Race and History

Paris: Unesco, 1968. Softcover. Near fine. Fifth impression. 47 pp. Light toning and a few small scuff marks on wrappers, else fine. As cited in WorldCat: "This work presents a challenge not only to mid-20th-century zoological theories of racial difference, but more radically to the very idea of human progress that underlies racism. Lévi-Strauss's goal was to assert that cultures are in fact not equal, but unique, and that these differences must not be read as inferiority, as if a culture has yet to arrive at some crucial developmental stage of mass production and consumption. Rather than products of history, cultures are accidents--and therefore incommensurable. From Lévi-Strauss's perspective, the UNESCO rhetoric that all cultures are equal, while well-intentioned, only invites comparisons that could bolster racist ideas about biological inferiority and cultural backwardness. (Adapted from Carolyn M. Rouse, "Claude Lévi-Strauss's Contribution to the Race Question: Race and History.")