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Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982, was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973 and was a member of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He received numerous honors from universities and institutions throughout the world. Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere. These observations culminated in his famous book ''Tristes Tropiques'' (1955) that established his position as one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his ideas reached into many fields in the humanities, including philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as "t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dina Lévi-Strauss
Dina Dreyfus (French: ʁɛˈfys, also known as Dina Levi-Strauss (French: evi stʁos 1 February 1911, Milan – 25 February 1999, Paris), was a French ethnologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and philosopher, who conducted cultural research in South America. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and also became an agrégé. She taught at the University of São Paulo in Brazil and later founded the first ethnological society in the country. She met her husband through her brother, Pierre Dreyfus, as much of their environment had everyone interconnected. In 1932 she married Claude Lévi-Strauss, who was also a French anthropologist. It can be assumed that part of his interest in ethnology was developed while working with Dina Levi-Strauss. In 1935 she joined the French cultural mission to lecture at the newly founded University of São Paulo. She taught a course on practical ethnology that attracted a large audience from the city's educated, French-speaking society. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floating Signifier
A floating signifier (also sometimes referred to as an empty signifier, but Ernesto Laclau separates both concepts) is a signifier without a referent in semiotics and discourse analysis, such as a word that points to no actual object and has no agreed upon meaning. The term open signifier is sometimes used as a synonym due to the empty signifier's nature to "resist the constitution of any unitary meaning" thus enabling its ability to remain open to different meanings in different contexts. Definition Claude Lévi-Strauss originated this term, where he identifies terms like ''mana'' (magical mystical substance of which the magic is formed) "to represent an undetermined quantity of signification, in itself void of meaning and thus apt to receive any meaning". Daniel Chandler defines the term as "a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signified". As such a "floating signifier" may "mean different things to different people: they may stand for many or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherine Clément
Catherine Clément (; born 10 February 1939) is a French philosopher, novelist, feminist, and literary critic, born in Boulogne-Billancourt. She received a degree in philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure, and studied under its faculty Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan, working in the fields of anthropology and psychoanalysis. A member of the school of French feminism and écriture féminine, she has published books with Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva. She lived many years overseas, as her husband, André Lewin (1934–2012), was a diplomat who was France's Ambassador to India, Austria, Guinea, Gambia and Senegal. She was awarded the Grand Officer of the Ordre national du Mérite in 2012 and the Commander of the Legion of Honour in 2017. Bibliography Novels * ''Bildoungue ou la vie de Freud'', Christian Bourgois, 1978 * ''La Sultane'', Grasset, 1981 * ''Le Maure de Venise'', Grasset, 1983 * ''Bleu Panique'', Grasset, 1986 * ''Adrienne Lecouvreur ou le c� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmund Leach
Sir Edmund Ronald Leach FRAI FBA (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist and academic. He served as provost of King's College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1979. He was also president of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 1971 to 1975. Early years Personal life Leach was born in Sidmouth, Devon, the youngest of three children and the son of William Edmund Leach and Mildred Brierley. His father owned and was manager of a sugar plantation in northern Argentina. In 1940 Leach married Celia Joyce who was then a painter and later published poetry and two novels. They had a daughter in 1941 and a son in 1946. Education and career Leach was educated at Marlborough College and Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA with honours in Engineering in 1932. After leaving Cambridge University, Leach took a four-year contract in 1933 with Butterfield and Swire in China, serving in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Chungking (now Chongqing), Tsingt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence in several related academic fields (e.g. anthropology, media and cultural studies, education, popular culture, and the arts). During his academic career he was primarily associated with the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and the Collège de France. Bourdieu's work was primarily concerned with the dynamics of power in society, especially the diverse and subtle ways in which power is transferred and social order is maintained within and across generations. In conscious opposition to the idealist tradition of much of Western philosophy, his work often emphasized the corporeal nature of social life and stressed the role of practice and embodiment in social dynamics. Building upon and criticizing the theories o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson Le Roy, who also succeeded to Bergson at the ''Académie française'' and was a fervent Catholic, extended to Revelation, revealed truth his conventionalism, leading him to privilege faith, heart and sentiment to dogmas, speculative theology and abstract reasoning. Like Bergson's, his writings were placed on the Index by the Vatican. Debate with Albert Einstein In 1922, Bergson's book ''Durée et simultanéité, a propos de la theorie d'Einstein'' (''Duration and Simultaneity: Bergson and the Einsteinian Universe'') was published. Earlier that year, Albert Einstein had come to the French Society of Philosophy and briefly replied to a short speech made by Bergson. It has been alleged that Bergson's knowledge of physics was insufficient and that the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought. His '' Discourse on Inequality'' and '' The Social Contract'' are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's sentimental novel '' Julie, or the New Heloise'' (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and romanticism in fiction. His '' Emile, or On Education'' (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—the posthumously published '' Confessions'' (composed in 1769), which initiated the modern autobiography, and the unfinished ''Reveries of the Solitary Walker'' (composed 1776–1778)—exemplified the late 18th-century " Age of Sensibility", and feature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss (; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950) was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology. Today, he is perhaps better recognised for his influence on the latter discipline, particularly with respect to his analyses of topics such as magic, sacrifice and gift exchange in different cultures around the world. Mauss had a significant influence upon Claude Lévi-Strauss, the founder of structural anthropology. His most famous work is '' The Gift'' (1925). Background Mauss was born in Épinal, Vosges, to a Jewish family, his father a merchant and mother an embroidery shop owner. Unlike his younger brother, Mauss did not join the family business and instead he followed socialist and cooperative movement in the Vosges. Following the death of his grandfather, the Mauss and Durkheim families grew close and there Mauss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, FBA (born Alfred Reginald Brown; 17 January 1881 – 24 October 1955) was an English social anthropologist who helped further develop the theory of structural functionalism. Biography Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown was born Alfred Reginald Brown in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, England, the second son of Alfred Brown (d.1886), a manufacturer's clerk, and his wife Hannah (née Radcliffe). He later changed his last name, by deed poll, to Radcliffe-Brown, Radcliffe being his mother's maiden name. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1905; M.A., 1909), graduating with first-class honours in the moral sciences tripos. At Trinity College, he was elected Anthony Wilkin student in 1906 and 1909. While still a student, he earned the nickname "Anarchy Brown" for his close interest in the writings of the anarcho-communist and scientist Peter Kropotkin. :"Like other young men with blood in their ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet ''The Communist Manifesto'' and the four-volume (1867–1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory. Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He married German theatre critic and political activist Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile with his wife and children in London for decades, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German philosopher Friedrich Engels and publish his writings, researching in the British Mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim ( or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with both Karl Marx and Max Weber. Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies can maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity, an era in which traditional social and religious ties are much less universal, and in which new social institutions have come into being. Durkheim's conception of the scientific study of society laid the groundwork for modern sociology, and he used such scientific tools as statistics, surveys, and historical observation in his analysis of suicides in Catholic and Protestant groups. His first major sociological work was (1893; ''The Division of Labour in Society''), followed in 1895 by ('' The Rules of Sociological Method''), the same year in which Durkheim set up the first European ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Boas
Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical particularism and cultural relativism. Studying in Germany, Boas was awarded a doctorate in 1881 in physics while also studying geography. He then participated in a geographical expedition to northern Canada, where he became fascinated with the culture and language of the Baffin Island Inuit. He went on to do field work with the indigenous cultures and languages of the Pacific Northwest. In 1887 he emigrated to the United States, where he first worked as a museum curator at the Smithsonian, and in 1899 became a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, where he remained for the rest of his career. Through his students, many of whom went on to found anthropology departments and research programmes inspired by their mentor, Boas pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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