Primitive Classification - Softcover

Durkheim, Emile

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226173348 ISBN 13: 9780226173344

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1967

Synopsis

Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss maintain that society is the source of the very categories of human thought. First published in the Année Sociologique in 1903, this classic essay has been translated by Rodney Needham, who also provides a critical introduction.

"[Primitive Classification] will impress the reader with its quiet elegance, its direct, logical form, its clarity of style, its spirit of careful, yet bold, exploration."—Harry Alpert, American Journal of Sociology

"Particularly instructive for anyone who wonders what social anthropology is: how, if at all, it differs from sociology and whether it has any unifying theoretical problem."—F. K. Lehman, American Sociological Review

About this title

Review:

‘This is a significant essay because it is the most unqualified expression of its authors’ grand idea that the origins and meaning of mental categories are to be sought in the organisation of societies.’ – The Times Literary Supplement

From the Back Cover:

This book is particularly instructive for anyone who wonders what social anthropology is: how, if at all, it differs from sociology and whether it has any unifying theoretical problem.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1967
• ISBN 10: 0226173348
• ISBN 13: 9780226173344
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144