Claude Lévi-Strauss

Maurice Godelier is a world-renowned anthropologist. Among the many honours he has received are the CNRS Gold Medal and the Alexander von Humbolt prize. His major works include The Making of Great Men, Metamorphoses of Kinship, The Enigma of the Gift, In and Out of the West, and more recently Lévi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought.

“All would agree on the influence of the voluminous oeuvre of Lévi-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“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 Lévi-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 “Cuts through the fog of commentary surrounding the legacy of this most enigmatic of scholars, to address Lévi-Strauss’s legacy in its own, properly anthropological terms. The book is a joy to read.” —Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen