Lévi-Strauss and his Nambikwara fieldnotes

Programme funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and coordinated by Emmanuel Désveaux (EHESS)

The ANR “Nambikwara” programme aims to decipher, digitize and critically edit Claude Lévi-Strauss’ field notebooks from his second Brazilian expedition within the Nambikwara (1938). The programme is thus part of a vast international movement that makes available to researchers and the public the field notebooks of the great anthropologists of the 20th century.

This project is supported by three associated partners: the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), the Institute of Modern Texts and Manuscripts (ITEM, ENS) and the National Library of France (BnF). Based on the collaboration between researchers in the human sciences, library curators, specialists in codicology, digital and genetic publishing, the programme uses the most advanced techniques in terms of reproduction, conservation and digital indexing in order to combine critical editing with genetic analysis.

The “Nambikwara” programme seeks, in short, to explore the ethnographic material of the notebooks and to understand the complexities of their epistemological, intellectual and literary destiny. In doing so, it aims to account for the process of developing Claude Lévi-Strauss’ major anthropological works, for which his field notes constitute the primitive material.

Contact anr.nambikwara@ehess/fr

For more information: here