This month, Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who radically changed the way we view other cultures, passed away at age 100.

Lévi-Strauss’ cultural analysis is remarkable in that it completely discredits any racist or supremacist notions we may have regarding other peoples. Its objective is to analyze a common underlying structure for all cultures, and therefore, it shows us that we should view cultural differences as merely variations on a general theme that we all share.

Lévi-Strauss departed from the popular functionalist theories that explained cultural practices in terms of benefit to the individual or society and created a unifying structuralist model that boiled cultural phenomena down to basic universals. He showed that we can identify the logical, even mathematical relationships between different parts of culture. Levi-Strauss argued that cultural myths, even the most foreign, magical or crazy-sounding ones, display an organized structure of binary opposites, and therefore, are similar across many cultures.

Using a beautifully simple method, Lévi-Strauss changed the way the West viewed “primitive” societies, showing their cultural practices are just as complex and sophisticated as those of Western society.

Today as well, Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism has powerful implications for how we view people of other cultural backgrounds. Foreign Minister of France Bernard Kouchner said Lévi-Strauss “broke with an ethnocentric vision of history and humanity. … At a time when we are trying to give meaning to globalization, to build a fairer and more humane world, I would like Claude Lévi-Strauss’s universal echo to resonate more strongly.”

I agree. As the world becomes more connected and we are able to communicate with people around the globe, understanding that there exists a universal culture that runs deeper than superficial differences is crucial. By accepting structuralism, we accept that other cultures are built on the same basic logic as our own, and we are less likely to believe that other cultures are inferior.

Therefore, I think the most vital lesson we can take from Levi-Strauss’s work is that cultures have more in common than we might think.

ASU is a huge institution, where students and faculty from around the world all study at the same university, practice various religions, eat differently and speak multiple languages. And college may be the first time that many of us have been exposed to such diversity. We can build a stronger community by understanding that cultural differences are really just diverse configurations of the same human relationships and experiences.

So, in memory of Claude Lévi-Strauss, I hope we can honor his life’s work by promoting tolerance, unity and cross-cultural understanding.

Reach Hannah at hannah.wasserman@asu.edu