LÉVi-Strauss, Claude

(born Nov. 28, 1908, Brussels, Belg.) Belgian-French social anthropologist and leading exponent of structuralism.

Lévi-Strauss originally studied philosophy at the University of Paris (1927–32) but went on to teach sociology at the University of São Paulo (1934–37) and to conduct field research on the Indians of Brazil. At the New School for Social Research in New York City (1941–45) he came under the influence of the linguist Roman Jakobson; he came to view culture as a system of communication, analogous to a language, and constructed models based on structural linguistics, information theory, and cybernetics to interpret them. He attempted to identify universal structures of the mind as reflected in myths, cultural symbols, and social organization. From 1950 to 1974 he was director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, and in 1959 he joined the faculty of the Collège de France. Among his major works are The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), Tristes tropiques (1955), Structural Anthropology (1961, vol. 2, 1973), and the four-volume Mythologiques (1964–71).

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