Antropologie a problémy moderního světa

From the French original L´anthropologie face aux problemes du monde moderne translated into Czech by Josef Fulka. The publication consists of three lectures delivered by French linguist, philosopher, ethnologist and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss during his fourth visit to Tokyo, Japan in the spring of 1986. It offers a recapitulation of many notions which brought Lévi-Strauss fame in connection with his previous books: with the division to "cold" and "hot" societies, with basic principles of a structural analysis of myth or considerations concerning the problem of race. The underlying and omnipresent theme of his lectures is suggested by the title of the book: what light can anthropological research - according to conventional ideas focusing primarily on non-European societies without a writing system - shed on the questions with which our western society has struggled? Lévi-Strauss thus focuses his attention on the problems of assisted reproduction, economic development and racism: in all of theses cases Lévi-Strauss shows that the study of the "primitive" societies brings answers to these questions or at least remarkable contributions to the ways of thinking about them. The entire text is permeated with the respect for societies and nations we still tend to consider underdeveloped; this respect for cultural diversity made the work of Lévi-Strauss famous as a whole.