at the level of structure (not manifest content) is made intelligible as Leach succinctly unwinds its application to the phenomena of cooking, totemism, and myth. He presents Levi-Strauss's concepts of symbolic communication and indicates their derivation from linguistic theory, making the ""grand conception"" of multidimensional cultural ""messages"" clear and exciting. Suggesting that Levi-Strauss has become increasingly dogmatic, Leach takes particular issue with his work on kinship, denying it stature, exposing its over-generality, and remarking that it confounds sex with marriage. The book is urbanely informal but, like its subject, demanding. A few terms like eidos and ""semantic algebra"" are insufficiently elaborated, and Leach makes little headway with Levi-Strauss's notions about history. Unlike Octavio Paz's Levi-Strauss (p. 730) however, it's a genuine introductory exposition, and a very good one: it should be much in demand.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1970

ISBN: 0226469689

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION