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Claude Lévi-Strauss
Bronisław Malinowski
Margaret Mead
Henrietta Moore
Lewis H. Morgan
Stephen O. Murray
Michelle Rosaldo
David M. Schneider
Marilyn Strathern

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Sex and Repression in Savage Society
Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship
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vt
Claude Lévi-Strauss (/klɔːd ˈleɪvi ˈstraʊs/;[2] French:[klod levi stʁos]; 28 November 1908, Brussels – 30 October 2009, Paris)[3][4][5] was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology.[6] He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982 and was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973. He received numerous honors from universities and institutions throughout the world and has been called, alongside James George Frazer and Franz Boas,[7] the "father of modern anthropology".[8]
Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere.[9][10] These observations culminated in his famous book Tristes Tropiques that established his position as one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his ideas reached into many fields in the humanities, including philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as "the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity."[4]
Biography
Early life, education, and career
Claude Lévi-Strauss was born to French Jewish parents who were living in Brussels at the time, where his father was working as a portrait painter.[11] He grew up in Paris, living on a street of the upscale 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he admired and later wrote about.[12] During the First World War, he lived with his maternal grandfather, who was the rabbi of the synagogue of Versailles.[13] He attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly and the Lycée Condorcet.
At the Sorbonne in Paris, Lévi-Strauss studied law and philosophy. He did not pursue his study of law, but passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1931. In 1935, after a few years of secondary-school teaching, he took up a last-minute offer to be part of a French cultural mission to Brazil in which he would serve as a visiting professor of sociology at the University of São Paulo while his then wife, Dina, served as a visiting professor of ethnology.
The couple lived and did their anthropological work in Brazil from 1935 to 1939. During this time, while he was a visiting professor of sociology, Claude undertook his only ethnographic fieldwork. He accompanied Dina, a trained ethnographer in her own right, who was also a visiting professor at the University of São Paulo, where they conducted research forays into the Mato Grosso and the Amazon Rainforest. They first studied the Guaycuru and Bororó Indian tribes, staying among them for a few days. In 1938, they returned for a second, more than half-year-long expedition to study the Nambikwara and Tupi-Kawahib societies. At this time, his wife suffered an eye infection that prevented her from completing the study, which he concluded. This experience cemented Lévi-Strauss's professional identity as an anthropologist. Edmund Leach suggests, from Lévi-Strauss's own accounts in Tristes Tropiques, that he could not have spent more than a few weeks in any one place and was never able to converse easily with any of his native informants in their native language, which is uncharacteristic of anthropological research methods of participatory interaction with subjects to gain a full understanding of a culture.
In the 1980s, he suggested why he became vegetarian in pieces published in Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica and other publications anthologized in the posthumous book Nous sommes tous des cannibales (2013): "A day will come when the thought that to feed themselves, men of the past raised and massacred living beings and complacently exposed their shredded flesh in displays shall no doubt inspire the same repulsion as that of the travellers of the 16th and 17th century facing cannibal meals of savage American primitives in America, Oceania or Africa."
Claude Lévi-Strauss was an atheist.[14]
Expatriation
Lévi-Strauss returned to France in 1939 to take part in the war effort, and was assigned as a liaison agent to the Maginot Line. After the French capitulation in 1940, he was employed at a lycée in Montpellier, but then was dismissed under the Vichy racial laws. (Lévi-Strauss's family, originally from Alsace, was of Jewish ancestry.) By the same laws, he was denaturalized (stripped of French citizenship). Around that time,  his first wife and he separated. She stayed behind and worked in the French resistance, while he managed to escape Vichy France by boat to Martinique,[15] from where he was finally able to continue traveling. In 1941, he was offered a position at the New School for Social Research in New York City and granted admission to the United States. A series of voyages brought him, via South America, to Puerto Rico, where he was investigated by the FBI after German letters in his luggage aroused the suspicions of customs agents. Lévi-Strauss spent most of the war in New York City. Along with Jacques Maritain, Henri Focillon, and Roman Jakobson, he was a founding member of the École Libre des Hautes Études, a sort of university-in-exile for French academics.
The war years in New York were formative for Lévi-Strauss in several ways. His relationship with Jakobson helped shape his theoretical outlook (Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss are considered to be two of the central figures on which structuralist thought is based).[16] In addition, Lévi-Strauss was also exposed to the American anthropology espoused by Franz Boas, who taught at Columbia University. In 1942, while having dinner at the Faculty House at Columbia, Boas died of a heart attack in Lévi-Strauss's arms.[17] This intimate association with Boas gave his early work a distinctive American inclination that helped facilitate its acceptance in the U.S. After a brief stint from 1946 to 1947 as a cultural attaché to the French embassy in Washington, DC, Lévi-Strauss returned to Paris in 1948. At this time, he received his state doctorate from the Sorbonne by submitting, in the French tradition, both a "major" and a "minor" doctoral thesis. These were The Family and Social Life of the Nambikwara Indians (La vie familiale et sociale des indiens Nambikwara) and The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Les structures élémentaires de la parenté).[18]:234
Structural anthropology

The Elementary Structures of Kinship was published the next year and quickly came to be regarded as one of the most important anthropological works on kinship. It was even reviewed favorably by Simone de Beauvoir, who viewed it as an important statement of the position of women in non-Western cultures. A play on the title of Durkheim's famous Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Elementary Structures re-examined how people organized their families by examining the logical structures that underlay relationships rather than their contents. While British anthropologists such as Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown argued that kinship was based on descent from a common ancestor, Lévi-Strauss argued that kinship was based on the alliance between two families that formed when women from one group married men from another.[19]
Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lévi-Strauss continued to publish and experienced considerable professional success. On his return to France, he became involved with the administration of the CNRS and the Musée de l'Homme before finally becoming professor (directeur d'études) of the fifth section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, the 'Religious Sciences' section where Marcel Mauss was previously professor, the title of which chair he renamed "Comparative Religion of Non-Literate Peoples".
While Lévi-Strauss was well known in academic circles, in 1955 he became one of France's best known intellectuals by publishing Tristes Tropiques in Paris that year by Plon (and translated into English in 1973, published by Penguin). Essentially, this book was a memoir detailing his time as a French expatriate throughout the 1930s, and his travels. Lévi-Strauss combined exquisitely beautiful prose, dazzling philosophical meditation, and ethnographic analysis of the Amazonian peoples to produce a masterpiece. The organizers of the Prix Goncourt, for instance, lamented that they were not able to award Lévi-Strauss the prize because Tristes Tropiques was nonfiction.
Lévi-Strauss was named to a chair in social anthropology at the Collège de France in 1959. At roughly the same time he published Structural Anthropology, a collection of his essays which provided both examples and programmatic statements about structuralism. At the same time as he was laying the groundwork for an intellectual program, he began a series of institutions to establish anthropology as a discipline in France, including the Laboratory for Social Anthropology where new students could be trained, and a new journal, l'Homme, for publishing the results of their research.
In 1962, Lévi-Strauss published what is for many people his most important work, La Pensée Sauvage, translated into English as The Savage Mind. The French title is an untranslatable pun because the word pensée means both "thought" and "pansy", while sauvage has a range of meanings different from English "savage". Lévi-Strauss supposedly suggested that the English title be Pansies for Thought, borrowing from a speech by Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet (ACT IV, Scene V). French editions of La Pensée Sauvage are often printed with an image of wild pansies on the cover.
The Savage Mind discusses not just "primitive" thought, a category defined by previous anthropologists, but also forms of thought common to all human beings. The first half of the book lays out Lévi-Strauss's theory of culture and mind, while the second half expands this account into a theory of history and social change. This latter part of the book engaged Lévi-Strauss in a heated debate with Jean-Paul Sartre over the nature of human freedom. On the one hand, Sartre's existentialist philosophy committed him to a position that human beings fundamentally were free to act as they pleased. On the other hand, Sartre also was a leftist who was committed to ideas such as that individuals were constrained by the ideologies imposed on them by the powerful. Lévi-Strauss presented his structuralist notion of agency in opposition to Sartre. Echoes of this debate between structuralism and existentialism eventually inspired the work of younger authors such as Pierre Bourdieu.
Now a worldwide celebrity, Lévi-Strauss spent the second half of the 1960s working on his master project, a four-volume study called Mythologiques. In it, he followed a single myth from the tip of South America and all of its variations from group to group north through Central America and eventually into the Arctic Circle, thus tracing the myth's cultural evolution from one end of the Western Hemisphere to the other. He accomplished this in a typically structuralist way, examining the underlying structure of relationships among the elements of the story rather than by focusing on the content of the story itself. While Pensée Sauvage was a statement of Lévi-Strauss's big-picture theory, Mythologiques was an extended, four-volume example of analysis. Richly detailed and extremely long, it is less widely read than the much shorter and more accessible Pensée Sauvage, despite its position as Lévi-Strauss's masterwork.

Lévi-Strauss completed the final volume of Mythologiques in 1971. On 14 May 1973, he was elected to the Académie française, France's highest honour for a writer.[20]  He was a member of other notable academies worldwide, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1956, he became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[21] He received the Erasmus Prize in 1973, the Meister-Eckhart-Prize for philosophy in 2003, and several honorary doctorates from universities such as Oxford, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. He also was the recipient of the Grand-croix de la Légion d'honneur, was a Commandeur de l'ordre national du Mérite, and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 2005, he received the XVII Premi Internacional Catalunya (Generalitat of Catalonia). After his retirement, he continued to publish occasional meditations on art, music, philosophy, and poetry.
Later life and death

In 2008, he became the first member of the Académie française to reach the age of 100 and one of the few living authors to have his works published in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. On the death of Maurice Druon on 14 April 2009, he became the Dean of the Académie, its longest-serving member.
He died on 30 October 2009, a few weeks before his 101st birthday.[3] The death was announced four days later.[3]
French President Nicolas Sarkozy described him as "one of the greatest ethnologists of all time".[22] Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, said Lévi-Strauss "broke with an ethnocentric vision of history and humanity ... At a time when we are trying to give meaning to globalisation, to build a fairer and more humane world, I would like Claude Lévi-Strauss's universal echo to resonate more strongly".[8] In a similar vein, a statement by Lévi-Strauss was broadcast on National Public Radio in the remembrance produced by All Things Considered on November 3, 2009: "There is today a frightful disappearance of living species, be they plants or animals. And it's clear that the density of human beings has become so great, if I can say so, that they have begun to poison themselves. And the world in which I am finishing my existence is no longer a world that I like." The Daily Telegraph said in its obituary that Lévi-Strauss was "one of the dominating postwar influences in French intellectual life and the leading exponent of Structuralism in the social sciences".[23] Permanent secretary of the Académie française Hélène Carrère d'Encausse said: "He was a thinker, a philosopher ... We will not find another like him".[24]
Theories
Summary
Lévi-Strauss sought to apply the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure to anthropology.[25] At the time, the family was traditionally considered the fundamental object of analysis, but was seen primarily as a self-contained unit consisting of a husband, a wife, and their children. Nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all were treated as secondary. Lévi-Strauss argued that, however, akin to Saussure's notion of linguistic value, families acquire determinate identities only through relations with one another. Thus he inverted the classical view of anthropology, putting the secondary family members first and insisting on analyzing the relations between units instead of the units themselves.[26]
In his own analysis of the formation of the identities that arise through marriages between tribes, Lévi-Strauss noted that the relation between the uncle and the nephew was to the relation between brother and sister, as the relation between father and son is to that between husband and wife, that is, A is to B as C is to D. Therefore, if we know A, B, and C, we can predict D, just as if we know A and D, we can predict B and C. The goal of Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology, then, was to simplify the masses of empirical data into generalized, comprehensible relations between units, which allow for predictive laws to be identified, such as A is to B as C is to D.[26]
Similarly, Lévi-Strauss identified myths as a type of speech through which a language could be discovered. His work is a structuralist theory of mythology which attempted to explain how seemingly fantastical and arbitrary tales could be so similar across cultures. Because he believed there was not one "authentic" version of a myth, rather that they were all manifestations of the same language, he sought to find the fundamental units of myth, namely, the mytheme. Lévi-Strauss broke each of the versions of a myth down into a series of sentences, consisting of a relation between a function and a subject. Sentences with the same function were given the same number and bundled together. These are mythemes.[27]
What Lévi-Strauss believed he had discovered when he examined the relations between mythemes was that a myth consists of juxtaposed binary oppositions. Oedipus, for example, consists of the overrating of blood relations and the underrating of blood relations, the autochthonous origin of humans and the denial of their autochthonous origin. Influenced by Hegel, Lévi-Strauss believed that the human mind thinks fundamentally in these binary oppositions and their unification (the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad), and that these are what make meaning possible. Furthermore, he considered the job of myth to be a sleight of hand, an association of an irreconcilable binary opposition with a reconcilable binary opposition, creating the illusion, or belief, that the former had been resolved.[27]
Anthropological theories

Lévi-Strauss's theory is set forth in Structural Anthropology (1958). Briefly, he considers culture a system of symbolic communication, to be investigated with methods that others have used more narrowly in the discussion of novels, political speeches, sports, and movies.
His reasoning makes best sense when contrasted against the background of an earlier generation's social theory. He wrote about this relationship for decades.
A preference for "functionalist" explanations dominated the social sciences from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1950s, which is to say that anthropologists and sociologists tried to state the purpose of a social act or institution. The existence of a thing was explained, if it fulfilled a function. The only strong alternative to that kind of analysis was historical explanation, accounting for the existence of a social fact by stating how it came to be.
The idea of social function developed in two different ways, however. The English anthropologist Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, who had read and admired the work of the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, argued that the goal of anthropological research was to find the collective function, such as what a religious creed or a set of rules about marriage did for the social order as a whole. Behind this approach was an old idea, the view that civilization developed through a series of phases from the primitive to the modern, everywhere in the same manner. All of the activities in a given kind of society would partake of the same character; some sort of internal logic would cause one level of culture to evolve into the next. On this view, a society can easily be thought of as an organism, the parts functioning together as do the parts of a body.
In contrast, the more influential functionalism of Bronisław Malinowski described the satisfaction of individual needs, what a person derived by participating in a custom.
In the United States, where the shape of anthropology was set by the German-educated Franz Boas, the preference was for historical accounts. This approach had obvious problems, which Lévi-Strauss praises Boas for facing squarely.
Historical information seldom is available for non-literate cultures. The anthropologist fills in with comparisons to other cultures and is forced to rely on theories that have no evidential basis, the old notion of universal stages of development or the claim that cultural resemblances are based on some unrecognized past contact between groups. Boas came to believe that no overall pattern in social development could be proven; for him, there was no single history, only histories.
There are three broad choices involved in the divergence of these schools–each had to decide what kind of evidence to use; whether to emphasize the particulars of a single culture or look for patterns underlying all societies; and what the source of any underlying patterns might be, the definition of a common humanity.
Social scientists in all traditions relied on cross-cultural studies. It always was necessary to supplement information about a society with information about others. So some idea of a common human nature was implicit in each approach.
The critical distinction, then, remained: does a social fact exist because it is functional for the social order, or because it is functional for the person? Do uniformities across cultures occur because of organizational needs that must be met everywhere, or because of the uniform needs of human personality?
For Lévi-Strauss, the choice was for the demands of the social order. He had no difficulty bringing out the inconsistencies and triviality of individualistic accounts. Malinowski said, for example, that magic beliefs come into being when people need to feel a sense of control over events when the outcome was uncertain. In the Trobriand Islands, he found the proof of this claim in the rites surrounding abortions and weaving skirts. But in the same tribes, there is no magic attached to making clay pots even though it is no more certain a business than weaving. So, the explanation is not consistent. Furthermore, these explanations tend to be used in an ad hoc, superficial way–one postulates a trait of personality when needed.
But the accepted way of discussing organizational function didn't work either. Different societies might have institutions that were similar in many obvious ways and yet, served different functions. Many tribal cultures divide the tribe into two groups and have elaborate rules about how the two groups may interact. But exactly what they may do–trade, intermarry–is different in different tribes; for that matter, so are the criteria for distinguishing the groups.
Nor will it do to say that dividing-in-two is a universal need of organizations, because there are a lot of tribes that thrive without it.
For Lévi-Strauss, the methods of linguistics became a model for all his earlier examinations of society. His analogies usually are from phonology (though also later from music, mathematics, chaos theory, cybernetics, and so on).
"A really scientific analysis must be real, simplifying, and explanatory," he writes.[28] Phonemic analysis reveals features that are real, in the sense that users of the language can recognize and respond to them. At the same time, a phoneme is an abstraction from language–not a sound, but a category of sound defined by the way it is distinguished from other categories through rules unique to the language. The entire sound-structure of a language may be generated from a relatively small number of rules.
In the study of the kinship systems that first concerned him, this ideal of explanation allowed a comprehensive organization of data that partly had been ordered by other researchers. The overall goal was to find out why family relations differed among various South American cultures. The father might have great authority over the son in one group, for example, with the relationship rigidly restricted by taboos. In another group, the mother's brother would have that kind of relationship with the son, while the father's relationship was relaxed and playful.
A number of partial patterns had been noted. Relations between the mother and father, for example, had some sort of reciprocity with those of father and son–if the mother had a dominant social status and was formal with the father, for example, then the father usually had close relations with the son. But these smaller patterns joined together in inconsistent ways.
One possible way of finding a master order was to rate all the positions in a kinship system along several dimensions. For example, the father was older than the son, the father produced the son, the father had the same sex as the son, and so on; the matrilineal uncle was older and of the same sex, but did not produce the son, and so on. An exhaustive collection of such observations might cause an overall pattern to emerge.
But for Lévi-Strauss, this kind of work was considered "analytical in appearance only." It results in a chart that is far more difficult to understand than the original data and is based on arbitrary abstractions (empirically, fathers are older than sons, but it is only the researcher who declares that this feature explains their relations). Furthermore, it doesn't explain anything. The explanation it offers is tautological–if age is crucial, then age explains a relationship. And it does not offer the possibility of inferring the origins of the structure.
A proper solution to the puzzle is to find a basic unit of kinship which can explain all the variations. It is a cluster of four roles–brother, sister, father, son. These are the roles that must be involved in any society that has an incest taboo requiring a man to obtain a wife from some man outside his own hereditary line. A brother may give away his sister, for example, whose son might reciprocate in the next generation by allowing his own sister to marry exogamously. The underlying demand is a continued circulation of women to keep various clans peacefully related.
Right or wrong, this solution displays the qualities of structural thinking. Even though Lévi-Strauss frequently speaks of treating culture as the product of the axioms and corollaries that underlie it, or the phonemic differences that constitute it, he is concerned with the objective data of field research. He notes that it is logically possible for a different atom of kinship structure to exist–sister, sister's brother, brother's wife, daughter–but there are no real-world examples of relationships that can be derived from that grouping. The trouble with this view has been shown by the Australian anthropologist Augustus Elkin, who insisted on the point that in a four class marriage system, the preferred marriage was with a classificatory mother' s brother's daughter and never with the true one. Lévi-Strauss's atom of kinship structure deals only with consanguineal kin. There is a big difference between the two situations, in that the kinship structure involving the classificatory kin relations allows for the building of a system which can bring together thousands of people. Lévi-Strauss's atom of kinship stops working once the true MoBrDa is missing. Lévi-Strauss also developed the concept of the house society to describe those societies where the domestic unit is more central for social organization than the descent group or lineage.
The purpose of structuralist explanation is to organize real data in the simplest effective way. All science, he says, is either structuralist or reductionist. In confronting such matters as the incest taboo, one is facing an objective limit of what the human mind has accepted so far. One could hypothesize some biological imperative underlying it, but so far as social order is concerned, the taboo has the effect of an irreducible fact. The social scientist can only work with the structures of human thought that arise from it.
And structural explanations can be tested and refuted. A mere analytic scheme that wishes causal relations into existence is not structuralist in this sense.
Lévi-Strauss's later works are more controversial, in part because they impinge on the subject matter of other scholars. He believed that modern life and all history was founded on the same categories and transformations that he had discovered in the Brazilian back country–The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, The Naked Man (to borrow some titles from the Mythologiques). For instance he compares anthropology to musical serialism and defends his "philosophical" approach. He also pointed out that the modern view of primitive cultures was simplistic in denying them a history. The categories of myth did not persist among them because nothing had happened–it was easy to find the evidence of defeat, migration, exile, repeated displacements of all the kinds known to recorded history. Instead, the mythic categories had encompassed these changes.
He argued for a view of human life as existing in two timelines simultaneously, the eventful one of history and the long cycles in which one set of fundamental mythic patterns dominates and then perhaps another. In this respect, his work resembles that of Fernand Braudel, the historian of the Mediterranean and 'la longue durée,' the cultural outlook and forms of social organization that persisted for centuries around that sea. He is right in that history is difficult to build up in non literate society, nevertheless, Jean Guiart's anthropological and José Garanger's archeological work in central Vanuatu, bringing to the fore the skeletons of former chiefs described in local myths, who had thus been living persons, shows that there can be some means of ascertaining the history of some groups which otherwise would be deemed a-historical. Another issue is the experience that the same person can tell one a myth highly charged in symbols, and some years later a sort of chronological history claiming to be the chronic of a descent line (from examples in the Loyalty islands and New Zealand), the two texts having in common that they each deal in topographical detail with the land-tenure claims of the said descent line (see Douglas Oliver on the Siwai in Bougainville). Lévi-Strauss would agree to these aspects be explained inside his seminar, but would never touch them on his own. The anthropological data content of the myths was not his problem. He was only interested with the formal aspects of each story, considered by him as the result of the workings of the collective unconscious of each group, which idea was taken from the linguists, but cannot be proved in any way although he was adamant about its existence and would never accept any discussion on this point.
The structuralist approach to myth

