Albert Piette is Professor of Anthropology at Paris Nanterre University in France and a researcher at the Centre for Ethnology and Comparative Sociology (CNRS). He is the author of several books on the epistemology of the social sciences, ritual or religious phenomena, existence and the human specificity.

• Preface viiIntroduction xiiiChapter 1. Theory: Observing the Human Volume 11.1. Volume and voluments 11.2. The entirety of a volume and the density of presence 91.3. Difference and separation 201.4. Volumuation and continuity 281.5. Lessereity 47Chapter 2. Illustrating: Drawings of Theory 572.1. Drawings and contraspective 572.2. Focusing on the human figure 642.2.1. Putting into perspective 652.2.2. Separation 672.2.3. Focusing on the volume 682.2.4. Rays 692.2.5. Voluments 712.2.6. Consistency and style 722.2.7. Volugrams 732.2.8. Peripheral gestures, presence and absence 74Chapter 3. Debates: Anthropology and the Human Entity 793.1. Experience and existence 813.2. Going beyond, wrenching and eccentricity 923.3. Lines and flow 993.4. Intersubjectivity 1073.5. Perspections of the individual 115Chapter 4. Further Development: Structural Existantism 1254.1. Lévi-Strauss and the difficult ambition of anthropology 1254.2. A structural approach and the human volume 133Conclusion 151Bibliography 159Index 171