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Yaban Düşünce
Toplum bilimlerini belki de temelinden sarsan, açtığı yeni ufuklar, getirdiği farklı boyutlarla "insan"ı bambaşka ve çok daha zengin bir düzlemde ele alan budunbilimin önde gelen isimlerinden Claude Lévi-Strauss, Yaban Düşünce ile yalnızca bir/birçok bilimin önünü açmakla kalmamış, yapısalcılık yaklaşımının uygulanım alanını da genişletmiştir.
Yazarın yöntem sorunlarını ve tarih yaklaşımını sergilerken, aynı zamanda "ilkel" olarak adlandırılan toplulukların düşünce sistemlerini de ele alan bu temel yapıt, "yaban düşünce"nin derinlerinde yatan anlamı ortaya çıkarmaktadır. "Akılcı", "insanmerkezci" Batı düşünce sistemi çerçevesinde unutulmaya yüz tutan ve şimdilerde yoğun bir biçimde diriltilmeye çalışılan insan-doğa-kültür ilişkisine yeni bir bakış getiren Yaban Düşünce, toplum bilimleri alanında güncelliğini yitirmeyen bir modern klasik olarak edindiği yeri hep aynı tazelikte korumaktadır.
Yazarın yöntem sorunlarını ve tarih yaklaşımını sergilerken, aynı zamanda "ilkel" olarak adlandırılan toplulukların düşünce sistemlerini de ele alan bu temel yapıt, "yaban düşünce"nin derinlerinde yatan anlamı ortaya çıkarmaktadır. "Akılcı", "insanmerkezci" Batı düşünce sistemi çerçevesinde unutulmaya yüz tutan ve şimdilerde yoğun bir biçimde diriltilmeye çalışılan insan-doğa-kültür ilişkisine yeni bir bakış getiren Yaban Düşünce, toplum bilimleri alanında güncelliğini yitirmeyen bir modern klasik olarak edindiği yeri hep aynı tazelikte korumaktadır.
346 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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About the author
Claude Lévi-Strauss
229 books862 followersClaude 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).
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).
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June 28, 2013
Okay, first of all, these French guys have a way of talking about everything-and-nothing at the same time. From Braudel to Saussure to Barthes to Foucault to Mouffe to Derrida to Lacan to Deleuze and Guattari (and yes, Sartre), they have insisted on describing the deep structures (mentalities, langue, semiotics, microphysics of power, overdetermination, differance, etc) that underlie the petty details of history. Levi-Strauss deserves mention as part of this group. Along with Braudel, Levi-Strauss was arguably the only one of them to 'get his hands dirty,' so to speak. As an anthropologist, he critically responded to a deep tradition of romanticism and scientism (two sides of the same Eurocentric coin) in a very technical way, much like those other philosophers and theorists did so in more epistemological ways. It requires a certain mindset from the reader, especially if you not a big-picture kind of person.
Here is an example of what might seem like a subtle technicality that, when considered within the history of anthropology, really blew the whole field wide open and marks an important work in the re-definition of the word "culture" itself (culture, myth and language were becoming increasingly synonymous). Levi-Strauss forced anthropologists--arguably an academic front for Eurocentrism and empire--to integrate relativism into their models, thus debunking longstanding myths of "universal man" based on "superior" European civilization/culture. He writes: "ideas and beliefs of the 'totemic' type . . . constitute codes making it possible to ensure . . . the convertibility of messages appertaining to each level, even of those which are so remote from each other that they apparently relate solely to culture or solely to society, that is, to men's relations with each other, on the one hand, or, on the other, to phenomena of a technical or economic order which might rather seem ton concern man's relations with nature. This mediation between nature and culture, which is one of the distinctive functions of the totemic operator, enables us to sift out of what may be true from what is partial and distorted in Durkheim's and Malinowski's accounts. THEY EACH ATTEMPTED TO IMMURE TOTEMISM IN ONE OR OTHER OF THESE TWO DOMAINS. IN FACT, HOWEVER, IT IS PRE-EMINENTLY THE MEANS (OR HOPE) OF TRANSCENDING THE OPPOSITION BETWEEN THEM (90-91).
Note: scholars to this day are trying to transcend the distinction between nature and culture. To my mind, postmodernism has been an awkward start, or hiccup, in that direction, and I even see Levi-Strauss' call for an emphasis on space in preference to time as an anticipation of Frederic Jameson in "Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism." Levi-Strauss was among the first academics to be vociferous in this paradigmatic shift toward the democratization of the very idea of culture. It isn't enough to just write off previous anthropology as "armchair anthropology" or "pseudo-science"; those were the anthropology and science of the day, and they served profound social, political, and imperial purposes. To argue that indigenous peoples had culture was an epistemic gesture toward decolonization, even while the 'anti-colonial' Sartre was implying that History was dialectical (and thus linear). I think Raymond Williams' "culture is ordinary" can be seen as a nod to Levi-Strauss calling for "the reintegration of culture in nature and finally of life within the whole of its physico-chemical conditions" (247), or as Williams would have put it, the whole of its experience.
Levi-Strauss writes again in Ch. 3: "Nature is not in itself contradictory. It can become so ONLY IN TERMS OF SOME SPECIFIC HUMAN ACTIVITY WHICH TAKES PART IN IT . . . MAN'S RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS NATURAL ENVIRONMENT REMAIN OBJECTS OF THOUGHT: MAN NEVER PERCEIVES THEM PASSIVELY . . . THE MISTAKE OF MANNHARDT AND THE NATURALIST SCHOOL WAS TO THINK THAT NATURAL PHENOMENA ARE what MYTHS SEEK TO EXPLAIN, WHEN THEY ARE RATHER THE medium through which MYTHS TRY TO EXPLAIN FACTS WHICH ARE THEMSELVES NOT OF A NATURAL BUT A LOGICAL ORDER" (95). I personally don't disagree with the Naturalist School wholeheartedly, but I would say that a naturalist explanation on its own would be incomplete and/or particularistic.
These are two poignant examples that served to debunk the notion that non-Europeans, especially tropical and sub-equatorial peoples, were living in a "natural" state, as savages living "one with nature." Compare, for example, Levi-Strauss' _The Savage Mind_ to the Charles Mann's first chapter, "Holmberg's Mistake," in the book 1491.
That said, Levi-Strauss's work was flawed in that it tended to be synchronic rather than diachronic. But after all, history often is "an illusion sustained by the demands of social life" (256). Or as Foucault once quipped: I'm not a historian, but nobody's perfect.
Here is an example of what might seem like a subtle technicality that, when considered within the history of anthropology, really blew the whole field wide open and marks an important work in the re-definition of the word "culture" itself (culture, myth and language were becoming increasingly synonymous). Levi-Strauss forced anthropologists--arguably an academic front for Eurocentrism and empire--to integrate relativism into their models, thus debunking longstanding myths of "universal man" based on "superior" European civilization/culture. He writes: "ideas and beliefs of the 'totemic' type . . . constitute codes making it possible to ensure . . . the convertibility of messages appertaining to each level, even of those which are so remote from each other that they apparently relate solely to culture or solely to society, that is, to men's relations with each other, on the one hand, or, on the other, to phenomena of a technical or economic order which might rather seem ton concern man's relations with nature. This mediation between nature and culture, which is one of the distinctive functions of the totemic operator, enables us to sift out of what may be true from what is partial and distorted in Durkheim's and Malinowski's accounts. THEY EACH ATTEMPTED TO IMMURE TOTEMISM IN ONE OR OTHER OF THESE TWO DOMAINS. IN FACT, HOWEVER, IT IS PRE-EMINENTLY THE MEANS (OR HOPE) OF TRANSCENDING THE OPPOSITION BETWEEN THEM (90-91).
