Lévi-Strauss, C., Anthropology and Problems of the Modern World. translated by Fulka, J. Prague: Karolinum. 2012.

The text of the publication consists of three lectures, which French linguist, philosopher, ethnologist and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss presented during his fourth visit to Japan in the spring of 1986, in Tokyo. The readers will meet the recapitulation of a number of concepts that Lévi-Strauss has made known in connection with his previous books: the division into "cold" and "hot" societies, the basic principles of structural analysis of myths, or reflections on race issues.
However, the basic and ubiquitous subject of his lectures is what is suggested in the title of the book. What light can anthropological exploration - based on conventional ideas centred mainly on non-European non-literary societies - cast on the issues faced by Western civilization? The problem of assisted reproduction, economic development or racism is thus at the centre of Lévi-Strauss's attention: in all these cases, Lévi-Strauss shows that the study of so-called "primitive" societies brings if not the answers to these problems, then at least a remarkable contributions to the possibilities of their reflection. This whole late text is pervaded with the respect for communities and nations, which we often tend to regard as underdeveloped: the respect for the cultural diversity that celebrates Lévi-Strauss's work as a whole.