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Re: Is Levi-Strauss essential? was It still works? Avoid it anyway.
Dr Jacques Steyn (steynj@paperless.co.za)
Wed, 15 Jan 1997 15:22:47 -0800
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)?
>
> --
> Dan Goodman
> dsgood@visi.com
> http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
> Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
_________________________________
On Levi-Strauss:
Levi-Strauss' paradigm of thought is "structuralism". Within that
paradigm there are/were other thinkers. Apart from structuralism there
are other paradigms, eg constructivism.
So, you definitely do not have to buy Levi-Strauss' ideas about human
cultures.
Even if scientific ideas are not absoluut in space and time, its the
best we've got. So by rejecting one explanation (eg Levi-Strauss) does
not mean you have to reject everything scientists say and only accept
pseudo-scientific explanations.
Jacques Steyn
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