Anthropologie structurale 2

by Claude Lévi-Strauss

Publié quinze ans après
Anthropologie structurale et fidèle à la même formule, ce livre rassemble des textes antérieurs ou postérieurs devenus presque tous inaccessibles; certains d'ailleurs, jusqu'alors inédits en français.

Comme dans le volume précédent, ces textes ont été choisis et distribués de telle sorte qu'un lecteur peu familier avec les problèmes de l'ethnologie contemporaine puisse en prendre une vue cavalière et connaître, par quelques échantillons représentatifs groupés dans un seul livre, la façon dont l'anthropologie structurale les aborde et croit pouvoir les résoudre.

Une première partie, consacrée au passé et à l'avenir de la discipline, délimite le champ de l'anthropologie et met les questions qu'elle se pose en perspective.

Dans une seconde partie, on montre sur des exemples comment surmonter certaines difficultés théoriques et pratiques concernant l'organisation sociale et les attitudes liées aux systèmes de parenté.

Une troisième partie, plus développée puisqu'il s'agit d'un domaine auquel l'auteur s'est particulèrement appliqué depuis une vingtaine d'années, traite de la mythologie et du rituel. Au point de vue théorique, on s'efforce de distinguer formalisme et structuralisme; mais on démontre aussi pour des cas concrets, comment les variantes d'un même mythe, ou des mythe en apparence différents les uns des autres, peuvent se ramener à autant d'états d'un même groupe de transformation, ainsi que les rites qui leur correspondent dans une ou plusieurs populations. Enfin, on illustre la façon dont un mythe peut dégénérer en tradition légendaire, en récit romanesque ou en idéologie politique.

La quatrième partie passe rapidement en revue des problèmes variés qui se posent à nos sociétés contemporaines: littérature, beaux-arts, vie urbaine. Elle s'attarde sur l'organisation de la recherche et de l'enseignement dans les sciences sociales ou humaines, et sur certains obstacles trop souvent méconnus à la politique dite de développement. Elle s'achève par le texte le plus ancien de ce recueil, paru en 1952 et plusieurs fois republié depuis, mais dont on trouvera ici une version revue et corrigée. Dans une perspective très large, propre à lui faire jouer le rôle de conclusion, ce texte discute les rapports entre race et histoire, d'une part, et d'autre part, la question de la nature et de la signification du progrès.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Social Science, Philosophy, Sociology

450 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist, well-known for his development of structural anthropology. He was born in Belgium to French parents who were living in Brussels at the time, but he grew up in Paris. His father was an artist, and a member of an intellectual French Jewish family. Lévi-Strauss studied at the University of Paris. From 1935-9 he was Professor at the University of Sao Paulo making several expeditions to central Brazil. Between 1942-1945 he was Professor at the New School for Social Research. In 1950 he became Director of Studies at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes. In 1959 Lévi-Strauss assumed the Chair of Social Anthroplogy at the College de France. His books include The Raw and the Cooked, The Savage Mind, Structural Anthropology and Totemism (Encyclopedia of World Biography).

Some of the reasons for his popularity are in his rejection of history and humanism, in his refusal to see Western civilization as privileged and unique, in his emphasis on form over content and in his insistence that the savage mind is equal to the civilized mind.

Lévi-Strauss did many things in his life including studying Law and Philosophy. He also did considerable reading among literary masterpieces, and was deeply immersed in classical and contemporary music.

Lévi-Strauss was awarded the Wenner-Gren Foundation's Viking Fund Medal for 1966 and the Erasmus Prize in 1975. He was also awarded four honorary degrees from Oxford, Yale, Havard and Columbia. Strauss held several memberships in institutions including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society (Encyclopedia of World Biography).

Reviews

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second volume of essays published under the title Structural Anthropology, fifteen years after the first volume (which I read last year) this includes some articles as old as the first volume as well as articles published in the interval between the two. It is divided into four parts. Part I, "Perspective Views", contains five articles on the history of anthropology as a discipline, ranging from Rousseau and Durkheim to the Bureau of American Ethnology. Part II, "Social Organization", contains two rather technical articles on method; these were difficult because they were largely responses to criticisms which I haven't read. Part III, "Mythology and Ritual", contains seven articles, one on the work of Vladimir Propp on folklore, and the rest analyzing various myths and rituals, which built on the arguments in the four volumes of Mythologiques. Part IV, "Humanism and the Humanities", contains four general articles on the nature and aims of anthropology and general considerations on culture and civilization; the last two were particularly interesting. I may not agree with Lévi-Strauss on many points but he always has valuable insights.

[Gabriel Leibold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muito além de concordâncias integrais com a metodologia estruturalista de pesquisa, essa coletânea celebra a consistência de Lévi-Strauss naquilo que talvez seja seu maior legado - a afirmação recorrente de que a maior riqueza de conversar e conhecer diferentes culturas mundo afora não consiste em descobrir no subtexto da etnografia um elemento de humanidade comum a todos nós, mas antes diz respeito a dar o devido valor ao fato de que, sem a necessidade de impor hierarquias ao nosso encontro com o outro, somos valorosamente diferentes em cada uma das inúmeras culturas produzidas diariamente ao redor do globo.

[Harry Williams]

Probably one of the most mystifying writers ever. Even with a good background in Jacobsonian linguistics, Psychoanalysis and 20th century anthropology you may struggle. This volume has the advantage of including some lighter essays, book reviews and speeches that break up the almost impossibly dense and yet nonetheless dated and conjecture prone works on the scope of anthropology and the social sciences more generally.