Description
What is the specificity of the human race within nature? How is its history to be explained? What impact do material realities, natural and man-made, have on human beings? What role does thought, in all its dimensions, play in the production of social relations? How are the human sciences to be advanced today? These are among the crucial questions confronted by Godelier in this key book of contemporary social theory. Its point of departure lies in a fact and a hypothesis. The fact: in contrast to other social animals, human beings do not just live in society; they produce society in order to live. The hypothesis: because they have the unique capacity to appropriate and transform nature, they produce culture and create history.
Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork and ranging over the most diverse ethnographic data, Godelier substantiates his case by attending to the analysis of both social relations of production and the production of social relations. In a sustained challenge to currently dominant schemas, he offers a series of highly original theses on the constitution, reproduction and transformation of societies, recasting the distinction between infrastructure and superstructures, illuminating the relations between economic determination and political/ideological dominance, and clarifying the character of ideology and its central role in the perpetuation of dominance and exploitation.
Groundbreaking examination of the relationship between thought, economy and society
About the Author
Maurice Godelier is a world-renowned anthropologist. Among the many honours he has received are the CNRS Gold Medal and the Alexander von Humbolt 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 Levi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought.
Reviews
Engaging and intriguing-Anthropology, it would seem, may yet return from the graveyard of structuralism to stir up some debate in the social sciences. * New Statesman *
Book Information
ISBN 9781844677900
Author Maurice Godelier
Format Paperback
Page Count 266
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 300g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 132mm * 23mm
Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork and ranging over the most diverse ethnographic data, Godelier substantiates his case by attending to the analysis of both social relations of production and the production of social relations. In a sustained challenge to currently dominant schemas, he offers a series of highly original theses on the constitution, reproduction and transformation of societies, recasting the distinction between infrastructure and superstructures, illuminating the relations between economic determination and political/ideological dominance, and clarifying the character of ideology and its central role in the perpetuation of dominance and exploitation.
Groundbreaking examination of the relationship between thought, economy and society
About the Author
Maurice Godelier is a world-renowned anthropologist. Among the many honours he has received are the CNRS Gold Medal and the Alexander von Humbolt 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 Levi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought.
Reviews
Engaging and intriguing-Anthropology, it would seem, may yet return from the graveyard of structuralism to stir up some debate in the social sciences. * New Statesman *
Book Information
ISBN 9781844677900
Author Maurice Godelier
Format Paperback
Page Count 266
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 300g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 132mm * 23mm