Note: scholars to this day are trying to transcend the distinction between nature and culture. To my mind, postmodernism has been an awkward start, or hiccup, in that direction, and I even see Levi-Strauss' call for an emphasis on space in preference to time as an anticipation of Frederic Jameson in "Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism." Levi-Strauss was among the first academics to be vociferous in this paradigmatic shift toward the democratization of the very idea of culture. It isn't enough to just write off previous anthropology as "armchair anthropology" or "pseudo-science"; those were the anthropology and science of the day, and they served profound social, political, and imperial purposes. To argue that indigenous peoples had culture was an epistemic gesture toward decolonization, even while the 'anti-colonial' Sartre was implying that History was dialectical (and thus linear). I think Raymond Williams' "culture is ordinary" can be seen as a nod to Levi-Strauss calling for "the reintegration of culture in nature and finally of life within the whole of its physico-chemical conditions" (247), or as Williams would have put it, the whole of its experience.
Levi-Strauss writes again in Ch. 3: "Nature is not in itself contradictory. It can become so ONLY IN TERMS OF SOME SPECIFIC HUMAN ACTIVITY WHICH TAKES PART IN IT . . . MAN'S RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS NATURAL ENVIRONMENT REMAIN OBJECTS OF THOUGHT: MAN NEVER PERCEIVES THEM PASSIVELY . . . THE MISTAKE OF MANNHARDT AND THE NATURALIST SCHOOL WAS TO THINK THAT NATURAL PHENOMENA ARE what MYTHS SEEK TO EXPLAIN, WHEN THEY ARE RATHER THE medium through which MYTHS TRY TO EXPLAIN FACTS WHICH ARE THEMSELVES NOT OF A NATURAL BUT A LOGICAL ORDER" (95). I personally don't disagree with the Naturalist School wholeheartedly, but I would say that a naturalist explanation on its own would be incomplete and/or particularistic.
These are two poignant examples that served to debunk the notion that non-Europeans, especially tropical and sub-equatorial peoples, were living in a "natural" state, as savages living "one with nature." Compare, for example, Levi-Strauss' _The Savage Mind_ to the Charles Mann's first chapter, "Holmberg's Mistake," in the book 1491.
That said, Levi-Strauss's work was flawed in that it tended to be synchronic rather than diachronic. But after all, history often is "an illusion sustained by the demands of social life" (256). Or as Foucault once quipped: I'm not a historian, but nobody's perfect.
May 26, 2022
OK. The blurbs on the back tell us 'no outline is possible' and 'no précis is possible'. So let's attempt the impossible.
Savage Mind is intended to arrest our sense of time in the macro-historical sense, asking us to see humanity and the culture that humanity presupposes as something nearly eternal at its very depth. The truth which Levi-Strauss (hereafter L-S) develops is intended to destroy our common sense prejudices about how natives think. For L-S we are all natives. There is no Hobbesian hell that we crawled out of. We are all born into a heritage of both language (all languages are equally old) and culture (all cultures are systematically patterned, open to a creative transformation by the participants in this system). We are all natives in the sense that our linguistic and sociocultural patterns have corollaries in the most un-modern of contexts. A tribe might conceptually divide itself into clans, grouped into oppositions (usually binary). But voila, our thoroughly modern political systems divide our own enormous tribe in exactly the same ways. Although we moderns have tremendously elaborate sciences and almost as complex ideologies, we are all blessed (or is it cursed) by the same savage mind. We cannot escape this. In our own local existence, we tend to think in dualities and contrasts, in terms of a lexicon of social and aesthetic categories, as well as in terms of a symbolic syntax analyzable into features and oppositions. We differ of course in the manic specialization of our cultures into organic composites, and we also tend to think with abstract (made up) ideas instead of appropriating the concrete world of natural kinds (kinds of plants, kinds of animals) to generate our matrices of thought.
In my view, one shared by the anthropological tradition, our self estimation of our own intellectual talents is overblown. Television, for example, is a complex scientific achievement for the dissemination of sometimes sophisticated ideological content. But I don't make televisions and I don't produce programs on TV. Few people do. The science and propaganda of our civilization is left to the experts. There is no comparable specialization in the primitive world. Every man and every woman is expected to fabricate their very own tools and to fashion their very own ideological products. So although a television is a far greater technical accomplishment, it is a tool made by others to articulate ideas made by others. True enough, the savages are not engineers, but it takes the same degree of intellect to be a bricoleur, a jack of all trades who is capable of making or improvising all that is needed for survival and for intellectual satisfaction. Although modernity preaches self-reliance, it is the savage mind that practices it. I think Jack Goody said that.
I feel there is little to criticize here. An obvious starting point would be to point out that rationalism, although alive and well in linguistics, no longer seems so relevant to cultural anthropology. The reflexive turn in anthropology has led to an awareness that the intellect is perhaps a much greater concern of the professors than it is of the Natives, us or them. The festishization of the mind had reached its high water mark in The Savage Mind. Another criticism I have heard is that L-S is a pseudo-Marxist. Although he always claimed to have been a Marxist, it is hard to see his work as materialist (it is idealist most of the time), as dialectical (his notion of dialectic is not really Hegelian in any clear sense), or as concerned with labor (apart from the non-commodified and non-alienated form of the natives' products). Finally, it has been said that L-S deploys a method that cannot really be replicated in the research programs of others. I personally have found it rewarding to apply his system to questions of ancient Greek mythology. There are certainly good structuralists and there are bad ones, but the high bar set by L-S should not discourage anthropologists from attempting to follow his lead.
Savage Mind is intended to arrest our sense of time in the macro-historical sense, asking us to see humanity and the culture that humanity presupposes as something nearly eternal at its very depth. The truth which Levi-Strauss (hereafter L-S) develops is intended to destroy our common sense prejudices about how natives think. For L-S we are all natives. There is no Hobbesian hell that we crawled out of. We are all born into a heritage of both language (all languages are equally old) and culture (all cultures are systematically patterned, open to a creative transformation by the participants in this system). We are all natives in the sense that our linguistic and sociocultural patterns have corollaries in the most un-modern of contexts. A tribe might conceptually divide itself into clans, grouped into oppositions (usually binary). But voila, our thoroughly modern political systems divide our own enormous tribe in exactly the same ways. Although we moderns have tremendously elaborate sciences and almost as complex ideologies, we are all blessed (or is it cursed) by the same savage mind. We cannot escape this. In our own local existence, we tend to think in dualities and contrasts, in terms of a lexicon of social and aesthetic categories, as well as in terms of a symbolic syntax analyzable into features and oppositions. We differ of course in the manic specialization of our cultures into organic composites, and we also tend to think with abstract (made up) ideas instead of appropriating the concrete world of natural kinds (kinds of plants, kinds of animals) to generate our matrices of thought.
In my view, one shared by the anthropological tradition, our self estimation of our own intellectual talents is overblown. Television, for example, is a complex scientific achievement for the dissemination of sometimes sophisticated ideological content. But I don't make televisions and I don't produce programs on TV. Few people do. The science and propaganda of our civilization is left to the experts. There is no comparable specialization in the primitive world. Every man and every woman is expected to fabricate their very own tools and to fashion their very own ideological products. So although a television is a far greater technical accomplishment, it is a tool made by others to articulate ideas made by others. True enough, the savages are not engineers, but it takes the same degree of intellect to be a bricoleur, a jack of all trades who is capable of making or improvising all that is needed for survival and for intellectual satisfaction. Although modernity preaches self-reliance, it is the savage mind that practices it. I think Jack Goody said that.
