Claude Levi-Strauss on the social reinvention that comes with travel

“Not only does a journey transport us over enormous distances, it also causes us to move a few degrees up or down in the social scale. It displaces us physically and also — for better or worse — takes us out of our class context, so that the color and flavor of certain places cannot de dissociated from the always unexpected social level on which we find ourselves in experiencing them.”
–Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (1955)

Note: Of the many books I’ve finished of late (see above), one book I’ve had trouble finishing is Levi-Strauss’s anthropological travel classic Tristes Tropiques. Though not briskly readable, it is very quotable — and I will be excerpting it all this week. Perhaps one day I’ll actually get around to finishing it.