As a graduate student of anthropology at Columbia in the 1970s, Scott Atran was responsible for organizing a meeting of the minds at the Abbaye de Royaumont in France. Social theorist Claude Lévi-Strauss was on the guest list.
Decades later, Atran recalled how he was struck by the way Lévi-Strauss turned his personal warmth on and off like a light switch. The distinguished anthropologist’s recent passing now conjures up such memories, which mark his unique contributions to Columbia’s anthropology department.
Lévi-Strauss died at the end of October in Paris at the age of 100. His development of anthropological “structuralism,” one of the most groundbreaking social theories of the 20th century, sought to demonstrate how all human activity is informed by universal patterns of thought. Lévi-Strauss’s work directly challenged conventional Western understandings of civilization.
Anthropology professor Rosalind Morris traces the prominence of structuralism to its unifying capabilities. Lévi-Strauss’s research “attempted to dispel the idea that there were fundamental or categorical differences in the mode of thought among those defined as ‘primitive’… and those defined as ‘civilized,’” according to Morris.
An exhaustive, global-minded thinker, Lévi-Strauss studied tribal cultures in a manner unlike any anthropologist before him. He spent much of the 1930s living among indigenous peoples in North and South America where he sought to unearth the intricate logic of tradition—especially tribal mythology, systems of kinship, ritual masks, and tribal art and music.
Vincent Debaene, an assistant professor in the department of French and romance philology, served as an editor for the Lévi-Strauss edition of the “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,” a 2000-page volume containing seven of Levi-Strauss’s greatest works. The four-year project gave Debaene and his fellow editors access to the anthropologist’s personal archives, a unique opportunity he described as both exciting and moving. Lévi-Strauss’s notes were replete with drawings, diagrams, and scores of Brazilian Indian music, transcribed painstakingly by ear.
“Lévi-Strauss had never shown his field notes to anyone,” Debaene explained. “We were going to his place, reading his field notes, archives, and correspondence, and talking to him about his own ideas.”
Atran, now a professor at the University of Michigan, organized the veritable pantheon of intellectuals in France in 1974. After securing the attendance of linguist Noam Chomsky, psychologist Jean Piaget, and biologist Jacques Monod, Atran was encouraged by his academic advisor, celebrated anthropologist Margaret Mead, BC ’23 and GSAS ’29, to personally invite Lévi-Strauss to join.
Despite an initially cold reception, Atran recounted that there was “an instant change” in Lévi-Strauss’s demeanor upon Atran’s mention of Mead, and he agreed to be a part of the debate.
Atran said Lévi-Strauss was very fond of Mead, who secured him a job at The New School for Social Research when France capitulated to German invasion in 1940. It was in this climate of irreconcilable political tensions, Atran recalled, that Lévi-Strauss was able to produce some of the most humanistic ideas of the century. “He recognized that if you want to understand what’s different between people, begin by looking at what’s common.”
Lévi-Strauss was shown the American side of anthropology by renowned Columbia anthropologist Franz “Papa” Boas in the 1940s. When Boas had a heart attack during dinner at the Columbia Faculty House, he died in Lévi-Strauss’s arms.
For an intellectual who dedicated his career to the study of universals, Lévi-Strauss’s ideas continue to resonate for today’s anthropologists. From her first reading as a graduate student at Indiana University in 1982, associate professor of anthropology Neni Panourgiá still considers “Tristes Tropiques”—Lévi-Strauss’s famous memoir—a work of enormous personal significance.
“We see the anthropologist struggling for himself, thinking of himself as a self in the midst of selves,” she said.
Sonia Ahsan, who is currently studying anthropology at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, also noted the insight of Lévi-Strauss’s “Tristes Tropiques.” Flipping through her well-worn copy, she pointed with astonishment to the book’s mention of Peshawar, the city of her birth on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Even for his time, he was so well traveled,” she said.
“I felt so small next to this intellectual giant but realized, ‘He was not shy, so let’s not be shy.’ He taught me not to be fearful of unexpected associations and comparisons,” Debaene said of Lévi-Strauss. “There is a way of not being afraid that one learns from studying his work.”
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