This volume scrutinizes the questions of conceptualization, method and history in the fields of kinship, social anthropology and structuralism. It puts forward a radical revision of the conventional approaches and criteria. Exploring analysis and method in the disparity between relative age and kinship categories as means of social classification, the book makes theoretical readjustments, largely inspired by the precepts of Wittgenstein. Originally published in 1971.

First published in English 1960. The historical value of Hertz's writings is that they are a representative example of the culmination of two centuries of development of sociological thought in France, from Montesquieu to Durkheim and his pupils. In the intervening years since publication, that development has grown into the systematic comparative study of primitive institutions, based on a great body of ethnographic facts from all over the world: in effect social anthropology.

This volume is concerned with two of the fundamental topics of social anthropology, kinship and marriage, approached from a variety of viewpoints by an international group of contributors of diverse experience and background. The wide range of subjects examined includes: Incest, epistemology, linguistics, prescriptive alliance and methodology. Fieldwork from the following countries is drawn on: Burma, Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Australia, Africa and South America.

BY G. W. LOCHER Some years ago, in a discussion of the modern concept of structure, Levi-Strauss contended that the extraordinarily widespread employment of the term "structure" since 1930 reflected a rediscovery of the concept and the term rather than the continuation of a prior usage. This assertion may be correct in general, but it does not apply to the N ether lands, at least nOlI: so far as the concept of structure is concerned. The transmission of the concept in that country can in f...

In this pithy two-part essay, Marshall Sahlins reinvigorates the debates on what constitutes kinship, building on some of the best scholarship in the field to produce an original outlook on the deepest bond humans can have. Covering thinkers from Aristotle and Lévy- Bruhl to Émile Durkheim and David Schneider, and communities from the Maori and the English to the Korowai of New Guinea, he draws on a breadth of theory and a range of ethnographic examples to form an acute definition of kinsh...

Designed to provoke controversy, the papers in this volume concentrate on two main themes: the study of myth and totemism. Starting with an English translation of La Geste d'Asdiwal, which is widely considered to be the most brilliant of all of Lévi-Strauss's shorter expositions of his technique of myth analysis, the volume also contains criticism of this essay. The second part of the volume discusses how far Lévi-Strauss's treatment of totemism as a system of category formation can be cor...

This vintage book comprises three famous Malinowski essays on the subject of religion. Malinowski is one of the most important and influential anthropologists of all time. He is particularly renowned for his ability to combine the reality of human experience, with the cold calculations of science. An important collection of three of his most famous essays, "Magic, Science and Religion" provides its reader with a series of concepts concerning religion, magic, science, rite and myth. This is...

THE result of recent historical studies, whether on anthropological, sociological, archeological, or religious lines, has brought into ever clearer vision as the substratum of all civilizations that stage of culture from which this book takes its title. One consequence is: general recognition of animism as a life factor, the power of which is not yet exhausted, the study of which fascinates because of its almost infinite variety and its persistent force. The words "animism," "animistic," h...

From the preeminent anthropologist, a landmark exploration of how culture shapes human society“Shrewd and often illuminating."—New York TimesOver his storied career, Clifford Geertz pioneered ground-breaking approaches to anthropology, arguing that interpreting and analyzing cultural symbols was central to understanding a wide range of societies. In Local Knowledge, he revisits and expands the core ideas that reshaped an e...

Among the natives of Kiriwina, death is the starting point of two series of events which run almost independently of each other. Death affects the deceased individual; his soul (baloma or balom) leaves the body and goes to another world, there to lead a shadowy existence. His passing is also a matter of concern to the bereft community. Its members wail for him, mourn for him, and celebrate an endless series of feasts. These festivities consist, as a rule, in the distribution of uncooked fo...

The structural method,” first set forth in this epoch-making book, changed the very face of social anthropology. This reissue of a classic will reintroduce readers to Lévi-Strauss's understanding of man and society in terms of individuals-kinship, social organization, religion, mythology, and art.