This book is the result of a research project begun by the author in 1958 with the aim of answering two questions: First, what is the rationality of the economic systems that appear and disappear throughout history--in other words, what is their hidden logic and the underlying necessity for them to [...]
This work reassesses the significance of gifts in social life by focusing on sacred objects which are never exchanged despite the value they possess. It presents an analysis of the seminal work of Marcel Mauss and Claude Levi-Strauss, and drawing on his own fieldwork in Melanesia, Maurice Godelier a[...]
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 adva[...]
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 adva[...]