The Scope of Anthropology

Maurice Godelier’s Work in Context

Laurent Dousset, Serge Tcherkézoff, Laurent Dousset, Serge Tcherkézoff

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781782385325
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857453327
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Introduction
• 1. Some Things You Say, Some Things You Dissimulate, and Some Things You Keep To Yourself: Linguistic, Material and Marital Exchange in the Construction of Melanesian Societies
• 2. The Enigma of Christian Conversion: Exchange and the Emergence of New Great Men among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea
• 3. Alienating the Inalienable: Marriage and Money in a Big Man Society
• 4. Anthropology and the Future of Sexuality Studies: An Essay in Honour of Maurice Godelier
• 5. Material and Immaterial Relations: Gender, Rank and Christianity in Vanuatu
• 6. The Making of Chiefs: ‘Hereditary Succession’, Personal Agency and Exchange in North Mekeo Chiefdoms
• 7. What is Left Out in Kinship
• 8. Maurice Godelier and the Asiatic Mode
• 9. The Dialectic of Cosmopolitanization and Indigenization in the Contemporary World System: Contradictory Configurations of Class and Culture
• Publications by Maurice Godelier
• Notes on Contributors
• Index