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collection" in the relevant area and worked tirelessly on Peru and
Argentina. "Everything I know about ethnology, I learned there," he
admitted later.
Confronted by professional demands usually impa.ed only on estab–
lished figures, Levi-Strauss accelerated his research. In the Library of
Congress and in the American Philosophical Society he found vast,
unsuspected resources-"sleeping treasures," as he called them. Later,
with the creation within the New School of the "French University in
Exile"-which included figures like Georges Gurvitch, Jacques
Soustelle, and Jean Weiller-Levi-Strauss helped establish the Institute
of Sociology. There he was able to teach in French and choose the topic
of his class in ethnology.
The war proved something of a godsend for Levi-Strauss because it
catapulted him early in his career into intellectual hyperspace-from
the poverty of French social sciences into the opulence of the American
scientific community. There he had the opportunity to interact freely
with acclaimed academics, unhindered by hierarchical barriers. In those
days of exceptional intellectual activity, he was quickly and warmly wel–
comed by the master of American ethnology, Franz Boas, and admitted
to a circle which included Robert Lowie, Ruth Benedict, Margaret
Mead, and Ralph Linton.
During those years, certain elements in the American intellectual
world that had attracted him almost intuitively in his early reading of
Lowie's work became available to Levi-Strauss: "In the U.S., I started to
read periodicals like
Scientific American, Science,
and
Nature,"
he
declares today. "I didn't understand everything, far from it, but they
made a valuable contribution
to
my work...
.I
have always been fasci–
nated by traditional natural sciences like zoology, botany, and geology."
Between the vast libraries and the numerous publications, Levi-Strauss
was discovering little by little the range of the American scientific com–
munity. The balance between arcane scientific research and its commu–
nication to a popular audience struck him as completely novel.
Another American novelty Levi-Strauss discovered was that the bor–
ders between disciplines seemed more distinctive and yet less rigid than
in France. He was able to inquire into the outer limits of ethnology and
its relationship to other scientific disciplines, such as linguistics, psy–
chology, history, mathematics, biology, and geology. He could also
engage in dialogues with many others thus constructing a vast new sci–
entific culture. As to history, he was "shocked by Malinowsky's posi–
tions as well as by those of a few American anthropologists." His own
position was uncompromising. When he participated in the conference
