Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Father of Structuralism, Dies at 100

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French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who wrote several seminal works during his six-decade career and is responsible for those seemingly inscrutable structuralist texts you may have grappled with in college, died last weekend at 100. —KA

AP via Google News:

The French intellectual was regarded as having reshaped the field of anthropology, introducing structuralism — concepts about common patterns of behavior and thought, especially myths, in a wide range of human societies. Defined as the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity, structuralism compared the formal relationships among elements in any given system.

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By exitbird, December 24, 2009 at 7:23 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I am a big fan of him.

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By Virginia777, November 10, 2009 at 4:35 pm Link to this comment

I’m not mystified at all by the great Levi-Strauss (and he was 101, not 100, when he died).

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By gerald spezio, November 10, 2009 at 12:09 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

The preposterous French fog known as structuralism is deep brain damage.
Although it leads to the complete mystification of its poseuring adherents, structuralists pompously act as though they actually know something.
The illusion of knowledge is worse than ignorance.

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By G.Anderson, November 8, 2009 at 3:16 pm Link to this comment

As an undergraduate, I was one of those who grappled, with Levi-Strauss works, along with Marvin Harris, and Leslie White to name a few. On my way to a degree in Anthropology. Levi-Strauss works were good to think about.

This was back when people still had brains, and could think. Though even then, mindlessness was creeping in. Before everthing had the potential to become a reality show or a computer game.

Structualism, for those who still remember: Me:Other, Life:Death, Culture:Nature.

Goodbye, we will not be likely to see your kind again.

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By radson, November 5, 2009 at 2:12 pm Link to this comment

Howie: Your mistaking to different persons with similar names Claude Levi Strauss,which the article is about and Levi strauss and Company the jeans maker.

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By Howie Bledsoe, November 5, 2009 at 5:18 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

He also made some pretty kick-ass jeans.

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