Claude Lévi-Strauss Meets Alexander Goldenweiser: Boasian Anthropology and the Study of Totemism

Contrary to some recent overviews of the "Boas school" (e.g., by Marvin Harris and Derek Freeman), Boasian anthropology was far from unified even on a single subject: totemism. Although more recent thought on this subject stems from Lévi-Strauss, Alexander Goldenweiser's corpus on totemism anticipates Lévi-Strauss's formulations. This corpus included ideas that altered in the course of Goldenweiser's career, and these alterations were differently received by his "Boasian" contemporaries. It seems likely—though details of the process are unclear—that Goldenweiser's ideas "diffused" to Lévi-Strauss.     

Lévi-Strauss on the Oedipus Myth: A Reconsideration

The first half of the article presents a critique of Lévi-Strauss' well-known analysis of the Oedipus myth. A consideration of Greek beliefs suggests that Lévi-Strauss is incorrect in tying certain events in that myth to the "overvaluation of blood relations" and in asserting that the myth is concerned with the "affirmation/denial of man's autochthonous origins." The second half of the article presents a different structural analysis of the entire Theban Saga, of which the Oedipus myth is but a part. It concludes (1) that Lévi-Strauss is correct in identifying a series of events in the myth which indicate the devaluation of blood relations, but that these events specifically refer to the devaluation of patrilineal kin ties and that the range of events indicating the devaluation of patrilineal ties is broader than his analysis would suggest, and (2) there is another series of repeated events (unmentioned by Lévi-Strauss) which indicates the affirmation of patrilineal kin ties. The final hypothesis— that the opposition between the devaluation/affirmation of patrilineal kin ties underlies the Theban Saga— "makes sense" in terms of Greek history, as the period in which the Olympian myths look their present form is also the period in which the Greeks moved from a society organized along patrilineal kin ties to one organized around allegiance to the polis. [structuralism, Oedipus myth, myth and social structure, Lévi-Strauss, anthropological theory]