Claude Levi-Strauss, a pioneering figure in social antropology, has turned 100. Like a number of prominent social scientists in Europe, he trained in philosophy and then did field work, making his writing of a different intellectual character than so much of social science in America (something he shared both with older french generations in social science like Durkheim and Mauss, as well as later generations such as Bourdieu and Wanquant).
He founded the Laboratory of Social Anthropology in France which provided a prototype of sorts for the Colaboratory in Contemporary Anthropology (although more as a negative example than a model) founded by my teacher Paul Rabinow in Berkeley. Levi-Strauss did a series of interviews with Didier Eribon now published by the University of Chicago. They famously include his comments about the intellecual greats of his time including Sartre and Camus as well as Foucault, Lacan, and an important figure for my own work, Merleu-Ponty. Happy Birthday, Professor.
photo: Pascal Pavani/Agence France-Presse
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