Claude Levi-Strauss Dies

I woke up this morning to discover Levi-Strauss have passed away (and I am not talking about the jeans maker, please). A teensy-weensy sadness gnawed at my belly. Of course, I am always slightly unhappy when someone I admired passed away, whether I do know them personally or not.

What connected me to Levi-Strauss was his theory of ethnicity, claiming there is no basic difference between myths and belief systems of the so-called "primitive" civilisations and those of the western societies. Levi-Strauss became popular after published his biographical  book, Tristes Tropiques, in 1955 after he spent some time among Brazilian tribes in the Amazon. The book have long been classified as among one of the 20th Century major works.

Levi-Strauss was a believer in structuralism, a system of study which aim to uncover unconscious patterns of thoughts that has influence on human behaviour and relationships. President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy has described Levi-Strauss as a "curious academic...who was always in search of knowledge...and raised the reputation of French human and social sciences to its highest level".