Lévi-Strauss sees a basic paradox in the study of myth. On one hand, mythical stories are fantastic and unpredictable: the content of myth seems completely arbitrary. On the other hand, the myths of different cultures are surprisingly similar:
On the one hand it would seem that in the course of a myth anything is likely to happen. ... But on the other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding similarity between myths collected in widely different regions. Therefore the problem: If the content of myth is contingent [i.e., arbitrary], how are we to explain the fact that myths throughout the world are so similar?[28]:208
Lévi-Strauss proposed that universal laws must govern mythical thought and resolve this seeming paradox, producing similar myths in different cultures. Each myth may seem unique, but he proposed it is just one particular instance of a universal law of human thought. In studying myth, Lévi-Strauss tries "to reduce apparently arbitrary data to some kind of order, and to attain a level at which a kind of necessity becomes apparent, underlying the illusions of liberty".[29] Laurie suggests that for Levi-Strauss, 'operations embedded within animal myths provide opportunities to resolve collective problems of classification and hierarchy, marking lines between the inside and the outside, the Law and its exceptions, those who belong and those who do not'.[30]
According to Lévi-Strauss, "mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution".[28]:224 In other words, myths consist of:
elements that oppose or contradict each other and
other elements that "mediate", or resolve, those oppositions.
For example, Lévi-Strauss thinks the trickster of many Native American mythologies acts as a "mediator". Lévi-Strauss's argument hinges on two facts about the Native American trickster:
the trickster has a contradictory and unpredictable personality;
the trickster is almost always a raven or a coyote.
Lévi-Strauss argues that the raven and coyote "mediate" the opposition between life and death. The relationship between agriculture and hunting is analogous to the opposition between life and death: agriculture is solely concerned with producing life (at least up until harvest time); hunting is concerned with producing death. Furthermore, the relationship between herbivores and beasts of prey is analogous to the relationship between agriculture and hunting: like agriculture, herbivores are concerned with plants; like hunting, beasts of prey are concerned with catching meat. Lévi-Strauss points out that the raven and coyote eat carrion and are therefore halfway between herbivores and beasts of prey: like beasts of prey, they eat meat; like herbivores, they don't catch their food. Thus, he argues, "we have a mediating structure of the following type":[28]:224

By uniting herbivore traits with traits of beasts of prey, the raven and coyote somewhat reconcile herbivores and beasts of prey: in other words, they mediate the opposition between herbivores and beasts of prey. As we have seen, this opposition ultimately is analogous to the opposition between life and death. Therefore, the raven and coyote ultimately mediate the opposition between life and death. This, Lévi-Strauss believes, explains why the coyote and raven have a contradictory personality when they appear as the mythical trickster:
The trickster is a mediator. Since his mediating function occupies a position halfway between two polar terms, he must retain something of that duality—namely an ambiguous and equivocal character.[28]:226
Because the raven and coyote reconcile profoundly opposed concepts (i.e., life and death), their own mythical personalities must reflect this duality or contradiction: in other words, they must have a contradictory, "tricky" personality.
This theory about the structure of myth helps support Lévi-Strauss's more basic theory about human thought. According to this more basic theory, universal laws govern all areas of human thought:
If it were possible to prove in this instance, too, that the apparent arbitrariness of the mind, its supposedly spontaneous flow of inspiration, and its seemingly uncontrolled inventiveness [are ruled by] laws operating at a deeper level ... if the human mind appears determined even in the realm of mythology, a fortiori it must also be determined in all its spheres of activity.[29]
Out of all the products of culture, myths seem the most fantastic and unpredictable. Therefore, Lévi-Strauss claims, if even mythical thought obeys universal laws, then all human thought must obey universal laws.
The Savage Mind: bricoleur and engineer
Lévi-Strauss developed the comparison of the Bricoleur and Engineer in The Savage Mind. "Bricoleur" has its origin in the old French verb bricoler, which originally referred to extraneous movements in ball games, billiards, hunting, shooting and riding, but which today means do-it-yourself building or repairing things with the tools and materials on hand, puttering or tinkering as it were. In comparison to the true craftsman, whom Lévi-Strauss calls the Engineer, the Bricoleur is adept at many tasks and at putting preexisting things together in new ways, adapting his project to a finite stock of materials and tools. The Engineer deals with projects in their entirety, conceiving and procuring all the necessary materials and tools to suit his project. The Bricoleur approximates "the savage mind" and the Engineer approximates the scientific mind. Lévi-Strauss says that the universe of the Bricoleur is closed, and he often is forced to make do with whatever is at hand, whereas the universe of the Engineer is open in that he is able to create new tools and materials. But both live within a restrictive reality, and so the Engineer is forced to consider the preexisting set of theoretical and practical knowledge, of technical means, in a similar way to the Bricoleur.
Criticism
Lévi-Strauss's theory on the origin of the Trickster has been criticized on a number of points by anthropologists. Stanley Diamond notes that while the secular civilized often consider the concepts of life and death to be polar, primitive cultures often see them "as aspects of a single condition, the condition of existence."[31]:308 Diamond remarks that Lévi-Strauss did not reach such a conclusion by inductive reasoning, but simply by working backwards from the evidence to the "a priori mediated concepts"[31]:310 of "life" and "death", which he reached by assumption of a necessary progression from "life" to "agriculture" to "herbivorous animals", and from "death" to "warfare" to "beasts of prey". For that matter, the coyote is well known to hunt in addition to scavenging and the raven also has been known to act as a bird of prey, in contrast to Lévi-Strauss's conception. Nor does that conception explain why a scavenger such as a bear would never appear as the Trickster. Diamond further remarks that "the Trickster names 'raven' and 'coyote' which Lévi-Strauss explains can be arrived at with greater economy on the basis of, let us say, the cleverness of the animals involved, their ubiquity, elusiveness, capacity to make mischief, their undomesticated reflection of certain human traits."[31]:311 Finally, Lévi-Strauss's analysis does not appear to be capable of explaining why representations of the Trickster in other areas of the world make use of such animals as the spider and mantis.
Edmund Leach wrote that "The outstanding characteristic of his writing, whether in French or English, is that it is difficult to understand; his sociological theories combine baffling complexity with overwhelming erudition. Some readers even suspect that they are being treated to a confidence trick".[32] The sociologist Stanislav Andreski criticized Lévi-Strauss's work generally, arguing that his scholarship was often sloppy and moreover that much of his mystique and reputation stemmed from his "threatening people with mathematics," a reference to Lévi-Strauss's use of quasi-algebraic equations to explain his ideas.[33] The critic Camille Paglia dismissed Lévi-Strauss as overrated, commenting that "When as a Yale graduate student I ransacked that great temple, Sterling Library, in search of paradigms for reintegrating literary criticism with history, I found literally nothing in Lévi-Strauss that I felt had scholarly solidity."[34] Drawing on post-colonial approaches to anthropology, Timothy Laurie has suggested that "Lévi-Strauss speaks from the vantage point of a State intent on securing knowledge for the purposes of, as he himself would often claim, salvaging local cultures... but the salvation workers also ascribe to themselves legitimacy and authority in the process".[35]
Honours