I feel there is little to criticize here. An obvious starting point would be to point out that rationalism, although alive and well in linguistics, no longer seems so relevant to cultural anthropology. The reflexive turn in anthropology has led to an awareness that the intellect is perhaps a much greater concern of the professors than it is of the Natives, us or them. The festishization of the mind had reached its high water mark in The Savage Mind. Another criticism I have heard is that L-S is a pseudo-Marxist. Although he always claimed to have been a Marxist, it is hard to see his work as materialist (it is idealist most of the time), as dialectical (his notion of dialectic is not really Hegelian in any clear sense), or as concerned with labor (apart from the non-commodified and non-alienated form of the natives' products). Finally, it has been said that L-S deploys a method that cannot really be replicated in the research programs of others. I personally have found it rewarding to apply his system to questions of ancient Greek mythology. There are certainly good structuralists and there are bad ones, but the high bar set by L-S should not discourage anthropologists from attempting to follow his lead.
January 1, 2013
I had forgotten just how seminal Levi-Strauss was to literary and critical social theory- which seems to be what's left of Western philosophy- until I read this. Whether or not his systems approach is right in all its details for traditional societies is impossible for me to say. But his major contribution to anthropology- to have basically shredded its colonialist presuppositions by demonstrating that traditional peoples' way of thinking was not "primitive" in its relationship to logic and science, or to social behavior, but other-directed and coherent in itself- is magnificently evident here. His original insight is now the accepted way of thinking about cultural difference in academe. (Whether it has really penetrated beyond the academy, is another and a sadder question.) In any case, he is a great writer and refreshing to read--it's like clearing mental cobwebs.
September 6, 2009
A difficult book to get through, as I needed to make sure I understood what he was saying. There are many intriguing thoughts nestled among the scientific reportings. It would be a great adventure to do an in-depth comparison of Levi-Strauss and Mead, but that study will have to wait for a couple lifetimes down the road unfortunately.
April 17, 2010
Instead of reading this long and brutal book, read Rumi's beautiful first poem in Divane Shams. What Rumi said in 10 lines so beautifully and elegantly 800 years ago, this French dude is trying to say in this long and horribly written book: categories are arbitrary.
November 19, 2023
This new translation of La Penseé Sauvage by Claudi Lévi-Strauss, a classic of structuralist anthropology, brings the English version closer to the original French. The translators have added an abundance of explanatory notes that help eludicidate Lévi-Strauss's thinking and their own translation choices. It is not an easy read, as is the case with most of Lévi-Strauss's work after Tristes Tropiques, which is where anyone unfamiliar with his writing should start.
Lévi=Strauss's chief point is that so-called "primitive" peoples--he examines especially the Indigenous populations of Australia and North America, but diverts from time to time into other parts of the world--did not think in a way fundamentally different from western science, but followed reasoning patterns that anticipated and made possible "modern" scientific thinking. He approaches this argument first through a discussion of totemism, which had been used by his predecessors as evidence of the dissociation of "primitive thinking" from "modern." Totemism, he shows, obeys a logic that is indistinguishable from the ways "moderns" think in science. He goes on, then, to expand on these results, including in an extended critique of Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason--pages that open a window on the debates in French intellectual circles in the heady and creative days of the 1960s.
Anthropology has moved on from structuralism, but Lévi-Strauss remains central to the intellectual evolution of the field and remains a crucial contribution to the ways anthropology works today.
Lévi=Strauss's chief point is that so-called "primitive" peoples--he examines especially the Indigenous populations of Australia and North America, but diverts from time to time into other parts of the world--did not think in a way fundamentally different from western science, but followed reasoning patterns that anticipated and made possible "modern" scientific thinking. He approaches this argument first through a discussion of totemism, which had been used by his predecessors as evidence of the dissociation of "primitive thinking" from "modern." Totemism, he shows, obeys a logic that is indistinguishable from the ways "moderns" think in science. He goes on, then, to expand on these results, including in an extended critique of Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason--pages that open a window on the debates in French intellectual circles in the heady and creative days of the 1960s.
Anthropology has moved on from structuralism, but Lévi-Strauss remains central to the intellectual evolution of the field and remains a crucial contribution to the ways anthropology works today.
April 13, 2008
Totemism is dead! Take that, nineteenth-century armchair anthropology! What edifice shall we build upon its scattered remains? This movement would later be called Edificism, which would be followed by Post-Edificism.
Fred and Ben Savage take you on a tour the intimate world they created through sheer cognitive willpower. Today, we are all scientists, and we are all savages.
Don't miss a WORD of these savage delights!
* The French national pasttime, bricolage! Turns out the human habit is hard-wired since at least the paleolithic. (Ch. 1, see also Sister Act II: Back in the Habit)
* Caste and 'totemism' are the same, but different! (Ch. 4)
* The proper names of birds, dogs, cattle, and horses. And, a turnip. (Ch. 7).
* Sartre and historians are eviscerated for all to see! Turns out they don't know what they're talking about! TURNS OUT WE DON'T NEED HISTORY! (Ch. 9).
Fred and Ben Savage take you on a tour the intimate world they created through sheer cognitive willpower. Today, we are all scientists, and we are all savages.
Don't miss a WORD of these savage delights!
* The French national pasttime, bricolage! Turns out the human habit is hard-wired since at least the paleolithic. (Ch. 1, see also Sister Act II: Back in the Habit)
* Caste and 'totemism' are the same, but different! (Ch. 4)
* The proper names of birds, dogs, cattle, and horses. And, a turnip. (Ch. 7).
* Sartre and historians are eviscerated for all to see! Turns out they don't know what they're talking about! TURNS OUT WE DON'T NEED HISTORY! (Ch. 9).
July 23, 2011
Passionant mais un peu difficile à digérer complètement. L’intérêt que soulève l'ethnologie est immense mais l'ampleur de la tache de Levy Strauss qui embrasse un sujet particulièrement vaste fait que l'esprit se perd parfois en essayant le suivre. Aurait il pu utiliser un peu moins de jargon philosophique et linguistique, serrer un peu plus ses raisonnements ? Son approche qui consiste à essayer de trouver ce qui unifie la pensée des êtres humains malgré les variations observées est très sympathique, mais on comprend aussi que sa méthode ait pu susciter des réserves
January 21, 2019
#bookreview
الفكر البري المترجم عن الكتاب the savage mind بقلم الكاتب الفرنسي Claude levi Strauss.
قبل كل شيئ، الانثرپولوجيا هي دراسة الثقافة و الثقافة هي نتاج كل شيئ منذ بداية الوقت الى نهايته. معرفتي بها كاختصاص تقتصر على علاقة اللغة بالثقافة و كيف أن الواحدة جزء و كل من الاخرى. قراءة هذا الكتاب كان بمثابة تحدي لأنه يتطلب معرفة ليست ببسيطة في هاذا المجال. الكلمات المفتاحية و الدليلية صعبة للغاية و اختصاصية. مثالا على هذا، كلمة برقيل التي تترجم الى الفرنسية الى bricoleur و هو الشخص الذي يتسم بصفات عكسية للعالم، حيث يصنع الاشياء او يحلل الامور فيما اتيحت له، اي أن مجاله لا يقتصر على العدم او الغير موجود على عكس العالم.
اعتمد الكاتب على الدراسة التحليلية و ليست النقدية في مسميات الأمور و الأحداث و هي من صفات structuralism او الدراسة البنيية. أي ان الثقافة هي مجموعة من الاشياء و الاحداث التي تصنف الى عدة اصناف و المقارنة بين ثقافة و اخرى يعني المقارنة بين صنف و اخر و هذا ما يسميه الكاتب ب odds and ends للثقافة، ما تبقى منها ليصفها و يصنفها.
