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Re: Is Levi-Strauss essential? was It still works? Avoid it anyway.
Dan Goodman (dsgood@visi.com)
15 Jan 1997 03:11:04 GMT
In article <rdiller-1401971420320001@ntcs-ip40.uchicago.edu>,
rmd <rdiller@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>In article <5bgi96$40b@darla.visi.com>, dsgood@visi.com (Dan Goodman) wrote:
>
>> In article <5betmn$d35@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>> Chad Ryan Thomas <crthomas@indiana.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> >Seriously, though, if you don't buy Levi-Strauss, you can't buy the majority
>> >of modern thought on the structure and function of human culture. If you
>> >throw that out, you no longer have ethnographic analogy to help you
>> >understand alien cultures, and then a whole slew of bad things start to
>> >happen. (Again, this is just my take on it, and I've found several people
>> >on the 'net who think differently with quite a conviction. So please don't
>> >think I'm trying to impose my views on you.)
>> >
>> Question for sci.anthropology -- is this an accurate assessment of
>> Levi-Strauss's place in anthropology (and related disciplines)?
>
>Can't speak for anthropology, but can for a related discipline:
>comparative religion. In these parts L-S is rather out-of-date, and has
>mostly been discarded in favor of more flexible (and less overtly
>dogmatic) theories of culture. There are still a few ardent
>structuralists out there, but they're increasingly isolated from the
>mainstream. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but there's an
>answer to your question.
Can you give any pointers to the current mainstream?
Most of what I've found easily available on comparative religion has been
of the "Isn't it wonderful that Shintoism and Confucianism have the same
ideals as Christianity?" sort. I suspect this is not the leading edge of
the discipline.
--
Dan Goodman
dsgood@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
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