the Raw and the Cooked

The Raw and the Cooked is a seminal work of structuralist anthropology that proposes a structural and thematic link between the opposition of the raw and the cooked in mythological thought and humanity's attempt to establish a balanced relationship between natural and cultural forces.

Through an analysis of nearly two hundred myths from tropical South America, Lévi-Strauss demonstrates how myths cannot be understood in isolation but only as parts of an entire myth system, with the relationships and transformations between myths being more significant than individual details.