In the text “Race and History”, written for UNESCO, Lévi-Strauss directs his thought to cultural diversity, elaborating his theory based on a critique of evolutionism. For the author, evolutionism occurs because the West sees itself as the purpose of human development. This generates the ethnocentrism, that is, the West sees and analyzes other cultures from its own categories. There needs to be an effort to relativize not to judge other cultures through our own culture. It is necessary to see them without the presuppositions of ours.
Ethnocentrism is common to all cultures. All societies see others from within themselves. But evolutionism is a Western product, not only the biological one, but also the one that preceded it, that is, social evolutionism. When Darwin formulated his theory, social evolutionism already existed.
Thus, evolutionism becomes the first weapon with which the West decides to investigate differences and trying to explain why some peoples have a cumulative history and others a history stationary. According to evolutionary theories, diversity is explained by the fact that humanity has different stages of civilization. Savages would thus represent the childhood of Western society.
To combat evolutionism, Lévi-Strauss refutes the foundations on which it rests. According to the author, there is a great temptation to compare time-sharing societies, even though they are in different parts of space, as happens with “archaic” and Western societies. This is the primacy of evolutionism, since the objects used in these societies are the same used in Europe in the Neolithic period. The cave paintings would be hunting rites that would bring them closer to archaic societies; America would be, at the time of discovery, at the same stage in which Europe found itself in the Neolithic period.
The author makes use of the following argument: objects are used in different ways by different civilizations. For Lévi-Strauss, progress is a game and human history is the result of the bets of various players (which are different cultures). This game only takes place if there is diversification. The great revolutions of humanity, the Neolithic and the industrial, for example, were the result of this partnership between the various players, or rather, between the various cultures.
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Thus, it is understood that diversity is dynamic and homogenization itself produces diversity again. For example, the industrial revolution produces a homogenization of the economy, in production, but it produces an internal diversity in society, creating social classes such as the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This is a way of producing diversity, introducing social inequality. Another way used was imperialism, which introduces other societies as a partnership for the game.
As such, diversity always returns and, again, is homogenized. Take capitalism as an example: it produces the economic homogenization of the globe. But it creates diversity with social inequality. Thus, we have two poles that are constantly fighting. The proletarian is in struggle against the bourgeoisie through trade unions, through acquired labor rights; the social welfare society is established. Thus, a bourgeoisification of the proletarian takes place and this again ends diversity. Then occurs the neoliberalism, which destroys the welfare state, again producing social diversity.
It is concluded, then, that diversity will always exist and there is no reason to consider it an anomaly. What becomes necessary is to see diversity as necessary and the only possibility for the construction of a cumulative history. The technological evolution that we witness in the work of the West was only possible with the collaboration of all the civilizations involved. Diversity is the ontological and dynamic dimension of the human condition.
By João Francisco P. Cabral
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Philosophy from the Federal University of Uberlândia - UFU
Master's student in Philosophy at the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
CABRAL, João Francisco Pereira. "Cultural diversity in Lévi-Strauss"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/filosofia/a-diversidade-cultural-levi-strauss.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
