Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Claude Lévi-Strauss on race, history and genetics

  • Original Article
  • Published:
BioSocieties Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In 1952, the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss published a small booklet titled Race and History. It formed part of a series of pamphlets on the so-called ‘race-question’ by leading anthropologists and geneticists, which UNESCO published as part of its campaign against racism. Roughly 20 years later, in 1971, UNESCO invited Lévi-Strauss's to give a lecture to open the International Year of Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination. This time the lecture, titled ‘Race and culture’, caused a scandal. In 2005, on occasion of the Organisation's sixtieth anniversary, Lévi-Strauss was once again invited by UNESCO to give a lecture. It followed the same lines as his 1971 speech, but now met with acclaim. In my paper I will analyse Lévi-Strauss’s interventions with respect to their reliance on contemporary genetics. Lévi-Strauss always saw a close analogy between structuralist anthropology and genetics, and derived his anti-evolutionary stance from the combinatory logic that both disciplines endorsed. I will argue, that it was this combinatory logic which created room for historical contingency and agency in Lévi-Strauss’s understanding of the history of humankind.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The English translation (Lévi-Strauss, 1992a, p. xiii) is ‘lively scandal’, which is a rather overstated rendering of un assez joli scandal. Lévi-Strauss later toned down his earlier account of the scandal in De près et de loin (1988), a book based on an extended interview with Didier Eribon (Lévi-Strauss and Eribon, 1991, p. 152).

  2. The English translation follows the second, revised edition of Les structures élémentaires de la parenté, published in 1967. The passages quoted here, and in the following, remained unchanged against the first edition, however.

  3. An excerpt from this memorandum has been published in The UNESCO Courier, 2008, 5, URL=http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=41841.

  4. I owe the chemical metaphor of ‘fractionation’ to Norton Wise.

References

  • Barkan, E. (1993) The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonneuil, C. (2005) Producing identity, industrializing purity: Elements for a cultural history of genetics. In: Cultural History of Heredity IV: Heredity in the Century of the Gene, Preprint No. 343, 81–110. Berlin, Germany: Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brattain, M. (2007) Race, racism, and antiracism: UNESCO and the politics of presenting science to the postwar public. American Historical Review 112: 1386–1413.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, S. (1981) The Foundations of Structuralism: A Critique of Lévi-Strauss and the Structuralist Movement. Brighton: Harvester Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahlberg, G. (1929) Inbreeding in man. Genetics 14: 421–454.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahlberg, G. (1937) On rare defects in human populations with particular regard to in-breeding and isolate effects. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 58: 213–232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dahlberg, G. (1943) Race, Reason and Rubbish: An Examination of the Biological Credentials of the Nazi Creed. London: Allen & Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dunn, L.C. and Dobzhansky, T. (1946) Heredity, Race and Society. New York: Penguin.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • East, E.M. (1938) Heredity and Human Affairs. New York: C. Scribner's Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fry, P.H. (2005) O significado da anemia falciforme no contexto da “política racial” do governo Brasileiro 1995–2004. História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos 12: 347–370.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gayon, J. (2003) Do biologists need the expression “human races”? UNESCO 1950–1951. In: J.J. Rozenberg (ed.) Bioethical and Ethical Issues Surrounding the Trials and Code of Nuremberg: Nuremberg Revisited. Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen, pp. 23–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (1997) Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan©_Meets _OncoMouse™. Feminism and Technoscience. New York and London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacob, F. (1970) La logique du vivant. Paris: Gallimard.

  • Jacob, F., Jakobson, R., Lévi-Strauss, C., L'Héritier, P. and Tréguer, M. (1968) Vivre et Parler. Les Lettres Francaises, 1221: 1–7, 1222: 4–5.

  • Johannsen, W. (1911) The genotype conception of heredity. American Naturalist 45: 129–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, C. (2003) Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Formative Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kay, L. (2000) Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laubichler, M.L. (2007) Tinkering: A conceptual and historical evaluation. In: G. Bock and J. Goode (eds.) Tinkering: The Microevolution of Development. Chichester, UK: Wiley (Novartis Foundation Symposium, Vol. 284), pp. 20–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (1952) Race et histoire. Paris: UNESCO.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966) The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (1969) The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Revised edn, R. Needham (ed.), Translated by J.H. Bell and J.R. von Sturmer. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (1971) Race and culture. International Social Science Journal 23: 608–625.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (1977) Race and history. In: C. Lévi-Strauss (ed.) Structural Anthropology, Volume II, Translated by M. Layton. London: Allan Lane, pp. 323–362.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (1983) Le regard éloigné. Paris: Plon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (1992a) The View from Afar, Translated by J. Neugroschel and P. Hoss. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (1992b) Tristes Tropiques, Translated by J. and D. Weightman. New York: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (2001) Race et histoire. Race et culture. Paris: UNESCO/Albin Michel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (2007) Refléxion. In: 60 ans d’histoire de l’UNESCO. Actes du colloque international, Paris, 16–18 novembre 2005, Paris: UNESCO, pp. 31–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (2008) Lévi-Strauss remembers …. The UNESCO Courier, 2008, 5, URL=http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=41836.