الفكر البري المترجم عن الكتاب the savage mind بقلم الكاتب الفرنسي Claude levi Strauss.
قبل كل شيئ، الانثرپولوجيا هي دراسة الثقافة و الثقافة هي نتاج كل شيئ منذ بداية الوقت الى نهايته. معرفتي بها كاختصاص تقتصر على علاقة اللغة بالثقافة و كيف أن الواحدة جزء و كل من الاخرى. قراءة هذا الكتاب كان بمثابة تحدي لأنه يتطلب معرفة ليست ببسيطة في هاذا المجال. الكلمات المفتاحية و الدليلية صعبة للغاية و اختصاصية. مثالا على هذا، كلمة برقيل التي تترجم الى الفرنسية الى bricoleur و هو الشخص الذي يتسم بصفات عكسية للعالم، حيث يصنع الاشياء او يحلل الامور فيما اتيحت له، اي أن مجاله لا يقتصر على العدم او الغير موجود على عكس العالم.
اعتمد الكاتب على الدراسة التحليلية و ليست النقدية في مسميات الأمور و الأحداث و هي من صفات structuralism او الدراسة البنيية. أي ان الثقافة هي مجموعة من الاشياء و الاحداث التي تصنف الى عدة اصناف و المقارنة بين ثقافة و اخرى يعني المقارنة بين صنف و اخر و هذا ما يسميه الكاتب ب odds and ends للثقافة، ما تبقى منها ليصفها و يصنفها.
June 25, 2022
မအားမလပ်တဲ့ကြားထဲက တစ်လကျော်ကြာတဲ့ နောက်မှာတော့ ဒီစာအုပ်ကို အပြတ်ဖြတ်နိုင်ခဲ့ပြီ
Levi Strauss ရဲ့ ခြည်းကပ်ပုံက linguistic တစ်ယောက် ဖြစ်တဲ့ ဆောဆူးရဲ့ structuralism ပုံစံကို မှီငြမ်းထားတာ ဖြစ်လို့ structural anthropology category ထဲ မှာအကြုံးဝင်သွားတယ်။ လူနဲ့ တိရိစ္ဆ န်တွေ ကွာခြားသွားကြရာမှာ ဘာသာစကား အပြင် semiotics တွေ symbolism တွေမှာ တာသွားတာပါဘဲ။ ဒီစာအုပ်ရဲ့ main theme က domesticated thought လို့ ခေါ်တဲ့ modern scientific thinking နဲ့ wild thought လို့ ခေါ်တဲ့ primitive thinking အကြား ဘာကွာ သွားသလဲဆိုတာကို ထောက်ပြသွားတာဘဲ။(spoiler alert;စာရေးသူက အဲဒီအတွေးနှစ်ခုဟာ ကွာခြားမှု မရှိကြောင်း ချေပသွားတယ်) အထူးသဖြင့် civilized ဖြစ်တယ် ဆိုတဲ့ အနောက်တိုင်းသားတွေဟာ အာရှသားတွေ အရှေ့အလယ်ပိုင်းသားတွေ ဌါနေတိုင်းရင်းသားတွေ ထက် အသိပညာပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာမှာရော culture ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာမှာ ရော တဆင့်ပိုမြင့်တယ် ဆိုတဲ့ preconceived idea တွေ ရှိကြတယ်။ သို့ပေမယ့် ethnologist တွေ ဌါနေတိုင်းရင်းသားတွေ နဲ့ အနီးကပ်နေထိုင်လေ့လာကြည့်တဲ့အခါ အနောက်တိုင်းသားတွေ နဲ့ မတူညီ တဲ့ paradigm မှာ တွေးခေါ်ကြပြီး scientific ဆန်တဲ့ အငွေ့အသက်တွေပါရှိကြောင်း သိရတယ်။ သံထည်တွေ ကြေးထည်တွေ သွန်းလုပ်နိုင်တာကိုက အမှုမဲ့ အမှတ်မဲ့ တွေ့ရှိခြင်းမျိုးလို မဟုတ်ဘဲ အကြိမ်ကြိမ်အခါခါ လေ့လာစမ်းသပ် ပြုလုပ်မှုရဲ့ ရလာဒ်တွေ ဖြစ်တယ် ဆိုတဲ့ အကြောင်းကို ရှင်းထားသလို တချို့သော ဌါနေတိုင်းရင်းသားတွေရဲ့ botanical knowledge ဟာ ခေတ်မှီ botanist တွေ ထက် ပိုပြီးတိကျတာတွေ ရှိကြောင်း ထောက်ပြထားတယ်။
Nature/Culture dichotomy မှာ totem တွေ mythတွေ ရဲ့ အခန်းကဏ္ဍ အနေနဲ့ သဘာဝတရား နဲ့ထပ်တူပြုခြင်းမျိုး (identification)မဟုတ်ဘဲ လူမျိုးစု တစ်ခုနဲ့ တစ်ခု အကြား differentiation အတွက်သာ ဖြစ်တယ် ဆိုတဲ့ hypothesis က linguistic မှာ signifier တခုနဲ့ တခု differentiation (ခြားနားမှု) ဖြစ်မှု ကိုသွားပြီး မှီငြမ်းထားတာ တွေ့ရတယ်( this is a book because it is not a chair ဆိုသလိုမျိုး) bear clan,eagle clan အစရှိသဖြင့် လူမျိုးစုများရဲ့ totem ထားရှိခြင်းဟာ symbolic အရသာဖြစ်ပြီး ဌါနေတိုင်းရင်းသားတွေ ကိုယ်တိုင်ဟာလည်း အမှန်တကယ် ဝက်ဝံကနေ ဆင်းသက်လာတယ် လို့ ယုံကြည်ခြင်းမရှိကြောင်း ရှင်းထားတာတွေ့ရတယ်( modern civilization မှာလည်း circulation of myth and totemism တွေကို တွေ့နိုင်တယ် အားကစား နဲ့ ပတ်သက်ပြီးဥပမာ ပြောရရင် လီဗာပူး ပရိတ်သတ်တွေဟာ သူတို့ကိုယ်သူတို့ ကြိုးကြာနီ တွေလို့ ခံယူထားသလိုမျိုးဘဲ) နောက်ဆုံး chapter မှာ ယန်းပေါလ် ဆာ့ဒ်ရဲ့ dialectic/analytic အကြပ်အတည်းကို ဖြင်ပြထားပြီး historian တယောက်နဲ့ ethnologist တယောက် အကြား သမိုင်း အပေါ် မတူညီတဲ့ ချည်းကပ်မှု အကြောင်းကို ရှင်းသွားတယ်။
Levi Strauss ရဲ့ ခြည်းကပ်ပုံက linguistic တစ်ယောက် ဖြစ်တဲ့ ဆောဆူးရဲ့ structuralism ပုံစံကို မှီငြမ်းထားတာ ဖြစ်လို့ structural anthropology category ထဲ မှာအကြုံးဝင်သွားတယ်။ လူနဲ့ တိရိစ္ဆ န်တွေ ကွာခြားသွားကြရာမှာ ဘာသာစကား အပြင် semiotics တွေ symbolism တွေမှာ တာသွားတာပါဘဲ။ ဒီစာအုပ်ရဲ့ main theme က domesticated thought လို့ ခေါ်တဲ့ modern scientific thinking နဲ့ wild thought လို့ ခေါ်တဲ့ primitive thinking အကြား ဘာကွာ သွားသလဲဆိုတာကို ထောက်ပြသွားတာဘဲ။(spoiler alert;စာရေးသူက အဲဒီအတွေးနှစ်ခုဟာ ကွာခြားမှု မရှိကြောင်း ချေပသွားတယ်) အထူးသဖြင့် civilized ဖြစ်တယ် ဆိုတဲ့ အနောက်တိုင်းသားတွေဟာ အာရှသားတွေ အရှေ့အလယ်ပိုင်းသားတွေ ဌါနေတိုင်းရင်းသားတွေ ထက် အသိပညာပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာမှာရော culture ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာမှာ ရော တဆင့်ပိုမြင့်တယ် ဆိုတဲ့ preconceived idea တွေ ရှိကြတယ်။ သို့ပေမယ့် ethnologist တွေ ဌါနေတိုင်းရင်းသားတွေ နဲ့ အနီးကပ်နေထိုင်လေ့လာကြည့်တဲ့အခါ အနောက်တိုင်းသားတွေ နဲ့ မတူညီ တဲ့ paradigm မှာ တွေးခေါ်ကြပြီး scientific ဆန်တဲ့ အငွေ့အသက်တွေပါရှိကြောင်း သိရတယ်။ သံထည်တွေ ကြေးထည်တွေ သွန်းလုပ်နိုင်တာကိုက အမှုမဲ့ အမှတ်မဲ့ တွေ့ရှိခြင်းမျိုးလို မဟုတ်ဘဲ အကြိမ်ကြိမ်အခါခါ လေ့လာစမ်းသပ် ပြုလုပ်မှုရဲ့ ရလာဒ်တွေ ဖြစ်တယ် ဆိုတဲ့ အကြောင်းကို ရှင်းထားသလို တချို့သော ဌါနေတိုင်းရင်းသားတွေရဲ့ botanical knowledge ဟာ ခေတ်မှီ botanist တွေ ထက် ပိုပြီးတိကျတာတွေ ရှိကြောင်း ထောက်ပြထားတယ်။
Nature/Culture dichotomy မှာ totem တွေ mythတွေ ရဲ့ အခန်းကဏ္ဍ အနေနဲ့ သဘာဝတရား နဲ့ထပ်တူပြုခြင်းမျိုး (identification)မဟုတ်ဘဲ လူမျိုးစု တစ်ခုနဲ့ တစ်ခု အကြား differentiation အတွက်သာ ဖြစ်တယ် ဆိုတဲ့ hypothesis က linguistic မှာ signifier တခုနဲ့ တခု differentiation (ခြားနားမှု) ဖြစ်မှု ကိုသွားပြီး မှီငြမ်းထားတာ တွေ့ရတယ်( this is a book because it is not a chair ဆိုသလိုမျိုး) bear clan,eagle clan အစရှိသဖြင့် လူမျိုးစုများရဲ့ totem ထားရှိခြင်းဟာ symbolic အရသာဖြစ်ပြီး ဌါနေတိုင်းရင်းသားတွေ ကိုယ်တိုင်ဟာလည်း အမှန်တကယ် ဝက်ဝံကနေ ဆင်းသက်လာတယ် လို့ ယုံကြည်ခြင်းမရှိကြောင်း ရှင်းထားတာတွေ့ရတယ်( modern civilization မှာလည်း circulation of myth and totemism တွေကို တွေ့နိုင်တယ် အားကစား နဲ့ ပတ်သက်ပြီးဥပမာ ပြောရရင် လီဗာပူး ပရိတ်သတ်တွေဟာ သူတို့ကိုယ်သူတို့ ကြိုးကြာနီ တွေလို့ ခံယူထားသလိုမျိုးဘဲ) နောက်ဆုံး chapter မှာ ယန်းပေါလ် ဆာ့ဒ်ရဲ့ dialectic/analytic အကြပ်အတည်းကို ဖြင်ပြထားပြီး historian တယောက်နဲ့ ethnologist တယောက် အကြား သမိုင်း အပေါ် မတူညီတဲ့ ချည်းကပ်မှု အကြောင်းကို ရှင်းသွားတယ်။