Works
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Gracchus Babeuf et le communisme, L'églantine, 1926.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. La Vie familiale et sociale des Indiens Nambikwara, Paris, Société des américanistes, 1948.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Race et histoire (1952, UNESCO;  from "Race and History" – in English; see also The Race Question, UNESCO, 1950)
, Journal of American Folklore (1955)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques (1955, trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman, 1973) – also translated as A World on the Wane
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Anthropologie structurale (1958, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, 1963)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Le Totemisme aujourdhui (1962, Totemism, trans. Rodney Needham, 1963)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. La Pensée sauvage (1962, The Savage Mind, 1966)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Mythologiques I–IV (trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman)
Le Cru et le cuit (1964, The Raw and the Cooked, 1969)
Du miel aux cendres (1966, From Honey to Ashes, 1973)
L'Origine des manières de table (1968, The Origin of Table Manners, 1978)
L'Homme nu (1971, The Naked Man, 1981)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Anthropologie structurale deux (1973, Structural Anthropology, Vol. II, trans. Monique Layton, 1976)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. La Voie des masques (1972, The Way of the Masks, trans. Sylvia Modelski, 1982)
templatestyles stripmarker in |postscript= at position 23 (help)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Paroles donnés (1984, Anthropology and Myth: Lectures, 1951–1982, trans. Roy Willis, 1987)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Le Regard éloigné (1983, The View from Afar, trans. Joachim Neugroschel and Phoebe Hoss, 1985)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. La Potière jalouse (1985, The Jealous Potter, trans. Bénédicte Chorier, 1988)
templatestyles stripmarker in |postscript= at position 23 (help)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Regarder, écouter, lire (1993, Look, Listen, Read, trans. Brian Singer, 1997)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Saudades do Brasil, Paris, Plon, 1994
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Le Père Noël supplicié, Pin-Balma, Sables, 1994
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. L’Anthropologie face aux problèmes du monde moderne, Paris: Seuil, 2011
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. L’Autre face de la lune, Paris: Seuil, 2011
Interviews
De près et de loin, interviewed by Didier Eribon (1988, Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss, trans. Paula Wissing, 1991)
Loin du Brésil, interviewed by Véronique Mortaigne, Paris, Chandeigne, 2005
Jean-Louis de Rambures, "Comment travaillent les écrivains", Paris 1978 (interview with C. Lévi-Strauss)
See also

Alliance theory
Comparative mythology
Evolutionary Principle
List of important publications in anthropology
Little Arpad

Notes

Boon, James, and David Schneider. . American Anthropologist, New Series 76.4(1974): 799–817
Doja, Albert (2008): "Claude Lévi-Strauss at his Centennial: toward a future anthropology", Theory, Culture & Society, 25(7-8): 321–340, doi: <>.
Doja, Albert (2010): "Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009): The apotheosis of heroic anthropology", Anthropology Today, 26(5): 18–23, doi: <>.
Leach, Edmund, Lévi-Strauss (1970) Fontana/Collins ISBN0-00-632255-7
Wiseman, Boris. Introducing Lévi-Strauss. Totem Books, 1998.
Wiseman, Boris, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Lévi-Strauss. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Further reading

 film directed by Edson Matarezio

 at marxists.org
 from "Race and History" (1952 – see also The Race Question, 1950, UNESCO)

, in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory (subscriber access only)

, 1991 – Super 16 Film
, Obituary, The Economist, 12 November 2009
, 3 and 4 October 1984, UC Berkeley (audio file)
 Examines the structural differences between barter and monetary commodity exchanges and oral and written linguistic exchanges
Philippe Descola, "Claude Lévi-Strauss: a Career Spanning a Century", in  n°4, 2009, p.36.
, in English, translated by John Russell, 1961

Claude Lévi-Strauss and his Mythologiques — An interdisciplinary internet project by scholars of the  (Germany):

What was Claude Lévi-Strauss's first book?


New South Wales (abbreviated as NSW) is a state on the east coast of Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria to the south, and South Australia to the west. Its coast borders the Tasman Sea to the east.  The Australian Capital Territory is an enclave within the state. New South Wales' state capital is Sydney, which is also Australia's most populous city. In March 2018, the population of New South Wales was over 7.9 million,[3] making it Australia's most populous state. Just under two-thirds of the state's population, 5.1 million, live in the Greater Sydney area.[9] Inhabitants of New South Wales are referred to as New South Welshmen.[1][2]
The Colony of New South Wales was founded as a penal colony in 1788. It originally comprised more than half of the Australian mainland with its western boundary set at 129th meridian east in 1825. The colony also included the island territories of New Zealand, Van Diemen's Land, Lord Howe Island, and Norfolk Island. During the 19th century, most of the colony's area was detached to form separate British colonies that eventually became New Zealand and the various states and territories of Australia. However, the Swan River Colony has never been administered as part of New South Wales.
Lord Howe Island remains part of New South Wales, while Norfolk Island has become a federal territory, as have the areas now known as the Australian Capital Territory and the Jervis Bay Territory.
History

Aborigines (indigenous people)

The prior inhabitants of New South Wales were the Aboriginal tribes who arrived in Australia about 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. Before European settlement there were an estimated 250,000 Aboriginal people in the region.[10]
The Wodi Wodi people are the original custodians of the Illawarra region of South Sydney.[11] Speaking a variant of the Dharawal language, the Wodi Wodi people lived across a large stretch of land which was roughly surrounded by what is now known as Campbelltown, Shoalhaven River and Moss Vale.[11]
The Bundjalung people are the original custodians of parts of the northern coastal areas.
1788 British settlement
The European discovery of New South Wales was made by Captain James Cook during his 1770 survey along the unmapped eastern coast of the Dutch-named continent of New Holland, now Australia. In his original journal(s) covering the survey, in triplicate to satisfy Admiralty Orders, Cook first named the land "New Wales", named after Wales. However, in the copy held by the Admiralty, he "revised the wording" to "New South Wales".[12]
The first British settlement was made by what is known in Australian history as the First Fleet; this was led by Captain Arthur Phillip, who assumed the role of governor of the settlement on arrival in 1788 until 1792.[13][14]
After years of chaos and anarchy after the overthrow of Governor William Bligh, a new governor, Lieutenant-Colonel (later Major-General) Lachlan Macquarie, was sent from Britain to reform the settlement in 1809.[15] During his time as governor, Macquarie commissioned the construction of roads, wharves, churches and public buildings, sent explorers out from Sydney and employed a planner to design the street layout of Sydney. Macquarie's legacy is still evident today.
Mid-19th century
During the 19th century, large areas were successively separated to form the British colonies of Tasmania (proclaimed as a separate colony named Van Diemen's Land in 1825), South Australia (1836), Victoria (1851) and Queensland (1859). Responsible government was granted to the New South Wales colony in 1855. Following the Treaty of Waitangi, William Hobson declared British sovereignty over New Zealand in 1840. In 1841 it was separated from the Colony of New South Wales to form the new Colony of New Zealand.
Charles Darwin visited Australia in January 1836 and in The Voyage of the Beagle (chapter19 of the 11th edition) records his hesitations about and fascination with New South Wales, including his speculations about the geological origin and formation of the great valleys, the aboriginal population, the situation of the convicts, and the future prospects of the country.
1901 Federation of Australia
At the end of the 19th century, the movement toward federation between the Australian colonies gathered momentum. Conventions and forums involving colony leaders were held on a regular basis. Proponents of New South Wales as a free trade state were in dispute with the other leading colony Victoria, which had a protectionist economy. At this time customs posts were common on borders, even on the Murray River.
Travelling from New South Wales to Victoria in those days was very difficult. Supporters of federation included the New South Wales premier Sir Henry Parkes whose 1889 Tenterfield Speech (given in Tenterfield) was pivotal in gathering support for New South Wales involvement. Edmund Barton, later to become Australia's first Prime Minister, was another strong advocate for federation and a meeting held in Corowa in 1893 drafted an initial constitution.
In 1898 popular referenda on the proposed federation were held in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. All votes resulted in a majority in favour, but the New South Wales government under Premier George Reid (popularly known as "yes–no Reid" because of his constant changes of opinion on the issue) had set a requirement for a higher "yes" vote than just a simple majority which was not met.
In 1899 further referenda were held in the same states as well as Queensland (but not Western Australia). All resulted in yes votes with majorities increased from the previous year. New South Wales met the conditions its government had set for a yes vote. As a compromise to the question on where the capital was to be located, an agreement was made that the site was to be within New South Wales but not closer than 100 miles (161km) from Sydney, while the provisional capital would be Melbourne. Eventually the area that now forms the Australian Capital Territory was ceded by New South Wales when Canberra was selected.
Early 20th century
In the years after World War I, the high prices enjoyed during the war fell with the resumption of international trade. Farmers became increasingly discontented with the fixed prices paid by the compulsory marketing authorities set up as a wartime measure by the Hughes government. In 1919 the farmers formed the Country Party, led at national level by Earle Page, a doctor from Grafton, and at state level by Michael Bruxner, a small farmer from Tenterfield.
The Great Depression, which began in 1929, ushered in a period of political and class conflict in New South Wales. The mass unemployment and collapse of commodity prices brought ruin to both city workers and to farmers. The beneficiary of the resultant discontent was not the Communist Party, which remained small and weak, but Jack Lang's Labor populism. Lang's second government was elected in November 1930 on a policy of repudiating New South Wales' debt to British bondholders and using the money instead to help the unemployed through public works. This was denounced as illegal by conservatives, and also by James Scullin's federal Labor government. The result was that Lang's supporters in the federal Caucus brought down Scullin's government, causing a second bitter split in the Labor Party. In May 1932 the Governor, Sir Philip Game dismissed his government. The subsequent election was won by the conservative opposition.