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. and Eribon, D. (1991) Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss, Translated by P. Wissing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lindee, S. (2003) Voices of the dead: James Neel's Amerindian studies. In: F.M. Salzano and A.M. Hurtado (eds.) Lost Paradises and the Ethics of Research and Publication. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 27–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone, F.B. (1958) Anthropological implications of Sickle Cell Gene distribution in West Africa. American Anthropologist 60: 533–562.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mendelsohn, A. (1999) Das wilde Gehirn. Über Natur und Kultur im Zeitalter des Strukturalismus. In: M. Hagner (ed.) Ecce Cortex. Beiträge zur Geschichte des modernen Gehirns. Göttingen: Wallstein, pp. 286–306.

    Google Scholar 

  • Müller-Wille, S. (2005) Race and kinship in anthropology: Morgan and Boas. In: A Cultural History of Heredity III: 19th and Early 20th Centuries, Preprint 294, pp. 255–263.

  • Müller-Wille, S. (2007) Race et appartenance ethnique: la diversité humaine et l’UNESCO Déclarations sur la race (1950 et 1951). In: 60 ans d’histoire de l’UNESCO. Actes du colloque international, Paris, 16–18 novembre 2005. Paris: UNESCO, pp. 211–220.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neel, J.V. (1970) Lessons from a “primitive” people. Science 170: 815–822.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pace, D. (1983) Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Bearer of Ashes. Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parfitt, T. and Egorova, Y. (2006) Genetics, Mass Media and Identity: A Case Study of the Genetic Research on the Lemba and Bene Israel. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pogliano, C. (2001) Statements on race dell’Unesco: cronaca di un lungo travaglio, 1949–1953. Nuncius Studi e Testi 16: 347–399.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Proctor, R.N. (2003) Three roots of human recency: Molecular anthropology, the refigured Acheulean, and the UNESCO response to Auschwitz. Current Anthropology 44: 213–229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reardon, J. (2005) Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genmics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. (2008) Race, risk and medicine in the age of ‘your own personal genome’. BioSocieties 3: 423–439.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S.B. (2002) Denounced by Lévi-Strauss. The Americas 59: 1–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stenou, E. (ed.) (2007) L’UNESCO et la question de la diversité culturelle, 1946–2007. Bilan et stratégies. Paris: UNESCO (Série diversité culturelle, Vol. 3).

    Google Scholar 

  • Stoczkowski, W. (2007) Racisme, anti-racisme et cosmologie lévi-straussienne. Un essai d’anthropologie réflexive. L’Homme 182: 7–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stoczkowski, W. (2008) Claude Lévi-Strauss and UNESCO. The UNESCO Courier, 2008, 5, URL=http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=41820.

  • Tapper, M. (1999) In the Blood: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race. Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • UNESCO. (1952) The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry. Paris: UNESCO.

  • UNESCO. (1956) The Race Question in Modern Science: Race and Science. Paris: UNESCO.

  • Visweswaran, K. (2003) The interventions of culture: Claude Lévi-Strauss, race, and the critique of historical time. In: R. Bernasconi (ed.) Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 227–248.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wailoo, K. (1996) Genetic marker of segregation: Sickle cell anemia, thalassemia and racial ideology. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 18: 305–320.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wailoo, K. and Pemberton, S. (2006) The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine. Ethnicity and Innovation in Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, and Sickle Cell Disease. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weingart, P., Bayertz, K. and Kroll, J. (1992) Rasse, Blut und Gene: Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ESRC Centre for Genomics and Society, University of Exeter, Byrne House, Exeter, EX4 4PJ, UK

    Staffan Müller-Wille

Authors
  1. Staffan Müller-Wille
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Müller-Wille, S. Claude Lévi-Strauss on race, history and genetics. BioSocieties 5, 330–347 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2010.17

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2010.17

Keywords

Search

Navigation