Chapter 8 10/4

In this chapter, Claude Levi-Strauss discusses some of his many ideas on the unconscious elements of the human psyche. He stresses the fact that we do all of the things we do because we are either blind to the unconscious ideas within our minds or that we simply refuse to recognize the way we do certain things. The chapter later discusses the ideas of another thinker, Franz Boas. He argues that we don’t learn to speak our language until someone writes a grammar for the language. We learn to speak by listening to our parents or watching the television, which makes sense of how we learn to speak the language we speak when we are young. I have always wondered why we don’t speak a different language, but the idea of learning a language by listening to a person speak the language and deciphering what is correct and incorrect makes sense. There are two key terms mentioned in the chapter, the first being anthropology, which is defined as the study of culture or civilization. The other key term mentioned is culture, which is “the complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”