By the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the differences between New South Wales and the other states that had emerged in the 19th century had faded as a result of federation and economic development behind a wall of protective tariffs. New South Wales continued to outstrip Victoria as the centre of industry, and increasingly of finance and trade as well. Labor returned to office under the moderate leadership of William McKell in 1941 and remained in power for 24 years. World War II saw another surge in industrial development to meet the needs of a war economy, and also the elimination of unemployment.
Post-war period
Labor stayed in power until 1965. Towards the end of its term in power, it announced a plan for the construction of an opera/arts facility on Bennelong Point. The design competition was won by Jørn Utzon. Controversy over the cost of the Sydney Opera House became a political issue and was a factor in the eventual defeat of Labor in 1965 by the conservative Liberal Party led by Sir Robert Askin. Sir Robert remains a controversial figure with supporters claiming him to be reformist especially in terms of reshaping the NSW economy. Others though, regard the Askin era as synonymous with corruption with Askin the head of a network involving NSW police and SP bookmaking (Goot).

In the late 1960s a secessionist movement in the New England region of the state led to a referendum on the issue. The new state would have consisted of much of northern NSW including Newcastle. The referendum was narrowly defeated and, as of 2010, there are no active or organised campaigns for new states in NSW.
Askin's resignation in 1975 was followed by a number of short lived premierships by Liberal Party leaders. When a general election came in 1976 the ALP under Neville Wran were returned to power. Wran was able to transform this narrow one seat victory into landslide wins (known as Wranslide) in 1978 and 1981.
After winning a comfortable though reduced majority in 1984, Wran resigned as premier and left parliament. His replacement Barrie Unsworth struggled to emerge from Wran's shadow and lost a 1988 election against a resurgent Liberal Party led by Nick Greiner. Unsworth was replaced as ALP leader by Bob Carr. Initially Greiner was a popular leader instigating reform such as the creation of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). Greiner called a snap election in 1991 which the Liberals were expected to win. However the ALP polled extremely well and the Liberals lost their majority and needed the support of independents to retain power.
Greiner was accused (by ICAC) of corrupt actions involving an allegation that a government position was offered to tempt an independent (who had defected from the Liberals) to resign his seat so that the Liberal party could regain it and shore up its numbers. Greiner resigned but was later cleared of corruption. His replacement as Liberal leader and Premier was John Fahey whose government secured Sydney the right to host the 2000 Summer Olympics. In the 1995 election, Fahey's government lost narrowly and the ALP under Bob Carr returned to power.

Like Wran before him Carr was able to turn a narrow majority into landslide wins at the next two elections (1999 and 2003). During this era, NSW hosted the 2000 Sydney Olympics which were internationally regarded as very successful, and helped boost Carr's popularity. Carr surprised most people by resigning from office in 2005. He was replaced by Morris Iemma, who remained Premier after being re-elected in the March 2007 state election, until he was replaced by Nathan Rees in September 2008.[16] Rees was subsequently replaced by Kristina Keneally in December 2009.[17] Keneally's government was defeated at the 2011 state election and Barry O'Farrell became Premier on 28 March. On 17 April 2014 O'Farrell stood down as Premier after misleading an ICAC investigation concerning a gift of a bottle of wine. The Liberal Party then elected Treasurer Mike Baird as party leader and Premier. Baird resigned as Premier on 23 January 2017, and was replaced by Gladys Berejiklian.
Government

Executive authority is vested in the Governor of New South Wales, who represents and is appointed by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia. The current Governor is David Hurley. The Governor commissions as Premier the leader of the parliamentary political party that can command a simple majority of votes in the Legislative Assembly. The Premier then recommends the appointment of other Members of the two Houses to the Ministry, under the principle of responsible or Westminster government. As in other Westminster systems, there is no constitutional requirement in NSW for the Government to be formed from the Parliament—merely convention. The Premier is Gladys Berejiklian of the Liberal Party.[17]
Constitution
The form of the Government of New South Wales is prescribed in its Constitution, dating from 1856 and currently the Constitution Act 1902 (NSW).[18]  Since 1901 New South Wales has been a state of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Australian Constitution regulates its relationship with the Commonwealth.
In 2006, the Constitution Amendment Pledge of Loyalty Act 2006 No 6,[19] was enacted to amend the NSW Constitution Act 1902 to require Members of the New South Wales Parliament and its Ministers to take a pledge of loyalty to Australia and to the people of New South Wales instead of swearing allegiance to Elizabeth II her heirs and successors, and to revise the oaths taken by Executive Councillors. The Pledge of Loyalty Act was officially assented to by the Queen on 3 April 2006.
Under the Australian Constitution, New South Wales ceded certain legislative and judicial powers to the Commonwealth, but retained independence in all other areas. The New South Wales Constitution says: "The Legislature shall, subject to the provisions of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, have power to make laws for the peace, welfare, and good government of New South Wales in all cases whatsoever".[20]
Parliament

The first "responsible" self-government of New South Wales was formed on 6 June 1856 with Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson appointed by Governor Sir William Denison as its first Colonial Secretary which in those days accounted also as the Premier.[21] The State Parliament is composed of the Sovereign and two houses: the Legislative Assembly (lower house), and the Legislative Council (upper house). Elections are held every four years on the fourth Saturday of March, the most recent being on 28 March 2015. At each election one member is elected to the Legislative Assembly from each of 93 electoral districts and half of the 42 members of the Legislative Council are elected by a statewide electorate.
Local government
New South Wales is divided into 128 local government areas. There is also the Unincorporated Far West Region which is not part of any local government area, in the sparsely inhabited Far West, and Lord Howe Island, which is also unincorporated but self-governed by the Lord Howe Island Board.
Emergency services
New South Wales is policed by the New South Wales Police Force, a statutory authority. Established in 1862, the NSW Police Force investigates Summary and Indictable offences throughout the State of New South Wales. The state has two fire services: the volunteer based New South Wales Rural Fire Service, which is responsible for the majority of the state, and the Fire and Rescue NSW, a government agency responsible for protecting urban areas. There is some overlap due to suburbanisation. Ambulance services are provided through the Ambulance Service of New South Wales. Rescue services (i.e. vertical, road crash, confinement) are a joint effort by all emergency services, with Ambulance Rescue, Police Rescue Squad and Fire Rescue Units contributing. Volunteer rescue organisations include the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard, State Emergency Service (SES), Surf Life Saving New South Wales and Volunteer Rescue Association (VRA).
Demographics

Population

The estimated population of New South Wales at the end of March 2018 was 7,955,900 people, representing approximately 31.64% of nationwide population.[3]
As of the 2016 census, the principal ancestries of New South Wales's residents  are:[22]
23.3% English
22.9% Australian
7.5% Irish
5.9% Scottish
5.2% Chinese
In June 2017 Sydney was home to almost two-thirds (65.3%) of the NSW population.[9]

Transport

Passage through New South Wales is vital for cross-continent transport. Rail and road traffic from Brisbane (Queensland) to Perth (Western Australia), or to Melbourne (Victoria) must pass through New South Wales.
Railways

The majority of railways in New South Wales are currently operated by the state government. Some lines began as branch-lines of railways starting in other states. For instance, Balranald near the Victorian border was connected by a rail line coming up from Victoria and into New South Wales. Another line beginning in Adelaide crossed over the border and stopped at Broken Hill.
Railways management are conducted by Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink[24] which maintain rolling stock. Sydney Trains operates trains within Sydney while NSW TrainLink operates outside Sydney, intercity, country and interstate services.
Both Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink have their main terminus at Sydney's Central station. NSW TrainLink regional and long-distance services consist of XPT services to Grafton, Casino, Brisbane, Melbourne and Dubbo, as well as Xplorer services to Canberra, Griffith, Broken Hill, Armidale and Moree. NSW TrainLink intercity trains operate on the Blue Mountains Line, Central Cost & Newcastle Line, South Coast Line, Southern Highlands Line and Hunter Line.
Roads

Major roads are the concern of both federal and state governments. The latter maintains these through the Department of Roads and Maritime Services, formerly the Roads and Traffic Authority, and before that, the Department of Main Roads (DMR).
The main roads in New South Wales are
Hume Highway linking Sydney to Melbourne, Victoria;
Princes Highway linking Sydney to Melbourne via the Tasman Sea coast;
Pacific Highway linking Sydney to Brisbane, Queensland via the Pacific coast;
New England Highway running from the Pacific Highway, at Newcastle to Brisbane by an inland route;
Federal Highway running from the Hume Highway south of Goulburn to Canberra, Australian Capital Territory;
Sturt Highway running from the Hume Highway near Gundagai to Adelaide, South Australia;
Newell Highway linking rural Victoria with Queensland, passing through the centre of New South Wales;
Great Western Highway linking Sydney with Bathurst. As Route 32 it continues west as the Mitchell Highway then as the Barrier Highway to Adelaide via Broken Hill.
Other roads are usually the concern of the RMS and/or the local government authority.
Air

Kingsford Smith Airport (commonly Sydney Airport, and locally referred to as Mascot Airport or just 'Mascot'), located in the southern Sydney suburb of Mascot is the major airport for not just the state but the whole nation. It is a hub for Australia's national airline Qantas.
Other airlines serving regional New South Wales include:[25]
Jetstar[26]
Regional Express (also known as Rex);[27]
Virgin Australia[28] (formerly known as Virgin Blue Airlines).
Ferries
Harbour City Ferries operates ferries within Sydney Harbour and the Parramatta River, while Newcastle Transport has a ferry service within Newcastle.[29] All other ferry services are privately operated.[30]
Spirit of Tasmania ran a commercial ferry service between Sydney and Devonport, Tasmania. This service was terminated in 2006.[31]
Private boat services operated between South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales along the Murray and Darling Rivers but these only exist now as the occasional tourist paddle-wheeler service.[32]
Education

