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Why Was Lévi-Strauss Still Relevant Today

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In this essay I will discuss why I believe that Claude Lévi-Strauss’ work is still relevant today and I will focus on the role that he assigns to the social anthropologist. Claude Lévi-Strauss was the most influential anthropologist theorist in France. His work which he contributed to anthropology still remains to have significant relevance in todays contemporary anthropology. He was born on the 28th of November 1908 and passed away on the 30th of October 2009. I will discuss his theory and what he argued for and against. Anthropologists like Durkheim, De Saussure, Simiand, Rousseau, Jakobson and Mauss and many more influenced Lévi-Strauss when it came to his work. First I would like to explain the term anthropology according to (Lévi-Strauss, …show more content…

Lévi-Strauss discusses kinship, which in todays society is still very clear and important. Firstly when anthropologists discuss kinship “they are concerned with social behaviours and not biological facts and the two sets of data are often so widely discrepant that it is often convenient to discuss kinship without any reference to biology” (Leach, 1973: 96). We have to break down kinship terms into individual systems in order to see what relationship they have. Even though it states that kinship does not have to do with biology there has to be link as it is obvious that a child is related to their mother just like she is to her sister. Lévi-Strauss is interested in in the ‘systems’ and not as much with terms of kinship. He looks at the ties by which people are related, rather this be through siblingship and/or affinal relationships. In society in order for a child to be seen as a ‘legitimate child’ they need to have two parents who are married. Society does not judge this opinion on the relationship between the child and his/her parents but on the relationship between the parents themselves. This extremity has faded into the background for the most part in the contemporary society but is still around in some cases as everyone is always interested in your family dynamic. The way in which people are related is still of great importance. Lévi-Strauss does not look at the basic relationships for example mother/daughter and husband/wife, but he looks at the more complicated types of relationships such as the contrast between father/son and mother’s brother/sister’s son. According to Lévi-Strauss “in order for a kinship structure to exist three types of family relations must always be present: a relation of consanguinity, a relation of affinity and a relation of descent.” (Leach, 1973: 101). Through Lévi-Strauss’ explanation of

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