A masterwork of the anthropology of kinship by the heir to Levi-Strauss
Maurice Godelier is a world-renowned anthropologist. Among the many honours he has received are the CNRS Gold Medal and the Alexander von Humboldt prize. His major works include The Making of Great Men;Metamorphoses of Kinship;The Enigma of the Gift;In and Out of the West; and, more recently, Lévi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought.
This is a blockbuster of a book. Nothing like it has been written
since Levi-Strauss's Structures e?le?mentaires de la parente?
(1949) or Meyer Fortes's Kinship and the Social Order (1969). Yet
in the sweep of its evidence and argument, Godelier's summa is more
ambitious and far-reaching than either of these. It is at once a
major intervention in the discipline of anthropology, and a work of
the widest human interest ... The book is both a monument of
scholarship and a gripping set of reflections on universal
experience. It is certain to be read and discussed for years to
come.
*New Left Review*
Godelier has reasserted the value of our rich tradition of
discussions of kinship matters. He has also shown how the category
has metamorphosed as it has drawn in new issues of pressing current
importance in modern life and made his case that, far from being
genuinely in decline, the study of kinship is central to our
understanding of what it means to be human.
*Comparative Studies in Society and History*
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