Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction An intellectual biography
- Chapter 1 Lévi-Strauss, linguistics and structuralism
- Chapter 2 Kinship as communication
- Chapter 3 The illusion of totemism
- Chapter 4 Myths without meaning?
- Chapter 5 Structuralism, shamanism and material culture
- Chapter 6 The structure of nostalgia
- Chapter 7 Lévi-Strauss and the study of religions
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction An intellectual biography
- Chapter 1 Lévi-Strauss, linguistics and structuralism
- Chapter 2 Kinship as communication
- Chapter 3 The illusion of totemism
- Chapter 4 Myths without meaning?
- Chapter 5 Structuralism, shamanism and material culture
- Chapter 6 The structure of nostalgia
- Chapter 7 Lévi-Strauss and the study of religions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The customs of a community, taken as a whole, always have a particular style and are reducible to systems. I am of the opinion that the number of such systems is not unlimited and that—in their games, dreams or wild imaginings—human societies, like individuals, never create absolutely, but merely choose certain combinations from an ideal repertoire that it should be possible to define. By making an inventory of all recorded customs, of all those imagined in myths or suggested in children's games or adult games, or in the dreams of healthy or sick individuals or in psycho-pathological behaviour, one could arrive at a sort of table, like that of the chemical elements, in which all actual or hypothetical customs would be grouped in families, so that one could see at a glance which customs a particular society had in fact adopted.
(Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques)Three insuperable difficulties present themselves at the outset of this book whose remit lies in the critical exposition of the ideas and writings of Claude Lévi-Strauss for a religious studies—or as I prefer—a study of religions, audience. The first concerns the status of structuralism, a movement, fashion or mode of thought with which Claude Lévi-Strauss, to his liking or not, will always be associated. Structuralism appeared to promise a true and total science of humankind, a grand promise to be sure and one which proved to be, as with it seems all such promises, illusory.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Lévi-Strauss on ReligionThe Structuring Mind, pp. vii - xPublisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2008