November 19, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in June 2001.
Many books that, like The Savage Mind, go on to become influential on the way that people think, have at their time of writing two purposes, of which one only ensures their survival. The immediate cause of the genesis of such a book is to make a specific point or answer some then current school of thought; in this case, Lévi-Strauss wanted to counter some ideas about totemism in anthropology. This first purpose then suggests a more general thesis, more philosophical and theoretical, more illuminating of the way in which people think; in this case, it concerns how human beings classify and understand the world around them.
I have no claims to be an expert - or even to be greatly interested - in anthropology. The argument about totemism is hard to follow (mainly because the opinions with which Lévi-Strauss is disagreeing are assumed to be known to the reader), and in the end is only interesting as a series of illustrations to the philosophical thesis about the need we have to classify our environment.
I am not sure that I would agree with everything that Lévi-Strauss has to say. He argues against the idea that the various classification schemes he looks at are antecedents of scientific method, feeling instead that they are substantially different. There are clearly differences, but I would feel that the history of science shows the development of modern method in the late medieval period, as experiment and verifiability began to be seen as important, but that the body of knowledge attained by that time in Western Europe is in many ways analogous to (say) the medical theories of a tribe in the Amazon. Possibly what Lévi-Strauss meant is that the ideas of the medieval West were more theoretical and analytical, the theory of humours for example generalising ideas like bitter tasting substances being good for stomach upsets.
On the other hand, he may be against the implication that science is a superior development, an advance on earlier thought systems. In some ways, this is clearly the case; we certainly seem to be able to understand the nature of the physical world more accurately than our medieval ancestors could - every time we turn on an electric light bears witness to this. On the other hand, to say that this makes science "better" goes against the trend of thought since the sixties, and Lévi-Strauss could easily be anticipating this.
As a logician, one thing which struck me is that the classifications which form the examples are almost exclusively binary; something is either in a group or out of it with no middle ground, even if this requires some strange manipulation to shoehorn some objects into one group. This is clearly related to one of the main functions of classification, which is to reduce the complexity of the world and make it easier to understand; a tendency to view things as black or white is much simpler than admitting to hundreds of shades of grey.
I wouldn't claim to completely understand The Savage Mind. There is too much from fields of knowledge unfamiliar to me, and Lévi-Strauss' argument is very complex to take in at a single reading. From the very first page, however, it is clear that the book is the product of a first-rate mind, and it is absolutely fascinating.
Many books that, like The Savage Mind, go on to become influential on the way that people think, have at their time of writing two purposes, of which one only ensures their survival. The immediate cause of the genesis of such a book is to make a specific point or answer some then current school of thought; in this case, Lévi-Strauss wanted to counter some ideas about totemism in anthropology. This first purpose then suggests a more general thesis, more philosophical and theoretical, more illuminating of the way in which people think; in this case, it concerns how human beings classify and understand the world around them.
I have no claims to be an expert - or even to be greatly interested - in anthropology. The argument about totemism is hard to follow (mainly because the opinions with which Lévi-Strauss is disagreeing are assumed to be known to the reader), and in the end is only interesting as a series of illustrations to the philosophical thesis about the need we have to classify our environment.
I am not sure that I would agree with everything that Lévi-Strauss has to say. He argues against the idea that the various classification schemes he looks at are antecedents of scientific method, feeling instead that they are substantially different. There are clearly differences, but I would feel that the history of science shows the development of modern method in the late medieval period, as experiment and verifiability began to be seen as important, but that the body of knowledge attained by that time in Western Europe is in many ways analogous to (say) the medical theories of a tribe in the Amazon. Possibly what Lévi-Strauss meant is that the ideas of the medieval West were more theoretical and analytical, the theory of humours for example generalising ideas like bitter tasting substances being good for stomach upsets.
