Maurice Godelier – författare

This work reassesses the significance of gifts in social life by focusing on sacred objects which are never exchanged despite the value they possess. It presents an analysis of the seminal work of Marcel Mauss and Claude Levi-Strauss, and drawing on his own fieldwork in Melanesia, Maurice Godelier argues that traditional theories are flawed because they consider only exchangeable gifts. By explaining gift-giving in terms of sacred objects and the power associated with them, Godelier challenges both recent and traditional theories of gift-giving.

The societies of Melanesia have been a constant stimulus to anthropological theory. In this collection of essays, anthropologists who have worked in all parts of the Melanesian region of the Pacific bring their expertise to bear on a single theoretical issue. This is a hypothesis formulated by Maurice Godelier concerning the relationship between power, kinship and wealth. Although tightly focused on Godelier's work, the book opens up a major enquiry into the constitution of society in a part of the world where men of prominence come to personify the nature of power. 'Big men', entrepreneurs of exchanges, and 'great men', who flourish in societies characterised by restricted exchanges and ritual complexity, appear to belong to quite different systems. This book considers how substantial the difference between them really is.

The Baruya are a tribal society in highlands Papua New Guinea, with whom Western contact was first made in 1951. During the last twenty years, Maurice Godelier has spent many long periods of time living among this people, and in this book he presents a detailed account of their lives and their forms of social organization. The focus of the book is on inequality and power in this classless society. Godelier discusses both the power that certain men (the Great men) have over others through their control of war, shamanism, hunting, and rites of initiation, as well as the extraordinary power and domination that men in general exert over women. He explores how this domination is produced and maintained, examining it in particular through a detailed study of male and female initiation. He also analyzes the role that sexuality plays in Baruya thought and theories, showing that in the Baruya view, every aspect of domination - be it (in Western categorization) economic, political, or symbolic - can be explained by sexuality, and the different role of the sexes in human reproduction. A major contribution both to the ethnography of Melanesia and to anthropological theory, the book will interest scholars and students of anthropology, as well as other readers interested in power and inequality, and in the relationships between the sexes.

Is anthropology simply a continuation of colonial domination and cultural imperialism by other means, or has it--since its nineteenth-century rebirth as a purportedly scientific discipline--produced reliable knowledge about the cultures it studies? Is anthropology a mirror--which reflects only the preoccupations of the (Western) anthropologist--or a window, through which it is possible to see, though not with the same eyes as their members, other cultures? Deriving from the 2002 Page-Barbour Lectures delivered by the French anthropologist Maurice Godelier at the University of Virginia, and supplemented by additional lectures and articles by the author, In and Out of the West addresses a series of fundamental topics and issues in social anthropology--including family, kinship, and the construction of the self. He particularly emphasizes the strategic role of political-religious relations in the construction of societies and social life.Godelier places social anthropology in its historical perspective, with its origins in the West and, more particularly, colonialism, while also arguing that it has to some extent transcended its origins, achieving a measure of scientific objectivity and validity that cannot be reduced to a continuation of the colonial project. A final chapter, reflecting his experience as the first head of the science department of the new Quai Branly anthropological museum in Paris, discusses issues surrounding the presentation of nonwestern cultural artifacts to a Western general public.

Is anthropology simply a continuation of colonial domination and cultural imperialism by other means, or has it--since its nineteenth-century rebirth as a purportedly scientific discipline--produced reliable knowledge about the cultures it studies? Is anthropology a mirror--which reflects only the preoccupations of the (Western) anthropologist--or a window, through which it is possible to see, though not with the same eyes as their members, other cultures? Deriving from the 2002 Page-Barbour Lectures delivered by the French anthropologist Maurice Godelier at the University of Virginia, and supplemented by additional lectures and articles by the author, In and Out of the West addresses a series of fundamental topics and issues in social anthropology--including family, kinship, and the construction of the self. He particularly emphasizes the strategic role of political-religious relations in the construction of societies and social life. Godelier places social anthropology in its historical perspective, with its origins in the West and, more particularly, colonialism, while also arguing that it has to some extent transcended its origins, achieving a measure of scientific objectivity and validity that cannot be reduced to a continuation of the colonial project. A final chapter, reflecting his experience as the first head of the science department of the new Quai Branly anthropological museum in Paris, discusses issues surrounding the presentation of nonwestern cultural artifacts to a Western general public.

