Testament De Lévi-strauss?

Abstract

This article examines the legacy of Claude Lévi-Strauss and the contemporary transformations of structural anthropology. While Lévi-Strauss revolutionized the social sciences by modeling human culture on linguistic and symbolic structures to analyze savage difference and distant alterity , globalization and modern social shifts have blurred the boundary between the "far" and the "near". By engaging with the works of three key contemporary anthropologists—Marc Augé, Gérard Althabe, and Marc Abélès—the text explores how anthropological inquiry has pivoted toward the everyday, the urban, and the global.

• 
  
  

  Marc Augé shifts focus to the ethnography of "supermodernity," analyzing "non-places" (transit hubs, hypermarkets, and digital/global networks) and the hyper-individualization of modern life.

  
  


• 
  
  

  Gérard Althabe challenges rigid structuralism by proposing an anthropology of social dynamics and "implication," emphasizing historical context, power relations, and the reciprocal gaze between the observer and the observed.

  
  


• 
  
  

  Marc Abélès develops a political anthropology of the globalized world, investigating how contemporary politics navigates transnational institutions, environmental risks, and an paradigm centered on uncertainty and "survival" rather than utopian progress.

  
  

Ultimately, the article demonstrates that while classical structuralism as a totalizing system may have yielded to new paradigms, Lévi-Strauss’s rigorous ethical and conceptual spirit endures, continuing to inform how we decipher a rapidly changing world.