Search results for ""Author Maurice Godelier""

Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was among the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. In this rigorous study, Maurice Godelier traces the evolution of his thought. Focusing primarily on Lévi-Strauss's analysis of kinship and myth, Godelier provides an assessment of his intellectual achievements and legacy. Meticulously researched, Lévi-Strauss is written in a clear and accessible style. The culmination of decades of engagement with Lévi-Strauss's work, this book will prove indispensible to students of his thought and structural anthropology more generally.

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Cubierta posterior: La tarea de descubrir y reconstruir, a través del pensamiento, los modos de producción que se han desarrollado, que todavía se desarrollan, en la historia, impone la reconsideración de cada uno de los problemas teóricos que plantea el conocimiento de las sociedades, es decir, los problemas del descubrimiento de las leyes. No de la ?Historia? en general, sino de las diversas formaciones económicas y sociales que analizan el historiador, el antropólogo o el economista... Estas leyes existen y expresan las propiedades estructurales no intencionadas de las relaciones sociales y su jerarquización, así como su articulación, basada en un modo de producción determinado. Para descubrir esta lógica profunda es preciso ir más allá de el análisis estructural de las formas, de las relaciones sociales y del pensamiento, intentar revelar los ?efectos? de unas estructuras sobre las otras a través de los diversos procesos de la práctica social, y fijar su lugar real en la jer

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Lévi-Strauss held that "the real, the symbolic and the imaginary" are three separate orders. Maurice Godelier demonstrates the contrary: the real is not separate from the symbolic and the imaginary. Godelier's book goes to the strategic heart of the social sciences, for to examine the nature and role of the imaginary and the symbolic is also to attempt to account for the basic components of all societies and ultimately of human existence. And these aspects in turn shape our social and personal identity.

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One of the world's leading anthropologists assesses the work of the founder of structural anthropologyAs a young man, Maurice Godelier was Claude Lévi-Strauss's assistant. Since then, Godelier has drawn on this experience to develop a profound and intimate grasp on the writings of his former teacher, one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Meticulously researched, Lévi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought will prove indispensable to students of Lévi-Strauss and to structural anthropologists more generally. It is a compelling and comprehensive study destined to become the definitive work on the evolution of Lévi-Strauss's ideas, at the heart of which lies his analysis of kinship and myth.

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What is incest? Is it universally prohibited? Does this prohibition concern only "biological" kinships or does it extend to various "social" kinships, such as those that are formed today in so-called blended families but which also exist in many other societies?This prohibition plays a fundamental role in the functioning of the multiple kinship systems studied throughout the world. But where does it come from? Can we think, with Claude Lévi-Strauss, that the prohibition of incest alone marks the passage from nature to culture? And how can we understand, then, the persistent tension between the proclaimed, institutionalized prohibition and the incestuous practice which, everywhere, remains?World-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier highlights an essential fact, the spontaneously asocial and undifferentiated character of human sexuality and the need for a social regulation of this spontaneity. It thus brings to light the main teachings of anthropology on the question of incest, a major social fact of burning relevance today.

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With marriage in decline, divorce on the rise and the demise of the nuclear family, it is clear that the structures of kinship in the modern West are in a state of flux.In The Metamorphoses of Kinship, the world-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier contextualises these developments, surveying the accumulated experience of humanity with regard to such phenomena as the organisation of lines of descent, sexuality and sexual prohibitions. In parallel, Godelier studies the evolution of Western conjugal and familial traditions from their roots in the nineteenth century to the present. The conclusion he draws is that it is never the case that a man and a woman are sufficient on their own to raise a child, and nowhere are relations of kinship or the family the keystone of society.

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