He saw inside the structure of myth a binary logic that we also can find in divisive political ideology and universalizing civil discourse alike. Levi-Strauss also looked deeply into the wisdom of so-called primitive society.
It is precisely because the line between “traditional” and “modern” has turned out to be so problematic that Emile Durkheim’s theorizing about the Aboriginal religion still speaks to the cultural processes of our time.
A century of Marxist and Weberian social theory has been on a fool’s errand: It turns out we are not yet modern. Cultural sociology emerges from the paradox that societies today are not nearly as rational as they would like to think they are.