Forbidden Fruit

Praise for The Imagined, the Imaginary and the Symbolic: With his characteristic limpidity of thought and expression, Godelier explores major features of what makes us distinctive social beings: our capacity to imagine and inhabit other worlds beyond and within the ones we are living in. How the symbols we live by render plausible, even compulsory, the absurdities of our collective imagination; how what we imagine becomes imaginary in certain conditions, real in others; how the symbolic which binds collectives together becomes effective through the domination it exerts; how social life stabilizes imagined possibilities through play, art and religion. These basic questions receive here new and illuminating answers, which throw light on the most pressing issues of our time. -- Philippe Descola, College de France, author of Beyond Nature and Culture Praise for The Imagined, the Imaginary and the Symbolic: After 'Marx,' 'Durkheim' and 'Weber,' after the first fifty years of ethnographic and historical exploration, after Levi-Strauss and the next fifty years of ethnographic and historical research, what might the 'Frazer' of our times write? Maurice Godelier's gripping essay gives us an idea. Verging on a Jeremiad, drawing from predecessors near and far for a synthesis 'in the grand style,' The Imagined, the Imaginary and the Symbolic probes our current state of learning. In so doing it sets the conditions for posing new questions for the next generations struggling not only to know the others and the pasts but to create societies for the future. The grand synthesizer, Godelier has given us another gift for the times. -- Frederick H. Damon, Professor of Anthropology, University of Virginia Praise for Claude Levi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought: All would agree on the influence of the voluminous oeuvre of Levi-Strauss within the history of the Human Sciences. To come to terms with it, we need a reliable guide, such as this. Students of kinship, myth, or mythical thinking may disagree with some of Godelier's positions, but have here a splendid basis on which to build. -- Nick Allen, University of Oxford Praise for Claude Levi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought: Maurice Godelier, eminent French anthropologist, surveys and assesses, sympathetically and critically, the mass of writings on kinship and mythology of another eminent French anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss. This deep engagement of the one with the other is, for readers, both a pleasure and a powerful tool. -- Thomas R. Trautmann, Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan Praise for Claude Levi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought: Cuts through the fog of commentary surrounding the legacy of this most enigmatic of scholars, to address Levi-Strauss's legacy in its own, properly anthropological terms. The book is a joy to read. -- Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen Praise for The Metamorphoses of Kinship: This is a blockbuster of a book. Nothing like it has been written since Levi-Strauss's Structures elementaires de la parente (1949) or Meyer Fortes's Kinship and the Social Order (1969). Yet in the sweep of its evidence and argument, Godelier's summa is more ambitious and far-reaching than either of these. It is at once a major intervention in the discipline of anthropology, and a work of the widest human interest ... The book is both a monument of scholarship and a gripping set of reflections on universal experience. It is certain to be read and discussed for years to come. -- Jack Goody * New Left Review * Praise for The Metamorphoses of Kinship: Godelier has reasserted the value of our rich tradition of discussions of kinship matters. He has also shown how the category has metamorphosed as it has drawn in new issues of pressing current importance in modern life and made his case that, far from being genuinely in decline, the study of kinship is central to our understanding of what it means to be human. -- Robert H. Barnes * Comparative Studies in Society and History * Praise for The Mental and the Material: Engaging and intriguing - Anthropology, it would seem, may yet return from the graveyard of structuralism to stir up some debate in the social sciences. * New Statesman *