On the other hand, he may be against the implication that science is a superior development, an advance on earlier thought systems. In some ways, this is clearly the case; we certainly seem to be able to understand the nature of the physical world more accurately than our medieval ancestors could - every time we turn on an electric light bears witness to this. On the other hand, to say that this makes science "better" goes against the trend of thought since the sixties, and Lévi-Strauss could easily be anticipating this.
As a logician, one thing which struck me is that the classifications which form the examples are almost exclusively binary; something is either in a group or out of it with no middle ground, even if this requires some strange manipulation to shoehorn some objects into one group. This is clearly related to one of the main functions of classification, which is to reduce the complexity of the world and make it easier to understand; a tendency to view things as black or white is much simpler than admitting to hundreds of shades of grey.
I wouldn't claim to completely understand The Savage Mind. There is too much from fields of knowledge unfamiliar to me, and Lévi-Strauss' argument is very complex to take in at a single reading. From the very first page, however, it is clear that the book is the product of a first-rate mind, and it is absolutely fascinating.
September 1, 2015
A great book, but not because he's specifically right about anything he says. There are all kinds of red flags in the explanation of his theories from the binary nature of his associative cognizance diagrams and structures that probably don't specifically exist, to the allegories he uses for technologically advanced, civilized people to understand the structures provided by language he says he's found. Too many leaps of logic are made. He has too much faith in a truly limited understanding of the subjects on which he writes. Yet, this work greatly advanced linguistics, anthropology, and many social sciences with its less-than-perfect observations of the associative structures humanity creates.
June 27, 2018
très instructif et intéressant en particulier quand il explique que la connaissance fine du milieu, de la faune et de la flore des tribus se retrouvent transcrits dans la multitude de noms et de nuances qu'ils ont créés pour les décrire et sont un indicateur important du niveau de connaissance atteint, par ces sociétés trop souvent décrite comme "sauvages" ou primitives car différentes.
December 25, 2017
The book outlines the concept of (cultural) bricolage. While the term was adapted to other areas, the examples stem from “classic” ethnography studying indigenous cultures in remote settings. If you only want to read a part of the book, I suggest to spend time on the first few chapters which include the bricolage definition.
November 27, 2009
intensely complex and dense. but, once you start to get past the bricoleur and Levi-Strauss's heavy French-ness, its definitely something to think about. Good discussion of classification and the human mind and critique of Sartres.
February 22, 2011
Harder to read than "Tristes tropiques" but interesting.
September 30, 2013
Essential reading (regardless of one's view of L.-S.) - it is Claude L.-S.'s masterpiece
May 6, 2016
Very, very interesting. I was not keen on the writing style but I guess I'm too used to novels. A must read for those interested in anthropology.
February 3, 2020
Exceptional anthropological work on truth as a social institution!
August 7, 2022
Claude Lévi-Strauss' The Savage Mind, a translation of his La Pensée Sauvage, is a difficult book to summarize; for a structuralist, he seems to be somewhat lacking in structure in his writings. It is a very discursive book, and full of analogies and metaphors which to me at least obscure rather than clarify what he is trying to say (although sometimes interesting in themselves). To do my best: "Savage" or pre-literate peoples are experts at classification, at producing taxonomies of natural and social phenomena at every level; their classifications are based on structures of differences rather than resemblances; they postulate homologies between systems of differences at different levels, including behavior (marriage rules, food or verbal prohibitions and so forth) which have been mistakenly linked by ethnologists in the concept of "totemism" (the book by him which I read last, Totemism, published the same year, he describes as a kind of preface to the current book); these homologies combine to form coherent "totalizing" conceptions of the world; the very different systems of different pre-literate cultures are formed from similar structures of classification by "transformations" which give different contents to the same structural forms. He illustrates these theses in the first eight chapters by examples taken from many cultures in Africa, Asia, and especially the Americas and Australia.
The ninth and last chapter is a polemic against Sartre's Critique de la raison dialectique (of which I have read only the preface, published separately as Questions de Méthode) over the nature of dialectical reason, its relationship to analytical reason, the nature of history, and the relations of history and dialectic. While this was very interesting, I'm not sure I would agree with either of their views on dialectic; while both Lévi-Strauss and the later Sartre consider themselves within the Marxist tradition, they each combine Marx differently with other viewpoints, e.g. de Saussure and structural linguistics, Freudian psychology, and the phenomenological tradition of Husserl and Heidegger. Obviously, an understanding of both Lévi-Strauss and Sartre is necessary to understand many of the trends in contemporary social thought, but it is also more fundamentally necessary to understand the concepts of Marx, which most American academics (to say nothing of the general populace) are far from possessing.
The ninth and last chapter is a polemic against Sartre's Critique de la raison dialectique (of which I have read only the preface, published separately as Questions de Méthode) over the nature of dialectical reason, its relationship to analytical reason, the nature of history, and the relations of history and dialectic. While this was very interesting, I'm not sure I would agree with either of their views on dialectic; while both Lévi-Strauss and the later Sartre consider themselves within the Marxist tradition, they each combine Marx differently with other viewpoints, e.g. de Saussure and structural linguistics, Freudian psychology, and the phenomenological tradition of Husserl and Heidegger. Obviously, an understanding of both Lévi-Strauss and Sartre is necessary to understand many of the trends in contemporary social thought, but it is also more fundamentally necessary to understand the concepts of Marx, which most American academics (to say nothing of the general populace) are far from possessing.
February 20, 2018
Una lectura muchas veces enredada, especialmente si no se está al tanto de las disquisiciones disciplinares, y también por la naturaleza del tema, pero en general muy estimulante. Entre las cosas que me sorprendieron fue que, a contramano de las acusaciones contra el estructuralismo de no considerar los aspectos sincrónicos, y si no me equivoco en entenderlo, acá Lévi-Strauss sí lo hace, descentrando la obsesión occidental con la historia y tratando de situar la diacronía dentro de las operaciones del totemismo. Un libro muy entretenido.
March 25, 2020
"Denilebilir ki, Claude Levi-Strauss'un düşüncesini kavramak için, Yaban Düşünce, girilmesi gereken ilk kapıdır." (Tahsin Yücel)
December 10, 2024
Good intro for anthropology, at the same time I don’t think I can remember anything from it after years.
December 26, 2024
this was so boring oh my god well done for being a seminal piece of work i guess
February 21, 2021
Un libro citatissimo se ci si occupa di mitologia – ma non solo, questo affascinante trattato di Lévy-Strauss verte sulla struttura del pensiero, che sia “selvaggio” (primitivo) o no (ma perché, allora chiamarlo: “selvaggio”?). È una raccolta di riflessioni ed analisi pregnante che richiedono però una lettura molto concentrata. Ma una volta che si è riusciti a mettersi sulla stessa lunghezza d’onda di Lévy-Strauss succede qualcosa di straordinario: si riesce a percepire quell’incredibile sforzo intellettuale che combina e amalgama i passaggi da due realtà dialettiche opposte: la diacronia e la sincronia, lo spazio e il tempo, l’individuo e la società, il fluire (delle azioni e del tempo) come una somma di istanti fermi. Si sente proprio il cervello che si muove – come quello di una medusa, dilatandosi e restringendosi! Pazzesco!
Mi sono poi inchinata sull’ultimo capitolo in cui critica Sartre e la sua “Critica della ragione dialettica” nonché dell’idea (o intenzione) dello stesso della definizione di etnologia. Non è la prima volta che leggo di critiche al filosofo in questo campo e seppure io non abbia letto nulla di suo in proposito, mi sono ritrovata completamente sia nelle critiche di Lévy-Strauss che di Durand (autore di: “Antropologia dell’immaginario”), seppure devo ammettere che il mio riconoscermi sia di parte perché si basa solo sugli estrapolati di Sartre da parte degli altri. Comunque un lavoro eccezionale – non alla portata di tutti, però: richiede davvero tanta, tanta concentrazione, una certa flessibilità mentale che poggia su un allenamento intellettuale di testi filosofici e antropologici pregressa (o per lo meno: aiuterebbe molto. Nel mio caso è stato così).