Primary and Secondary
The NSW school system comprises a kindergarten to year 12 system with primary schooling up to year 6 and secondary schooling between years 7 and 12. Schooling is compulsory from before 6 years old until the age of 17 (unless Year 10 is completed earlier).[33] Between 1990 and 2010, schooling was only compulsory in NSW until age 15.[34]
Primary and secondary schools include government and non-government schools. Government schools are further classified as comprehensive and selective schools. Non-government schools include Catholic schools, other denominational schools, and non-denominational independent schools.
Typically, a primary school provides education from kindergarten level to year 6. A secondary school, usually called a "high school", provides education from years 7 to 12. Secondary colleges are secondary schools which only cater for years 11 and 12.
The NSW Education Standards Authority classifies the 13 years of primary and secondary schooling into six stages, beginning with Early Stage 1 (Kindergarten) and ending with Stage 6 (years 11 and 12).[35][36]
Record of School Achievement

A Record of School Achievement (RoSA) is awarded by the NSW Education Standards Authority to students who have completed at least Year 10 but leave school without completing the Higher School Certificate.[37] The RoSA was introduced in 2012 to replace the former School Certificate.
Higher School Certificate

The Higher School Certificate (HSC) is the usual Year 12 leaving certificate in NSW. Most students complete the HSC prior to entering the workforce or going on to study at university or TAFE (although the HSC itself can be completed at TAFE). The HSC must be completed for a student to get an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (formerly Universities Admission Index), which determines the student's rank against fellow students who completed the Higher School Certificate.
Tertiary

Eleven universities primarily operate in New South Wales. Sydney is home to Australia's first university, the University of Sydney founded in 1850. Other universities include the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, the University of Technology, Sydney and Western Sydney University. The Australian Catholic University has two of its six campuses in Sydney, and the private University of Notre Dame Australia also operates a secondary campus in the city.
Outside Sydney, the leading universities are the University of Newcastle and the University of Wollongong. Armidale is home to the University of New England, and Charles Sturt University and Southern Cross University have campuses spread across cities in the state's south-west and north coast respectively.
The public universities are state government agencies, however they are largely regulated by the federal government, which also administers their public funding. Admission to NSW universities is arranged together with universities in the Australian Capital Territory by another government agency, the Universities Admission Centre.
Primarily vocational training is provided up the level of advanced diplomas is provided by the state government's ten Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes. These institutes run courses in more than130 campuses throughout the state.
Geography and ecology

New South Wales is bordered on the north by Queensland, on the west by South Australia, on the south by Victoria and on the east by the Tasman Sea. The Australian Capital Territory and the Jervis Bay Territory form a separately administered entity that is bordered entirely by New South Wales. The state can be divided geographically into four areas. New South Wales' three largest cities, Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong, lie near the centre of a narrow coastal strip extending from cool temperate areas on the far south coast to subtropical areas near the Queensland border.
The Illawarra region is centred on the city of Wollongong, with the Shoalhaven, Eurobodalla and the Sapphire Coast to the south. The Central Coast lies between Sydney and Newcastle, with the Mid North Coast and Northern Rivers regions reaching northwards to the Queensland border. Tourism is important to the economies of coastal towns such as Coffs Harbour, Lismore, Nowra and Port Macquarie, but the region also produces seafood, beef, dairy, fruit, sugar cane and timber.

The Great Dividing Range extends from Victoria in the south through New South Wales to Queensland, parallel to the narrow coastal plain. This area includes the Snowy Mountains, the Northern, Central and Southern Tablelands, the Southern Highlands and the South West Slopes. Whilst not particularly steep, many peaks of the range rise above 1,000 metres (3,281ft), with the highest Mount Kosciuszko at 2,229m (7,313ft). Skiing in Australia began in this region at Kiandra around 1861. The relatively short ski season underwrites the tourist industry in the Snowy Mountains. Agriculture, particularly the wool industry, is important throughout the highlands. Major centres include Armidale, Bathurst, Bowral, Goulburn, Inverell, Orange, Queanbeyan and Tamworth.
There are numerous forests in New South Wales, with such tree species as Red Gum Eucalyptus and Crow Ash (Flindersia australis), being represented.[38] Forest floors have a diverse set of understory shrubs and fungi. One of the widespread fungi is Witch's Butter (Tremella mesenterica).[39]
The western slopes and plains fill a significant portion of the state's area and have a much sparser population than areas nearer the coast. Agriculture is central to the economy of the western slopes, particularly the Riverina region and Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area in the state's south-west. Regional cities such as Albury, Dubbo, Griffith and Wagga Wagga and towns such as Deniliquin, Leeton and Parkes exist primarily to service these agricultural regions. The western slopes descend slowly to the western plains that comprise almost two-thirds of the state and are largely arid or semi-arid. The mining town of Broken Hill is the largest centre in this area.[40]
One possible definition of the centre for New South Wales is located 33 kilometres (21mi) west-north-west of Tottenham.[41]
Climate

The major part of New South Wales, west of the Great Dividing Range, has an arid to semi arid climate. Rainfall averages from 150 to 500 millimetres (5.9 to 19.7in) a year throughout most of this region. Summer temperatures can be very hot, while winter nights can be quite cold in this region. Rainfall varies throughout the state. The far north-west receives the least, less than 180mm (7in) annually, while the east receives between 700 to 1,400mm (28 to 55in) of rain.[42]
The climate along the flat, coastal plain east of the range varies from oceanic in the south to humid subtropical in the northern half of the state, right above Wollongong. Rainfall is highest in this area; however, it still varies from around 800 millimetres (31in) to as high as 3,000 millimetres (120in) in the wettest areas, for example Dorrigo. Along the southern coast, rainfall is heaviest in winter due to cold fronts which move across southern Australia. While in the far north, around Lismore, rain is heaviest in summer from tropical systems and occasionally even cyclones.[42]
The climate in the southern half of the state is generally warm to hot in summer and cool in the winter. The seasons are more defined in the southern half of the state, especially as one moves inland towards South West Slopes, Central West and the Riverina region. The climate in the northeast region of the state, or the North Coast, bordering Queensland, is hot and humid in the summer and mild in winter. The Northern Tablelands, which are also on the north coast, have relatively mild summers and cold winters, due to their high elevation on the Great Dividing Range.
Peaks along the Great Dividing Range vary from 500 metres (1,640ft) to over 2,000 metres (6,562ft) above sea level. Temperatures can be cool to cold in winter with frequent frosts and snowfall, and are rarely hot in summer due to the elevation. Lithgow has a climate typical of the range, as do the regional cities of Orange, Cooma, Oberon and Armidale. Such places fall within the subtropical highland (Cwb) variety. Rainfall is moderate in this area, ranging from 600 to 800mm (24 to 31in).
Snowfall is common in the higher parts of the range, sometimes occurring as far north as the Queensland border. On the highest peaks of the Snowy Mountains, the climate can be subpolar oceanic and even alpine on the higher peaks with very cold temperatures and heavy snow. The Blue Mountains, Southern Tablelands and Central Tablelands, which are situated on the Great Dividing Range, have mild to warm summers and cold winters, although not as severe as those in the Snowy Mountains.[42]
The highest maximum temperature recorded was 49.7°C (121°F) at Menindee in the west of the state on 10 January 1939. The lowest minimum temperature was −23°C (−9°F) at Charlotte Pass in the Snowy Mountains on 29 June 1994. This is also the lowest temperature recorded in the whole of Australia excluding the Antarctic Territory.[43]

Economy

Since the 1970s, New South Wales has undergone an increasingly rapid economic and social transformation.  Old industries such as steel and shipbuilding have largely disappeared; although agriculture remains important, its share of the state's income is smaller than ever before.
New industries such as information technology and financial services are largely centred in Sydney and have risen to take their place, with many companies having their Australian headquarters in Sydney CBD. In addition, the Macquarie Park area of Sydney has attracted the Australian headquarters of many information technology firms.
Coal and related products are the state's biggest export. Its value to the state's economy is over A$5billion, accounting for about 19% of all exports from NSW.[45]
Tourism has also become important, with Sydney as its centre, also stimulating growth on the North Coast, around Coffs Harbour and Byron Bay. Tourism is worth over $25.1 billion to the New South Wales economy and employs 7.1% of the workforce.[46]
In 2007, then-Premier of New South Wales Morris Iemma established Events New South Wales to "market Sydney and NSW as a leading global events destination". In July 2011 Events NSW merged with three key state authorities including Tourism NSW to establish Destination NSW (DNSW).[47]
New South Wales had a Gross State Product in 2010–11 (equivalent to Gross Domestic Product) of $419.9billion which equalled $57,828 per capita.[48]
On 9 October 2007 NSW announced plans to build a 1,000 MW bank of wind powered turbines. The output of these is anticipated to be able to power up to 400,000 homes. The cost of this project will be $1.8billion for 500 turbines.[49] On 28 August 2008 the New South Wales cabinet voted to privatise electricity retail, causing 1,500 electrical workers to strike after a large anti-privatisation campaign.[50]
The NSW business community is represented by the NSW Business Chamber which has 30,000 members.
Agriculture

Agriculture is spread throughout the eastern two-thirds of New South Wales. Cattle, sheep and pigs are the predominant types of livestock produced in NSW and they have been present since their importation during the earliest days of European settlement. Economically the state is the most important state in Australia, with about one-third of the country's sheep, one-fifth of its cattle, and one-third of its small number of pigs.
New South Wales produces a large share of Australia's hay, fruit, legumes, lucerne, maize, nuts, wool, wheat, oats, oilseeds (about 51%), poultry, rice (about 99%),[51] vegetables, fishing including oyster farming, and forestry including wood chips.[52] Bananas and sugar are grown chiefly in the Clarence, Richmond and Tweed River areas.
Wools are produced on the Northern Tablelands as well as prime lambs and beef cattle. The cotton industry is centred in the Namoi Valley in northwestern New South Wales. On the central slopes there are many orchards, with the principal fruits grown being apples, cherries and pears.
About 40,200 hectares of vineyards lie across the eastern region of the state, with excellent wines produced in the Hunter Valley, with the Riverina being the largest wine producer in New South Wales.[53] Australia's largest and most valuable Thoroughbred horse breeding area is centred on Scone in the Hunter Valley.[54] The Hunter Valley is the home of the world-famous Coolmore,[55] Darley and Kia-Ora Thoroughbred horse studs.
About half of Australia's timber production is in New South Wales. Large areas of the state are now being replanted with eucalyptus forests.

