This volume is a study of mortuary customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa, in research for this project the author spent over 100 days attending funeral ceremonies and attended 25 burial services.

Against the background of the problems involved in the comparative study of human society, the essays in this book show the comparative ideal in practice, which combines elements from both sociology and anthropology.

This collection brings together Emrys Peters' major writings on the Bedouin of Libya.

Human ecology is ultimately part of a general theory of society. This is the argument developed here by Roy Ellen, whose exploration of the interplay between social organization and ecology in small-scale subsistence systems has direct bearings both on the investigation of human environmental relations in general and on contemporary social theory. He argues that while ecological study of non-industrial societies cannot be elevated to the status of theory, domain or discipline, it can be represented as a single 'problematic' that historically has acquired some degree of autonomy and which...

A collection of specially commissioned essays dealing with general aspects of kinship, family and marriage from an anthropological point of view, that is, considering the total range of human societies. In his editorial introduction, Jack Goody explains that his aim has been to provide 'essays dealing with general themes rather than ethnographic conundrums or descriptive minutiae' in the hope of achieving 're-consideration of some central problem areas including those examined by an earlier generation of anthropologists and still raised by scholars outside the discipline itself'. Individual...

The importance of writing as a means of communication in a society formerly without it, or where writing has been confined to particular groups, is enormous. It objectifies speech, provides language with a material correlative, and in this material form speech can be transmitted over space and preserved over time. In this book the contributors discuss cultures at different levels of sophistication and literacy and examine the importance of writing on the development of these societies. All the articles except the first were specially written for this book and the extensive introduction unites...

Edmund Leach's book investigates the writings of 'structuralists, ' and their different theories: the general incest theory and of animal sacrifice. This book is designed for the use of teaching undergraduates in anthropology, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy and related disciplines faced with structuralist argument. It provides the prolegomena necessary to understand the final chapter of Levi-Strauss's massive four-volume Mythologiques. Some prior knowledge of anthropological literature is useful but not essential. The principal ethnographic source is the Book of Leviticus; this...

This book is an attempt to see the development of domestic institutions, the family, marriage, conjugal roles, in relation to changes in the mode of productive activity, and specifically with the change from hoe to plough agriculture. These differences are related to societies in Africa on the one hand, and in Asia and Europe on the other. The author tries to do this in two ways. He compares information derived from a range of human societies, historical as well as contemporary, employing the impressionistic techniques of the social scientist and comparative historian. But in addition, he has...

This book offers an original way of bridging the gap between what biologists and social scientists have to say about human behaviour.

If faraway peoples have different ideas from our own, is this because they have different mentalities? Did our remote ancestors lack logic? The notion of distinct mentalities has been used extensively by historians to describe and explain cultural diversity. Professor Lloyd rejects this psychologising talk of mentalities and proposes an alternative approach, which takes as its starting point the social contexts of communication. Discussing apparently irrational beliefs and behaviour (such as magic), he shows how different forms of thought coexist in a single culture but within conventionally...