Dina Dreyfus, ou l’ethnographie en double mission

This article examines the trajectory of Dina Dreyfus, at the crossroads of ethnography and philosophy, between France and Brazil. One of the few French female ethnographers to have conducted fieldwork in South America before World War II, her work was long overshadowed by the fame of her then husban...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Fernanda Azeredo de Moraes
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Société des américanistes 2024-12-01
Series:Journal de la Société des Américanistes
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/jsa/24187
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Summary:This article examines the trajectory of Dina Dreyfus, at the crossroads of ethnography and philosophy, between France and Brazil. One of the few French female ethnographers to have conducted fieldwork in South America before World War II, her work was long overshadowed by the fame of her then husband and collaborator, Claude Lévi-Strauss. Her career exemplifies the gendered effects of the “double missions” ethnographic teams, proposed by Marcel Mauss, on women’s careers and on the memory of the discipline. By focusing on her Brazilian period, archival documents and publications reveal the extent of Dina Dreyfus’s ethnographic, institutional, and pedagogical work. The reproduction of previously unpublished (or now forgotten) passages from her writings provides a new and fresh perspective on the “sad tropics” of Brazil, as well as a different facet of French ethnology in the 1930s, seen through the eyes of a woman.
ISSN:0037-9174
1957-7842