This article will be released in full online February 7, 2022. Eleanor Burke Leacock taught that transhistorical, universal male dominance is a myth, not a fact.
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) was the foremost anthropologist of the twentieth century, and one of its most renowned intellectuals of any persuasion. Common readers, if they know him at all, tend to do so only by
Tristes Tropiques (French for “Sad Tropics”), his 1955 memoir of his fieldwork among Brazilian tribes and his travels as an academic junketeer in other alien enclaves. That book is salted with animadversions on the spread of the “monoculture” of the West doing its worst to refashion the world in its unhandsome image.
When he retails for a popular audience his experiences among the Caduveo, Bororo, and Nambikwara Indians, his observations are exceedingly sharp, shrewd, and empathetic. Yet although
Scientific American
Why Anthropology Matters
It’s the antidote to nativism, the enemy of hate a vaccine of understanding, tolerance and compassion that can counter the rhetoric of demagogues
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Kiplinger and
Forbes ranked anthropology as the least valuable undergraduate major, unleashing a small wave of indignation as many outside the field rushed to defend the study of culture as ideal preparation for any life or career in an interconnected and globalized world. The response from professional anthropologists, confronted by both an existential challenge and public humiliation, was earnest but largely ineffective, for the voice of the discipline had been muted by a generation of self-absorption, tempered by a disregard for popular engagement that borders on contempt.