Levi-Strauss on Religion: The Structuring Mind

Claude L'vi-Strauss and the style of thinking known as structuralism with which his work is conventionally associated is widely recognized as having made a seminal contribution to the discipline of anthropology. More generally, his writings register the turn to language in social theory in the 1960s, and are marked by the influence of Kant, Rousseau, Saussurian linguistics, Marx and Freud. In turn, L'vi-Strauss is recognized as having been a key influence on thinkers such as Althusser, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. This volume seeks to address a key gap in the burgeoning secondary literature about L'vi-Strauss: his importance to the study of religions. This volume pays particular attention to L'vi-Strauss writings on totemism, myth and la pens'e sauvage situating these writings both in terms of previous theories of religion and in terms of the wider influences that informed his work. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive overview of L'vi-Strauss life and work, the thinkers and theories that informed his writings, and his contribution to the study of religions