Tristes Tropiques

Introduction by Patrick Wilcken
Paperback
$22.00 US
On sale Jan 31, 2012 | 448 Pages | 9780143106258
A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology

This watershed work records Claude Lévi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, Lévi-Strauss found the societies he was seeking among the Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, and Tupi-Kawahib. More than merely recounting his time in their midst, Tristes Tropiques places the cultural practices of these peoples in a global context and extrapolates a fascinating theory of culture that has given the book an importance far beyond the fields of anthropology and continental philosophy. The author's fresh approach, sense of humor, and openness to the sensuous mystique of the tropics make the scientific thrust of the book eminently accessible.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS was a leading social anthropologist and the author of Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Tristes Tropiques, Totemism, The Savage Mind, The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, and Structural Anthropology. Born in 1908, he was revered as the father of modern anthropology. He died in Paris in 2009.

View titles by Claude Levi-Strauss

About

A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology

This watershed work records Claude Lévi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, Lévi-Strauss found the societies he was seeking among the Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, and Tupi-Kawahib. More than merely recounting his time in their midst, Tristes Tropiques places the cultural practices of these peoples in a global context and extrapolates a fascinating theory of culture that has given the book an importance far beyond the fields of anthropology and continental philosophy. The author's fresh approach, sense of humor, and openness to the sensuous mystique of the tropics make the scientific thrust of the book eminently accessible.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Author

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS was a leading social anthropologist and the author of Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Tristes Tropiques, Totemism, The Savage Mind, The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, and Structural Anthropology. Born in 1908, he was revered as the father of modern anthropology. He died in Paris in 2009.

View titles by Claude Levi-Strauss

Rockford University students use Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques in Introduction to International Studies

By: Dr. Ron Lee, Associate Professor, Political Science; Chair, Department of Political Science, Sociology, and Criminal Justice; Director, First Year Seminar Program at Rockford University   In an age defined by its great enthusiasm for diversity, a serious concern with the differences between us requires that we advance our understanding of those differences beyond a

Read more

Brown University students use Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques in Principles of Cultural Anthropology

By: Matthew Gutmann, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Brown University My students are hard put to recall another writer, let alone an intellectual giant like Claude Lévi-Strauss, who inveighs against the dangers of literacy, as he does in Tristes Tropiques. It is a great discussion starter. By turns travelogue and scholarly treatise on disappearing cultures

Read more