Riparian water rights
Under the Water Management Act 2000, updated riparian water rights were given to those within NSW with livestock. This change was named "The Domestic Stock Right" which gives "an owner or occupier of a landholding is entitled to take water from a river, estuary or lake which fronts their land or from an aquifer which is underlying their land for domestic consumption and stock watering without the need for an access licence."[56]
National parks

New South Wales has more than 780 national parks and reserves covering more than 8% of the state.[57] These parks range from rainforests, waterfalls, rugged bush to marine wonderlands and outback deserts, including World Heritage sites.[58]
The Royal National Park on the southern outskirts of Sydney became Australia's first National Park when proclaimed on 26 April 1879. Originally named The National Park until 1955, this park was the second National Park to be established in the world after Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. Kosciuszko National Park is the largest park in state encompassing New South Wales' alpine region.[59]
The National Parks Association was formed in 1957 to create a system of national parks all over New South Wales which led to the formation of the National Parks and Wildlife Service in 1967.[60] This government agency is responsible for developing and maintaining the parks and reserve system, and conserving natural and cultural heritage, in the state of New South Wales. These parks preserve special habitats, plants and wildlife, such as the Wollemi National Park where the Wollemi Pine grows and areas sacred to Australian Aboriginals such as Mutawintji National Park in western New South Wales.

Sport

Throughout Australian history, New South Wales sporting teams have been very successful in both winning domestic competitions and providing players to the Australian national teams.
The largest sporting competition in the state is the National Rugby League, which is based in Sydney and expanded from the New South Wales Rugby League. The state is represented by the New South Wales Blues in the State of Origin series. Sydney is the spiritual home of Australian rugby league and hosts nine of the 16 NRL teams: Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Cronulla Sharks, Manly Sea Eagles, Parramatta Eels, Penrith Panthers, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Sydney Roosters and Wests Tigers, as well as being the northern home of the St George Illawarra Dragons, which is based in Wollongong. A tenth team, the Newcastle Knights is located in Newcastle.

The state is represented by four teams in soccer's A-League: Sydney FC (2005–06, 2009–10, 2016-17 champions), Western Sydney Wanderers (2014 Asian champions), Central Coast Mariners (2012-13 champions) and Newcastle United Jets (2007–08 A League Champions).
Australian rules football has historically not been strong in New South Wales outside the Riverina region. However, the Sydney Swans relocated from South Melbourne in 1982 and their presence and success since the late 1990s has raised the profile of Australian rules football, especially after their AFL premiership in 2005. A second NSW AFL club, the Greater Western Sydney Giants, entered the competition in 2012.
The main summer sport is cricket and the Sydney Cricket Ground hosts the 'New Year' cricket Test match in January each year. The NSW Blues play in the One-Day Cup and Sheffield Shield competitions. Sydney Sixers and Sydney Thunder both play in the Big Bash League.
Other teams in major national competitions include the Sydney Kings and Illawarra Hawks in the National Basketball League, Sydney Uni Flames in the Women's National Basketball League, NSW Waratahs in Super Rugby and New South Wales Swifts in Suncorp Super Netball.

Sydney was the host of the 2000 Summer Olympics and the 1938 British Empire Games. The Olympic Stadium, now known as ANZ Stadium hosts major events including the NRL Grand Final, State of Origin, rugby union and football internationals. It hosted the final of the 2003 Rugby World Cup and the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, as well as the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualifier between Australia and Uruguay, qualifying Australia for their first World Cup since 1974.
The annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race begins in Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day. Bathurst hosts the annual Bathurst 1000 as part of the Supercars Championship at Mount Panorama Circuit.
The popular equine sports of campdrafting and polocrosse were developed in New South Wales and competitions are now held across Australia. Polocrosse is now played in many overseas countries.
Major professional teams include:
Australian rules football: Sydney Swans, Greater Western Sydney Giants
Basketball: Sydney Kings, Illawarra Hawks
Cricket: New South Wales Blues, Sydney Sixers, Sydney Thunder
Netball: New South Wales Swifts
Baseball: Sydney Blue Sox
Rugby league:
Representative: New South Wales Blues
Clubs: Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Cronulla Sharks, Manly Sea Eagles, Newcastle Knights, Parramatta Eels, Penrith Panthers, South Sydney Rabbitohs, St George Illawarra Dragons, Sydney Roosters, Wests Tigers
Rugby union: New South Wales Waratahs
Soccer: Sydney FC, Western Sydney Wanderers, Newcastle Jets, Central Coast Mariners
Culture

As Australia's most populous state, New South Wales is home to a number of cultural institutions of importance to the nation. In music, New South Wales is home to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Australia's busiest and largest orchestra. Australia's largest opera company, Opera Australia, is headquartered in Sydney. Both of these organisations perform a subscription series at the Sydney Opera House. Other major musical bodies include the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Sydney is host to the Australian Ballet for its Sydney season (the ballet is headquartered in Melbourne). Apart from the Sydney Opera House, major musical performance venues include the City Recital Hall and the Sydney Town Hall.

New South Wales is home to several major museums and art galleries, including the Australian Museum, the Powerhouse Museum, the Museum of Sydney, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Sydney is home to five Arts teaching organisations, which have all produced world-famous students: The National Art School, The College of Fine Arts, the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), the Australian Film, Television & Radio School and the Conservatorium of Music (now part of the University of Sydney).
New South Wales is the setting and shooting location of many Australian films, including Mad Max 2, which was shot near the mining town of Broken Hill. The state has also attracted international productions, both as a setting, such as in Mission: Impossible 2, and as a stand-in for other locations, as seen in The Matrix franchise, The Great Gatsby and Unbroken.[61][62] 20th Century Fox operates Fox Studios Australia in Sydney. Screen NSW, which controls the state film industry, generates approximately $100 million into the New South Wales economy each year.[63]
Sister states
New South Wales in recent history has pursued bilateral partnerships with other federated states/provinces and metropolises through establishing a network of sister state relationships.
The state currently has 7 sister states:[64]
 Guangdong, China (since 1979)
 Tokyo, Japan (since 1984)
 Ehime, Japan (since 1999)[65]
 North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (since 1989)
 Seoul, South Korea (since 1991)
 Jakarta, Indonesia (since 1994)
 California, United States (since 1997)
See also

Australia – Wikipedia book
Outline of Australia
Index of Australia-related articles
Geology of New South Wales
NSW Volunteer of the Year
Postage stamps and postal history of New South Wales
Selection (Australian history)
Squatting (pastoral)
Territorial evolution of Australia

 at Curlie
 Geographic data related to  at OpenStreetMap


Shannen Maria Doherty (/ˈdoʊ.ərti/; born April 12, 1971)[1] is an American actress, producer, and television director. She is known for her roles as Maggie Malene in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Heather Duke in Heathers (1988), Brenda Walsh in Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990–1994), and as Prue Halliwell in Charmed (1998–2001).
Early life
Doherty was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the daughter of Rosa, a beauty parlor owner, and Tom Doherty, a mortgage consultant.[1] Doherty has Irish ancestry on her father's side and English, Scottish, and Scots-Irish ancestry on her mother's side.[2] She was raised in her mother's Southern Baptist denomination.[3]
Career
Child actress
Doherty had guest spots on TV series including Voyagers! and Father Murphy. When a casting notice was released in Hollywood for a regular role on the popular Little House on the Prairie, she jumped at the opportunity and at the age of 11 eventually won the recurring role of Jenny Wilder,[4] thanks in part to actor/producer Michael Landon's seeing her guest spot on Father Murphy,[5] which he also produced. Doherty stayed in the series until the show's cancellation in 1983.
In 1982, Doherty lent her voice to the animated film The Secret of NIMH. In 1985, Doherty starred as Maggie Malene in the teen movie comedy Girls Just Want to Have Fun alongside actresses Helen Hunt and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Doherty was cast as the oldest Witherspoon sibling, Kris, on the family drama Our House, which ran from 1986 to 1988, a role which garnered her several Young Artist Award nominations.[6]  She next appeared in an episode of Magnum, P.I. ("A Sense of Debt"), followed by an early episode of Airwolf for which she was nominated as Best Young Actress: Guest in a Series at the 6th Youth in Film Awards in 1984.
Rise to fame: 1988–2001

