This book attempts to grant a clear insight into the problem of
culture. Thinking about culture, we are faced with the inevitable,
and apparently insuperable, problem of how to study culture in the
absence of a consensual definition of this notion. For several reasons,
the anthropologists Claude Lévi-Strauss and Clifford Geertz provide
an ideal starting point for tackling this issue. Firstly, both graduated in
philosophy before turning to anthropology. Secondly, the linguisticmodel-
based approach they initiated is founded on the general belief
that language is a feature which all men have in common. And
thirdly, when taken together, the conclusions reached by Lévi-Strauss
and Geertz, which contradict one another, yield a clear view on the
conceptual complexity of culture.