Character Catalog

A founding work of structural anthropology, demonstrating that the prohibition of incest and the exchange of women between groups are at the basis of all social organization.

An autobiographical and philosophical account of his travels in Brazil, blending ethnography, meditation on civilization, and a critique of colonialism. Considered a literary masterpiece.

A collection of theoretical articles that lays the methodological foundations of structuralism in anthropology, applying structural linguistics to the study of societies.

A work that rehabilitates the thought of so-called primitive societies, showing that it is just as rigorous and logical as Western scientific thought.

A monumental study analyzing hundreds of Amerindian myths to identify their universal logical structures. The four volumes are titled The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, The Origin of Table Manners, and The Naked Man.

A text written for UNESCO that deconstructs the notion of hierarchy between civilizations and argues for cultural diversity as a richness of humanity.

A study of the masks of the peoples of the northwest coast of America, showing that their meaning can only be understood within a system of transformations between neighboring societies.

I hate travelling and explorers. Yet here I am proposing to tell the story of my expeditions. But how long it has taken me to make up my mind to do so!

World civilization cannot be anything other than the coalition, on a world scale, of cultures each preserving its own originality.

The ultimate goal of the human sciences is not to constitute man but to dissolve him.

The scientist is not the person who provides the right answers; it is the one who asks the right questions.

Lévi-Strauss taught sociology at the university there from 1935 to 1939. It served as his base for ethnographic expeditions into the Mato Grosso.

The region of his major expeditions among the Caduveo, Bororo, and Nambikwara peoples — founding experiences that shaped his vocation as an ethnologist.

His place of exile during the war (1941–1947), where he met Roman Jakobson and attended the New School for Social Research.

He held the chair of social anthropology there from 1959 to 1982, founding the Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale.

His country house where he liked to retreat to write and work away from the bustle of Paris.

Lévi-Strauss meticulously recorded his ethnographic observations in notebooks during his expeditions in Brazil, also sketching villages and ritual objects.

He documented his fieldwork among the Nambikwara and Bororo through photography, building valuable visual archives of the peoples he studied.

His working method relied on a card index system in which he classified myths, variants, and motifs to identify underlying common structures.

An avid pipe smoker, Lévi-Strauss was often photographed with this object, which accompanied him during his long hours of reading and reflection.

He collected and studied masks from the peoples of the American Northwest Coast, dedicating an entire book to them: The Way of the Masks.

Passionate about music, particularly Wagner and Rameau, he structured the volumes of his Mythologiques according to musical forms: fugue, sonata, rondo.