Mi sono poi inchinata sull’ultimo capitolo in cui critica Sartre e la sua “Critica della ragione dialettica” nonché dell’idea (o intenzione) dello stesso della definizione di etnologia. Non è la prima volta che leggo di critiche al filosofo in questo campo e seppure io non abbia letto nulla di suo in proposito, mi sono ritrovata completamente sia nelle critiche di Lévy-Strauss che di Durand (autore di: “Antropologia dell’immaginario”), seppure devo ammettere che il mio riconoscermi sia di parte perché si basa solo sugli estrapolati di Sartre da parte degli altri. Comunque un lavoro eccezionale – non alla portata di tutti, però: richiede davvero tanta, tanta concentrazione, una certa flessibilità mentale che poggia su un allenamento intellettuale di testi filosofici e antropologici pregressa (o per lo meno: aiuterebbe molto. Nel mio caso è stato così).
October 6, 2016
"La Pensée sauvage" et non "la pensée des sauvages". Car ce livre s'écarte de l'ethnologie traditionnelle en prenant pour thème un attribut universel de l'esprit humain : la pensée à l'état sauvage qui est présente dans tout homme - contemporain ou ancien, proche ou lointain - tant qu'elle n'a pas été cultivée et domestiquée à des fins de rendement.
Même dans les sociétés sans écriture, cette pensée ressemble singulièrement à celle qui nous est familière, dans la poésie et dans l'art, ou encore dans les diverses formes du savoir populaire, archaïque ou récent.
Partant d'une observation du monde précise et minutieuse, elle analyse, distingue, classe, combine et oppose... Dans ce livre, par conséquent, les mythes, les rites, les croyances et les autres faits de culture sont considérés comme êtres "sauvages" comparables à tous ceux que la nature engendre sous d'innombrables formes, animales, végétales et minérales.
Issue d'une fréquentation millénaire de ces réalités, la pensée sauvage y a trouvé la matière et l'inspiration d'une logique dont les lois se bornent à transposer les propriétés du réel, et qui, pour cette raison même, a pu permettre aux hommes d'avoir prise sur lui.
Publié au milieu des années cinquante, La Pensée sauvage est aujourd'hui considéré comme l'un des classiques de l'ethnologie contemporaine, dont l'influence fut également décisive sur l'ensemble des disciplines qui forment le domaine des sciences sociales."
Même dans les sociétés sans écriture, cette pensée ressemble singulièrement à celle qui nous est familière, dans la poésie et dans l'art, ou encore dans les diverses formes du savoir populaire, archaïque ou récent.
Partant d'une observation du monde précise et minutieuse, elle analyse, distingue, classe, combine et oppose... Dans ce livre, par conséquent, les mythes, les rites, les croyances et les autres faits de culture sont considérés comme êtres "sauvages" comparables à tous ceux que la nature engendre sous d'innombrables formes, animales, végétales et minérales.
Issue d'une fréquentation millénaire de ces réalités, la pensée sauvage y a trouvé la matière et l'inspiration d'une logique dont les lois se bornent à transposer les propriétés du réel, et qui, pour cette raison même, a pu permettre aux hommes d'avoir prise sur lui.
Publié au milieu des années cinquante, La Pensée sauvage est aujourd'hui considéré comme l'un des classiques de l'ethnologie contemporaine, dont l'influence fut également décisive sur l'ensemble des disciplines qui forment le domaine des sciences sociales."
June 26, 2022
A very dense, very intricate, very in-depth discussion and thesis on the real structure of totemic, "primitive" thought and organization of such culture's worldviews. There are a lot of concepts and structures here that Lévi-Strauss employs with a wide range of application in other areas that have since come into use by various other scholars and academics. This in of itself proves that "savage thought" is actually quite systematic, dialectical, and advanced in important ways, although Lévi-Strauss himself demonstrates this continually throughout the book.
This took me a long time to read. I put it down for a while after finishing with the first three chapters. But then, I persevered, and it was quite rewarding actually all the way through (especially the last two chapters), even though it was often quite an exercise to my brain in understanding what he wrote. This book is very important not only because of its perennial relevance to post-structuralist theorists, but on its own it stands as a major work of 20th century philosophical anthropology.
This took me a long time to read. I put it down for a while after finishing with the first three chapters. But then, I persevered, and it was quite rewarding actually all the way through (especially the last two chapters), even though it was often quite an exercise to my brain in understanding what he wrote. This book is very important not only because of its perennial relevance to post-structuralist theorists, but on its own it stands as a major work of 20th century philosophical anthropology.
February 22, 2021
In this book, Lévi-Strauss revolutionises the fied of anthropology by examining the structures of totemic belief of so-called 'primitive' peoples. 'Savage', in this work, does not refer to man in his primitive state, but rather the mind untamed. Lévi-Strauss deconstructs the totemic systems of these 'exotic' cultures across space and time, and continually draws parallels between them and our own society, suggesting that these two structures are more alike than different.
Lévi-Strauss's arguments are well-written, easy to follow, and supported with illustrative examples drawn from a wide variety of cultures. I recommend this book not just to those interested in the study of 'primitive' cultures, but also to any who are intrigued by human behaviour and the general structure of modern society.
Lévi-Strauss's arguments are well-written, easy to follow, and supported with illustrative examples drawn from a wide variety of cultures. I recommend this book not just to those interested in the study of 'primitive' cultures, but also to any who are intrigued by human behaviour and the general structure of modern society.
December 10, 2025
The Savage Mind (La pensée sauvage) is Claude Lévi‑Strauss’s bold attempt to show that so‑called “primitive” peoples think just as logically and systematically as anyone with a PhD—only with different materials and goals. It is dense and theoretical, but at heart it is a surprisingly simple, even charming claim: human minds everywhere work in similar ways, whether you’re designing a smartphone app or arranging totems in a rainforest village.
Who Lévi-Strauss is and why this book matters
Claude Lévi‑Strauss (1908–2009) was a French anthropologist and one of the founders of structuralism, the idea that cultures are built from deep, shared mental structures—patterns, oppositions, and relationships—rather than just random customs. Before The Savage Mind (1962/1966 in English), he was already famous for work on kinship and myth, especially Structural Anthropology and the Mythologiques series, where he treated myths almost like languages with grammar and syntax.
This book sits near the center of his career and helped carry structuralist thinking beyond anthropology into literary theory, philosophy, and cultural studies, influencing figures like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. It’s often recommended as one of the key doors into Lévi‑Strauss’s thought, even though it is more essay‑like and philosophical than a straightforward ethnography.
What the book actually argues
Lévi‑Strauss’s main thesis is that there is no basic mental gap between “modern” and “primitive” people: everyone is capable of rigorous, logical thought, and everyone uses similar mental tools to make sense of the world. What differs is not the quality of thinking, but its focus: industrial societies invest their smarts in abstract science and technology, while small‑scale societies often invest them in detailed classification of plants, animals, myths, and kinship.
He develops this through several famous ideas:
“Untamed” thought vs. “domesticated” thought: “Savage mind” for him means thought in its wild, everyday state—not the mind of “savages,” but the kind of imaginative, associative reasoning found in myth, magic, and classification.
The bricoleur vs. the engineer: The bricoleur is the tinkerer who uses whatever is at hand—stories, animals, colors—to build meaning, while the engineer plans from scratch using formal concepts; both are intelligent, just working with different toolboxes.
