One of the most influential French anthropologists of the 20th Century, he founded the

structuralist school of anthropology in the 1950s

• Claude Levi Strauss applied the structural approach to anthropology arguing that family relations and belief systems are best analysed as

complex sets of interrelated parts.

• He undertook a law degree at the University of Paris, and then taught sociology at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.  He carried out sociological expeditions in Brazil in the 1930s.

• “a structuralist without knowing it” He has applied structural theory to studies of myth, ritual and kinship.

• Lévi-Strauss's contribution to structuralist thought is that he provides a scientific account which shows the world as a world of meanings. He considers culture a system of symbolic communication,

• This relates to narrative in media as, through his examination of myths from all over the world, he has identified that myths are organised in binary oppositions (for example, good/evil)

• Claude Levi Strauss was born in Belgium November 28 1908 to his French parents

• His job was a French anthropologist• Education: He studied at the university of Paris• Further education: he taught sociology at the University of São

Paulo in Brazil from 1935-1939, he was a professor at the new school for social research in 1942-1945, In 1950 he became director of studies at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes, In in 1959 Strauss assumed the chair of social anthropology at the college de France.

• Strauss has written many books including “The raw and the cooked”, “The savage mind”, “Structural anthropology” and “Totemism”

• Claude Levi Strauss is best known for his rejection of history and humanism

• I think that Strauss’s method is interesting because he has taught us how to read the signs of a human body, and how we express our thoughts and feelings through signs, symbols and body language.

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