Our first reading for the course comes from the most distinguished anthropologist of the past century - Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose profound influence changed not only how western scholars looked at indigenous peoples, but how we understand society, through his innovations in structuralist thought.
Lévi-Strauss did his early ethnographic among Amazonian Indians in Brazil, and in Tristes Tropiques he does more than give an account of their customs and social organization: he consults his own experience to question how one culture can observe and understand another, very different one.
You are reading excerpts from the beginning and end of the book. (Find them at the MyCorcoran Course page.) After you've thought them over, please post a comment selecting a passage or a point from your reading and explaining what it means, and how it might affect your own attempts to understand indigenous peoples and how the western world has viewed them.
You might consider your own previous background and interest in the topic. Do you come from indigenous background? Do you have a strong previous interest in or experience with indigenous groups and cultures? Do you feel you've been influenced by popular images? Please don't neglect to focus your comment on your response to Lévi-Strauss, however. If you read other participants' comments before completing your own, feel free to consider them in your response.
Please post by 9 am on Wednesday, September 7, so everyone has a chance to read it before class. Your response should be about 250 words, or one double-spaced printed page. In addition to posting on the blog, please bring a copy to submit in class, email to bwelt@corcoran.org. Include your name, the course number and title (AS2000D Humanities I), and the date on your copy. Please.
