
Series
Volume 23
Methodology & History in Anthropology
Email Newsletters
Sign up for our email newsletters to get customized updates on new Berghahn publications.
The Scope of Anthropology
Maurice Godelier’s Work in Context
Edited by Laurent Dousset and Serge Tcherkézoff
296 pages, 10 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-0-85745-331-0 $120.00/£85.00 Hb Published (April 2012)
ISBN 978-1-78238-532-5 $34.95/£24.00 Pb Published (October 2014)
eISBN 978-0-85745-332-7 eBook
Reviews
“This is an extremely welcome addition to the literature -- unfortunately, too many English-speakers today think of Godelier as a footnote in the history of Marxist anthropology. This volume helps us remember the importance of Godelier as a thinker of the first order and a major bridge between the Anglophone and Francophone anthropology.” · Alex Golub, University of Hawai’i, Manoa
Description
Some of the most prominent social and cultural anthropologists have come together in this volume to discuss Maurice Godelier’s work. They explore and revisit some of the highly complex practices and structures social scientists encounter in their fieldwork. From the nature–culture debate to the fabrication of hereditary political systems, from transforming gender relations to the problems of the Christianization of indigenous peoples, these chapters demonstrate both the diversity of anthropological topics and the opportunity for constructive dialogue around shared methodological and theoretical models.
Laurent Dousset is Associate Professor at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) and is former Director of the CREDO (Centre for Research and Documentation on Oceania) in Marseilles. He has done research in Aboriginal Australia and in Vanuatu and has also developed several IT knowledge systems for the social sciences.
Serge Tcherkézoff is Professor of Anthropology at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris-Marseille. With Maurice Godelier and Pierre Lemonnier, he founded the CREDO (Centre for Research and Documentation on Oceania), a research unit member of CNRS, EHESS and the University of Provence and is currently organising an EHESS Branch at the Australian National University.
Subject: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology
Area: Asia-Pacific
Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Introduction
Laurent Dousset and Serge Tcherkézoff
Chapter 1. Some Things You Say, Some Things You Dissimulate, and Some Things You Keep To Yourself: Linguistic and Material Exchange in the Construction of Melanesian Societies
Joel Robbins
Chapter 2. The Enigma of Christian Conversion: Exchange and the Emergence of New Great Men among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea
John Barker
Chapter 3. Alienating the Inalienable: Marriage and Money in a Big-man Society
Polly Wiessner
Chapter 4. Anthropology and the Future of Sexuality Studies: An Essay in Honour of Maurice Godelier
Gilbert Herdt
Chapter 5. Material and Immaterial Relations: Gender, Rank and Christianity in Vanuatu
Margaret Jolly
Chapter 6. The Making of Chiefs: Hereditary Succession, Personal Agency and Exchange in North Mekeo Chiefdoms
Mark S. Mosko
Chapter 7. What is left out in Kinship
Robert H. Barnes
Chapter 8. Maurice Godelier and the Asiatic Mode
Jack Goody
Chapter 9. The Dialectic of Cosmopolitanization and Indigenization in the Contemporary World System: Contradictory Configurations of Class and Culture
Jonathan Friedman
Publications by Maurice Godelier
Notes on the Contributors
Index