In this work, first published in 1912, Emile Durkheim examines a wide range of religious topics including: forms of animism, naturism, and totemism; fundamental concepts such as the soul, spirits and gods; and cults and rites. He argues that the origins of religion are social in nature, and that religious forms cannot be understood apart from their functions.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Written from a sociological viewpoint, this title examines a wide range of religious topics including forms of animism, naturism and totemism as well as fundamental concepts such as the soul, spirits, gods, cults and rights.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Book 1 The king of the wood: the king of the wood
• priestly kings
• magic and religion
• human gods
• departmental kings of nature
• the worship of trees
• the sacred marriage
• the kings of Rome
• the succession to the kingdom
• the burden of royalty
• the perils of the soul
• taboos. Book 2 Killing the god: the mortality of the gods
• the killing of the divine king
• temporary kings
• the sacrifice of the king's son
• killing the tree-spirit
• Adonis
• sacred prostitution
• the ritual of Adonis
• Attis
• the hanged god
• Osiris
• feasts of all souls
• Isis
• mother-kin and mother-goddesses
• Dionysus
• Demeter and Persephone
• woman's part in primitive agriculture
• corn-mother and corn-maiden
• Lityerses
• the corn-spirit as an animal
• eating the god
• the flesh diet
• killing the divine animal. Book 3 The scapegoat: the transference of evil
• ancient scapegoats
• killing the god in Mexico
• the Saturnalia
• the Crucifixion of Christ. Book 4 The golden bough: between Heaven and Earth
• the seclusion of girls
• Balder's fires
• the external soul
• death and resurrection
• the golden bough.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

First published in 1890, this classic work was eventually issued in a 12-volume edition (1906-15). It is a study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind and the progress through magic and religion to scientific thought. The book was abridged in 1922, but not reconsidered for a modern audience until this new abridgement, which restores Frazer's bolder theories, including Frazer's daring speculations on the Crucifixion of Christ, and sets them within the framework of a useful introduction and notes. The book was a seminal work of modern anthropology which influenced many 20th-century writers, including D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis. Its discussion of magical types, the sacrificial killing of kings, the dying god and the scapegoat is given fresh pertinences in this new edition. Robert Fraser is the author of "The Making of 'The Golden Bough'" and "Sir James Frazer and the Literary Imagination".
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• List of tables and figures
• Preface
• 1. Evolution and communication
• 2. Intellectuals in pre-literate societies?
• 3. Literacy, criticism and the growth of knowledge
• 4. Literacy and classification: on turning the tables
• 5. What's in a list?
• 6. Following a formula
• 7. The recipe, the prescription and the experiment
• 8. The Grand Dichotomy reconsidered
• Notes to the text
• References
• List of abbreviations
• Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Current theories and views on the differences in the 'mind' of human societies depend very much on a dichotomy between 'advanced' and 'primitive', or between 'open' and 'closed', or between 'domesticated' and 'savage', that is to say, between one of a whole variety of 'we-they' distinctions. Professor Goody argues that such an approach prevents any serious discussion of the mechanisms leading to long-term changes in the cognitive processes of human cultures or any adequate explanation of the changes in 'traditional' societies that are taking place in the world around us. In this book he attempts to provide the framework for a more satisfactory explanation by relating certain broad differences in 'mentalities' to the changes in the means of communication, and specifically to the series of shifts involved in the development of writing. The argument is based upon theoretical considerations, as well as empirical evidence derived from recent fieldwork in West Africa and the study of a wide range of source material on the ancient societies of the Near East.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Part I Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture * Part II The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man The Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind * Part III Religion As a Cultural System Ethos, World View, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example Internal Conversion in Contemporary Bali * Part IV Ideology As a Cultural System After the Revolution: The Fate of Nationalism in the New States The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States The Politics of Meaning Politics Past, Politics Present: Some Notes on the Uses of Anthropology in Understanding the New States * PART V The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Lvi-Strauss Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In The Interpretation of Cultures , the most original anthropologist of his generation moved far beyond the traditional confines of his discipline to develop an important new concept of culture. This groundbreaking book, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association, helped define for an entire generation of anthropologists what their field is ultimately about.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Nature and culture
• The problem of incest
• The universe of rules
• Endogamy and exogamy
• The principle of reciprocity
• Dual organization
• The archaic illusion
• Alliance and descent
• The mirage of cousins
• Matrimonial exchange
• The classical systems
• The Murngin system
• Harmonic and disharmonic regimes
• The givers of wives
• Exchange and purchase
• External limits of generalization exchange
• Internal limits of generalized exchange
• Granet's theory
• The chao mu order
• Matrilateral marriage
• Oblique marriage
• Peripheral systems
• Bone and flesh
• Clan and castes
• Asymmetric structures
• Cycles of reciprocity
• The transition to complex structures
• The principles of kinship.

Provides a comparative sociological study of the basic kinship structures.

• v. 1. The origins of culture.--
• v. 2. Religion in primitive culture.

• "Tableau des Bacab."--Plate 43 of the Borgian codex.--Plate 44 of the Fejervary codex.--Symbols of the cardinal points.