The “science of the concrete”: Indigenous knowledge is incredibly empirical and concrete—people know dozens of plant species, animal behaviors, and landscape features—yet they weave this knowledge into symbolic systems (totemism, myths) that double as encyclopedias of their world.
Through examples of myths, totemic systems, and classifications from many societies, he argues that behind all this variety lie shared structures: binary oppositions (raw/cooked, nature/culture, life/death) and ways of mediating them.
Why it’s interesting (and where it can be tough)
On the “highs” side, the book is eye‑opening if you’ve ever casually thought of myth or magic as just “irrational.” Lévi‑Strauss shows that what looks like superstition from a distance often turns out, up close, to be a clever way of organizing knowledge and coping with uncertainty. His bricoleur vs. engineer image is particularly fun and memorable—it gives you a mental picture you can apply to everything from grandma’s home remedies to fan theories about TV shows.
The flip side is that The Savage Mind is not an easy, chatty read. Lévi‑Strauss loves long, abstract sentences, packed with references and technical terms, and he sometimes leaps between societies and examples faster than a non‑specialist can comfortably follow. Some critics argue that his focus on deep structures can flatten cultural differences and underplay historical change, making myths feel like puzzles to be solved rather than living stories people tell for many reasons.
How it reads: style and tone
Lévi‑Strauss writes like a philosophically‑minded essayist rather than a field‑note‑waving anthropologist: the tone is reflective, sometimes poetic, and clearly shaped by French intellectual tradition. He rarely tells vivid, anecdotal stories about individual people; instead, he treats myths and classifications as if they were big patterns waiting to be decoded, which can be thrilling if you enjoy system‑building and a bit dry if you prefer narrative.
Still, there are playful moments—especially in his comparisons and metaphors—that lighten the mood and make you feel you’re being invited into a game of “spot the underlying structure.” If you take it slowly, chapter by chapter, and don’t worry about catching every technical detail, it can be surprisingly enjoyable as a kind of intellectual adventure story about how humans everywhere build meaning from the materials around them.
Place in his work and why it’s still read
Within Lévi‑Strauss’s bibliography, The Savage Mind acts as a bridge between his earlier, more empirical analyses (like Structural Anthropology) and his massive myth‑decoding projects in Mythologiques. It distills many of his core ideas—universal mental structures, binary oppositions, bricolage—into a relatively compact form that later structuralists and post‑structuralists would debate, adapt, and critique.
Today, anthropologists are more cautious about grand universal claims, but the book remains a classic for two big reasons: it helped demolish the old hierarchy that put “Western reason” above everyone else, and it offered a powerful toolkit for thinking about culture as patterned rather than random. Even where people disagree with him, they tend to do so by arguing with the questions he posed, which is a sign of lasting influence
Who Lévi-Strauss is and why this book matters
Claude Lévi‑Strauss (1908–2009) was a French anthropologist and one of the founders of structuralism, the idea that cultures are built from deep, shared mental structures—patterns, oppositions, and relationships—rather than just random customs. Before The Savage Mind (1962/1966 in English), he was already famous for work on kinship and myth, especially Structural Anthropology and the Mythologiques series, where he treated myths almost like languages with grammar and syntax.
This book sits near the center of his career and helped carry structuralist thinking beyond anthropology into literary theory, philosophy, and cultural studies, influencing figures like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. It’s often recommended as one of the key doors into Lévi‑Strauss’s thought, even though it is more essay‑like and philosophical than a straightforward ethnography.
What the book actually argues
Lévi‑Strauss’s main thesis is that there is no basic mental gap between “modern” and “primitive” people: everyone is capable of rigorous, logical thought, and everyone uses similar mental tools to make sense of the world. What differs is not the quality of thinking, but its focus: industrial societies invest their smarts in abstract science and technology, while small‑scale societies often invest them in detailed classification of plants, animals, myths, and kinship.
He develops this through several famous ideas:
“Untamed” thought vs. “domesticated” thought: “Savage mind” for him means thought in its wild, everyday state—not the mind of “savages,” but the kind of imaginative, associative reasoning found in myth, magic, and classification.
The bricoleur vs. the engineer: The bricoleur is the tinkerer who uses whatever is at hand—stories, animals, colors—to build meaning, while the engineer plans from scratch using formal concepts; both are intelligent, just working with different toolboxes.
The “science of the concrete”: Indigenous knowledge is incredibly empirical and concrete—people know dozens of plant species, animal behaviors, and landscape features—yet they weave this knowledge into symbolic systems (totemism, myths) that double as encyclopedias of their world.
Through examples of myths, totemic systems, and classifications from many societies, he argues that behind all this variety lie shared structures: binary oppositions (raw/cooked, nature/culture, life/death) and ways of mediating them.
Why it’s interesting (and where it can be tough)
On the “highs” side, the book is eye‑opening if you’ve ever casually thought of myth or magic as just “irrational.” Lévi‑Strauss shows that what looks like superstition from a distance often turns out, up close, to be a clever way of organizing knowledge and coping with uncertainty. His bricoleur vs. engineer image is particularly fun and memorable—it gives you a mental picture you can apply to everything from grandma’s home remedies to fan theories about TV shows.
The flip side is that The Savage Mind is not an easy, chatty read. Lévi‑Strauss loves long, abstract sentences, packed with references and technical terms, and he sometimes leaps between societies and examples faster than a non‑specialist can comfortably follow. Some critics argue that his focus on deep structures can flatten cultural differences and underplay historical change, making myths feel like puzzles to be solved rather than living stories people tell for many reasons.
How it reads: style and tone
Lévi‑Strauss writes like a philosophically‑minded essayist rather than a field‑note‑waving anthropologist: the tone is reflective, sometimes poetic, and clearly shaped by French intellectual tradition. He rarely tells vivid, anecdotal stories about individual people; instead, he treats myths and classifications as if they were big patterns waiting to be decoded, which can be thrilling if you enjoy system‑building and a bit dry if you prefer narrative.
Still, there are playful moments—especially in his comparisons and metaphors—that lighten the mood and make you feel you’re being invited into a game of “spot the underlying structure.” If you take it slowly, chapter by chapter, and don’t worry about catching every technical detail, it can be surprisingly enjoyable as a kind of intellectual adventure story about how humans everywhere build meaning from the materials around them.
Place in his work and why it’s still read
Within Lévi‑Strauss’s bibliography, The Savage Mind acts as a bridge between his earlier, more empirical analyses (like Structural Anthropology) and his massive myth‑decoding projects in Mythologiques. It distills many of his core ideas—universal mental structures, binary oppositions, bricolage—into a relatively compact form that later structuralists and post‑structuralists would debate, adapt, and critique.
Today, anthropologists are more cautious about grand universal claims, but the book remains a classic for two big reasons: it helped demolish the old hierarchy that put “Western reason” above everyone else, and it offered a powerful toolkit for thinking about culture as patterned rather than random. Even where people disagree with him, they tend to do so by arguing with the questions he posed, which is a sign of lasting influence
January 4, 2015
Levi-Strauss uses the analytical tools of linguistics and ethnography to demonstrate that there is no primitive man. A man who lives in a primitive society because of different life experiences and education will develop different typologies and schemes of classification than a man raised in a modern society and benefitting from a modern education. The basic thought structures however are the same. The primitive man as such does not exist.
This a deft, technical treatise which proves what most of us believe that all men are alike but some are much luckier than others to live in richer, safer and more modern societies.
This a deft, technical treatise which proves what most of us believe that all men are alike but some are much luckier than others to live in richer, safer and more modern societies.
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