Claude Levi-Strauss (b. 1908)

LEVI-STRAUSS, Claude), structuralism anthropologist. Levi-Strauss was born in Brussels and studied at the University of Paris. From 1935-9 he was professor at the University of Sao Paulo making several expeditions to central Brazil - from where much of the material for his classic Tristes Tropiques was garnered. Tristes Tropiques is a classical journey of discovery, a quest for the past and for the realization of self... It is a work of anthropology, grandly speculative and imaginative... a work of science, history, and a rational prose poetry, springing out of the multifariousness of the landscape. From 1942-5 he was professor at the New School for Social Research. In 1950 he became Director of Studies at the Ecole Practicum des Hautes Etudes. In 1959 Levi-Strauss assumed the Chair of Social Anthropology at the College de France. …