Dina Lévi-Strauss facts for kids
Dina Dreyfus (born February 1, 1911, in Milan – died February 25, 1999, in Paris), also known as Dina Levi-Strauss, was an important French thinker. She was an ethnologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and philosopher. She is known for her research on different cultures in South America.
Dina studied philosophy at the Sorbonne university in Paris. She later became a highly qualified teacher. She taught at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. She also helped start the first group for studying cultures in Brazil.
In 1932, she married Claude Lévi-Strauss, who was also a French anthropologist. It is thought that her interest in studying cultures helped him develop his own interest in the field. In 1935, she joined a French group that went to teach at the new University of São Paulo. She taught a class on practical ethnology, which many educated, French-speaking people in the city attended. She also started Brazil's first ethnological society, called the Society for Ethnography and Folklore. She founded it with Mário de Andrade, whom she met during an expedition to the Amazon rainforest with her husband. Dina also took part in the French Resistance during World War II. Later, she taught more about philosophy.
Work in Brazil
From 1936 to 1938, Dina and her husband did field research in Mato Grosso and Rondônia in the Amazon rainforest. They studied the cultures of the Guaycuru and Bororo Indigenous tribes. This research was paid for by São Paulo's Department of Culture. The study involved Dina, her husband, twenty men, fifteen mules, and about thirty oxen. They also brought guns and ammunition.
Dina took many photographs and made ethnographic films. These films were made from her photos and showed details about the tribes they were studying. She was very careful in recording the tribes and believed that using cameras and other audiovisual equipment was very important. She focused on Bororo funeral ceremonies and farming life in Mato Grosso. Most of her films were about eight minutes long. Some titles included A vida em uma aldeia Bororo (Life in a Bororo Village) and Cerimônias Fúnebres entre os Indios Bororo (Funeral Ceremonies among the Bororo Ι and ΙΙ).
Dina later used her short films and photographs for a course she taught to members of the Society of Ethnography and Folklore. Her main goal was to gather information that would help make anthropology more organized. She also wanted to show how diverse Brazilian culture was, based on her research. Her friend, Mario de Andrade, encouraged her to make her films more scientific. To achieve her goals, she focused on showing the objects and daily life of the tribes, rather than including herself or her husband in the scenes.
Objects collected during the Mato Grosso trip were first shown in Paris at the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. The exhibition was called Indiens du Mato-Grosso (Mission Claude et Dina Lévi-Strauss), which showed that both scientists had contributed. Dina believed that objects could carry the traits of human actions and reflect cultures and beliefs. She also noted that how an object changes over time can affect how it is seen and classified. She shared these ideas in her university lectures, where she also taught about the ideas of Frazer, Boas, and Marcel Mauss.
In 1938, she returned to Brazil with her husband to continue studying Indigenous tribes. They mainly studied the Nambikwara and Tupi-Kawahib tribes. For the Nambikwara, their study focused on how they lived and where they settled. Dina was proud of this work, but she sometimes felt overwhelmed by the Nambikwara groups. This was especially true when she learned that the Nambikwara dipped their arrows in a dangerous substance. During her last and longest trip to the Nambikwara, she got an eye infection. This forced her to return to São Paulo, and then to France in 1938. Her husband stayed behind to finish the trip.
Later Life
Dina and Claude Lévi-Strauss divorced some time after their work with the Nambikwara. One reason for their separation was that they took different paths during World War II. They separated in 1939 and were divorced by 1945, when Claude Lévi-Strauss remarried. Dina then went back to using her maiden name, Dreyfus.
In the years that followed, Dina's influence on her husband and her contributions to their shared trips were often overlooked. This happened because her role was not highlighted in her former husband's famous writings. When Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote about his experiences in Brazil in his 1955 book, Tristes Tropiques, he mentioned his former wife only once. He only noted the moment she had to leave the last expedition.
Later, Dina worked as a philosophy teacher in a high school and at a university. She also became an inspecteur général in the French education system, which is a high-ranking official who inspects schools. In the 1950s, she wrote articles about Georges Bernanos and Simone Weil. In the 1960s, she translated works by David Hume and Sigmund Freud.
Dina Dreyfus passed away at the age of 88 in Paris on February 25, 1999.
