SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) was a leading anthropologist of the twentieth century and the main exponent of “structuralism,” a theory proposing that cultural phenomena such as kinship and myth are organized systematically according to relations between their elementary units. He drew on the semiotic theories of Roman Jakobson and Ferdinand de Saussure to argue that cultural systems are a form of communication, sharing the same syntax as language itself. Structuralism offers a method to uncover these analogous structures, which Lévi-Strauss maintains arise from the universal propensity of the human mind to classify the world according to certain principles and logics.