Claude Levi-Strauss

Claude Levi-Strauss applied methods drawn from structural linguistics to the anthropological study of kinship, myth and ritual, arguing that the surface variety of human cultures rests on a smaller set of underlying mental structures, usually organized around binary oppositions. The Elementary Structures of Kinship, published in 1949, analyzed marriage rules and kinship terminology as a system of exchange between groups, and Structural Anthropology, published in 1958, set out the method for the wider field that came to be called structuralism. He held the chair of social anthropology at the College de France from 1959 to 1982.