Doherty's first major motion picture role was in Heathers, released in 1988. She garnered worldwide attention and fame for her breakout role as Brenda Walsh in the Aaron Spelling-produced TV series Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1990. In 1991 and 1992 her portrayal of Brenda earned her a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Young Actress Starring in a Television Series.[7] Doherty left the show after the fourth season in 1994. Her character was written off the show as moving to London to attend school at the Royal Academy for Dramatic Arts.
Doherty appeared nude in Playboy magazine, first in December 1993, followed by a spread in March 1994.[8] She posed for the magazine again in December 2003 and has been featured in a 10-page pictorial.[9][10]
Doherty's career afterward consisted primarily of made-for-TV movies, though she also had a lead role in Kevin Smith's 1995 film Mallrats and later cameoed in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. In 1998, Spelling again cast her in another of his television series, Charmed, in which she played lead character Prue Halliwell, the oldest of three sisters who are witches. Doherty also directed a few episodes for the series during the second and third seasons. Doherty left the show in 2001 at the end of the third season, resulting in her character's death. Reportedly, the reason for her departure was because of on-set and off-set tensions between Doherty and co-star Alyssa Milano.[11] Doherty was also twice nominated, in 1999 and 2000, for the Saturn Award, Best Genre TV Actress, for her performance in Charmed.[6] In 2004, E! placed Doherty at number 10 on their list of the 50 Most Wicked Women of Prime Time. In 2007, AOL named Prue Halliwell the 10th greatest witch in television history.[12]
Later work: 2002–present
In 2003, Doherty hosted the Sci Fi Channel candid camera show Scare Tactics during its initial season.[13] After her stint on Scare Tactics Doherty, in a return to her prime-time soap roots, starred as a regular on the short-lived TV series North Shore. She starred as Alexandra Hudson from 2004 to 2005. Later in 2005, she was in the pilot for a comedy, Love Inc..
Doherty then produced and starred in her own reality show, Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty, which premiered on the Oxygen channel in 2006. In the show, Doherty goes around doing "dirty work" for members of the public, including dumping boyfriends or telling people what their friends really think about them. The show was canceled after one season owing to poor ratings. She also starred in the popular British sitcom Bo! in the USA, a brain child of Leigh Francis.[5] In the show, she plays herself being randomly harassed by Avid Merrion (Francis), who claims they are lovers. The show aired in October 2006 on the British Channel 4, and she appeared in several episodes.
During 2007, Doherty appeared in two television projects. She first appeared in Kiss Me Deadly: A Jacob Keane Assignment for the Here TV network and followed up with a starring role in the holiday film Christmas Caper for ABC Family. That same year Doherty also set up a production company called No Apologies for which she planned to develop a TV drama for herself. Later in 2007, Doherty was ranked number 96 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 100 Greatest Television Icons. In 2008, Doherty was featured on the Swedish television show High Chaparall, appearing in the second episode of the show's fourth season.
Also in 2008, 14 years since her last television appearance as Brenda Walsh, Doherty joined the cast of the Beverly Hills, 90210 spin off for The CW Television Network for a reported $40,000–50,000 an episode.[14] She returned as a guest star, reprising her old role of Brenda Walsh in four of the new series' initial six episodes. Her character, now a successful theater actress and stage director, returned as the guest director of the high school musical. After her initial guest spot was completed, Doherty stated she was open to returning to the series later in the season[15] and eventually agreed to appear in three additional episodes, with her most recent appearance airing in May 2009.[16][17] The writers were eager to have her share scenes with Jennie Garth, who also reprised her 90210 role of Kelly Taylor.[18] It was reported that Doherty and Garth's characters would both have a romantic interest in the character Ryan Matthews (Ryan Eggold)[19] reminiscent of their old rivalry for former bad-boy character Dylan McKay (Luke Perry). Doherty and Garth later confirmed that the reports about the love triangle between their characters were false.[20]
In late 2008, Doherty was announced to co-star alongside Dylan McDermott in the independent film Burning Palms, a satire based on Los Angeles stereotypes told through five intertwining storylines.[21] That same year, Doherty played a lead role in the SciFi Channel adventure film The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon. The film premiered on the cable network on December 20, 2008.
On March 1, 2010, it was announced that Doherty would be a celebrity contestant on Dancing with the Stars for the tenth season. The season premiered on Monday, March 22, 2010.[22] Doherty was paired with two-time champion Mark Ballas in his sixth season on the show,[23] but the pair was the first couple eliminated in the second week on March 30. The judges have said, "Doherty wouldn't have left if we would have just done scores". She wanted to do Dancing with the Stars to make her ailing father proud.[24] Doherty returned for the finale.
Doherty starred in FEARnet's animated web series Mari-Kari, which launched on June 3, 2010.[25] Mari and Kari are identical twins, but Kari is already dead and is a ghost. Doherty voiced both Mari and Kari in the eight-episode show.[26] WE tv announced on July 21, 2011, that she would star in a one-hour reality series that follows her and her fiancé, Kurt Iswarienko, as they plan their wedding. The show, titled Shannen Says, premiered in April 10, 2012.[27] Later in 2012, Doherty became a spokesperson for Education Connection,[28] and appeared in an episode of The New Normal as her character Brenda Walsh from Beverly Hills, 90210.
On July 24, 2014, it was announced that Doherty and her former Charmed co-star Holly Marie Combs would be starring in their own road trip reality show called Off the Map with Shannen & Holly, which premiered on Great American Country on January 2, 2015.[29][30] The six-episode series follows the pair traveling across southeastern United States, with stops in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.[31] Viewers were able to vote on activities Doherty and Combs would partake in at each destination on Great American Country's official website.[31]
In November 2016, it was announced that Doherty had joined the cast of a television adaptation of Heathers, due to air on Paramount Network in March 2018.[32] She will play the mother of one of the new generation of "Heathers", different from the character of Heather Duke which she originated in the 1988 film.[33] The show's premiere was delayed by the Parkland school shooting because of its dark tone and themes of high school violence. In June 2018 the network chose to pull the show altogether without airing it.[34]
Personal life
In early 1993, Doherty was briefly engaged to Max Factor heir Dean Jay Factor before he filed for a restraining order on May 25, 1993.[35] He alleged physical violence and threats on the part of Doherty, although Doherty's father claimed that the abuse came from Factor and not her.[35]
On October 11, 1993, Doherty married Ashley Hamilton, the son of actor George Hamilton. They filed for divorce in April 1994.[36]
In 2002, Doherty married Rick Salomon, but the marriage was annulled after nine months.[37] On October 15, 2011, Doherty married photographer Kurt Iswarienko in Malibu, California.[38]
Reputation
Beginning with her stint on Beverly Hills, 90210, Doherty gained a reputation in the media for bad behavior that would dominate her public image for many years.[39] People Magazine has called her the "iconic Hollywood 'bad girl' of the nineties."[40] Between 1992 and 1994, coverage alleging fighting between Doherty and her co-stars dominated tabloid headlines, particularly concerning her heated feud with Jennie Garth, and further reports of heavy partying, on-set lateness, and physical fights.[41][35] The zine magazine Ben Is Dead, which published a newsletter called "I Hate Brenda" at the height of the show's popularity, even opened a hotline called the "Shannen Snitch Line" to which people could call in and report gossip about Doherty.[42]
This reputation gained further ground during her three seasons on Charmed, when tabloids fueled rumors of a feud with co-star Alyssa Milano. In both instances Doherty departed the shows acrimoniously after a few seasons; on Charmed she was allegedly fired by producer Aaron Spelling after an ultimatum from Milano.[43]
90210 executive producers Darren Star[44] and Charles Rosin have both confirmed that Doherty was difficult on-set; Rosin commented that "...she had habitual lateness. Her lateness was appalling, and she had a callous attitude and an indifference."[45] Jennie Garth has admitted that the two of them "often wanted to claw each other's eyes out", and at one point it escalated into physical violence;[46] nonetheless, she has said the feud was mutual and based more on immaturity than true animosity.[47] Doherty, for her part, has admitted to making mistakes, blaming her behavior on the pressures of fame, her youth, and problems in her personal life.[48][49] In 2010, she stated: "I have a rep. Did I earn it? Yeah, I did. But, after awhile you sort of try to shed that rep because you're kind of a different person. You've evolved and all of the bad things you’ve done in your life have brought you to a much better place."[50]
Legal problems
On December 2, 1992, Doherty was issued with a citation for misdemeanor battery after getting into a physical altercation with another woman at The Roxbury in Hollywood.[41]
In January 1993, California's United Bank took Doherty to court for $36,000 claiming she had bounced more than 70 checks.[51]
In May 2001, Doherty was sentenced to either 10 days in jail or 20 days of work-release duty and three years' probation, and was ordered to pay a $1,500 fine for drunk driving.
Politics and activism
Doherty is a registered Republican. According to Complex magazine, she said: "I realize that the majority of people in the entertainment business happen to be Democrats. I have no problem with that. And they should have no problem with the fact that I'm a Republican."[52]
An avid animal rights activist, Doherty is a supporter of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and while performing the Ice Bucket Challenge in 2014 she challenged founder Paul Watson and global supporters of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.[53]
Health
Doherty was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2015, which had spread to her lymph nodes.[54] In February 2016, Doherty revealed that she was receiving anti-estrogen treatment to shrink the tumor and enable treatment by lumpectomy rather than mastectomy.[55] Due to the presence of multiple tumors a lumpectomy was not possible, so a single mastectomy was performed in May 2016.[56] Surgery revealed that some of the cancer cells may have spread beyond the lymph nodes.[56] Because the cancer was more advanced than previously thought,[56] Doherty underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy following surgery.[56] On April 29, 2017, Doherty announced that her cancer was in remission.[57]
Filmography

Awards and nominations

 on IMDb
 at AllMovie


This is a list of wars fought by Romania since 1859:
The United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (1859–1862)
The United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia did not participate in any wars.
Romanian United Principalities (1862–1866)
The Romanian United Principalities did not participate in any wars.
Principality of Romania (1866–1881)

Kingdom of Romania (1881–1947)

Romanian People's Republic (1947–1965)

Socialist Republic of Romania (1965–1989)

Post-communist Romania (since 1989)