Dans quelle mesure le corps fait-il l'identité d'un être humain ? Et pour combien de temps si quelque chose survit de lui, après sa mort, ce n'est pas tout à fait son corps ? Dans toutes les cultures, il semble que l'humanité, sous des formes diverses, ait été amenée à imaginer l'être humain comme composé de deux parties : une partie périssable et une partie qui continue d'agir bien au-delà de la mort, même si elle n'est pas immortelle. Ces deux parties ne se réduisent pas nécessairement à un corps visible et à un animal double, invisible, mais qui meurt quand l'autre meurt. Chez les Maenge de Nouville-Guinée, l'individu a deux âmes, même s'il n'a qu'un seul corps. De nombreuses sociétés pensent qu'il faut plus de deux êtres humains pour faire un être humain. Il faut que l'esprit d'un ancêtre, ou l'action d'un dieu vienne sinon animer ce corps, du moins le rendre complet, le compléter. Chaque personne naît donc, s'étant inscrite en soi, formant comme une sorte d'intimité impersonnelle, un ensemble d'idées, d'images, de valeurs, par lesquelles l'ordre ou les désordres qui s'impriment dans son corps. règne dans sa société. Seize anthropologues et historiens ont exploré ces réalités culturelles dispersées dans l'espace et le temps.

Dans quelle mesure le corps fait-il l'identité d'un être humain ? Et pour combien de temps si quelque chose survit de lui, après sa mort, ce n'est pas tout à fait son corps ? Dans toutes les cultures, il semble que l'humanité, sous des formes diverses, ait été amenée à imaginer l'être humain comme composé de deux parties : une partie périssable et une partie qui continue d'agir bien au-delà de la mort, même si elle n'est pas immortelle. Ces deux parties ne se réduisent pas nécessairement à un corps visible et à un animal double, invisible, mais qui meurt quand l'autre meurt. Chez les Maenge de Nouville-Guinée, l'individu a deux âmes, même s'il n'a qu'un seul corps. De nombreuses sociétés pensent qu'il faut plus de deux êtres humains pour faire un être humain. Il faut que l'esprit d'un ancêtre, ou l'action d'un dieu vienne sinon animer ce corps, du moins le rendre complet, le compléter. Chaque personne naît donc, s'étant inscrite en soi, formant comme une sorte d'intimité impersonnelle, un ensemble d'idées, d'images, de valeurs, par lesquelles l'ordre ou les désordres qui s'impriment dans son corps. règne dans sa société. Seize anthropologues et historiens ont exploré ces réalités culturelles dispersées dans l'espace et le temps.

Pourquoi mourir? Comment survivre? De la naissance a la mort, c''est par le corps, c''est dans l''habitacle du corps que l''homme se situe dand l''unvers et fair l''expereince de ses congeneres. A l''occasion des rite de passage notamemnt, c''est par le coprps que la societe revendique l''individu comme sien, at c''est sure son corps qu''elle inscrit cette appartenance. Mais nulle branche de la famille humaine ne s''est jamais resignee aux limites naturelles que le corps assignait aux experiences vecues ou aux transformations subies par sa matiere jusqu''a la mort incluse. Toujours at partout on a imagine une ou plusieurs entites qui asurent la continuite de la personne a travers le temps et en illuminent le traits: ame, ombre, double, esprit, etc. Les noms variet, le metaphores aussi. Comment de telles entites accompagnent le corps, le forifient, s''en detachent ou se dressent contre lui, c''est ce que chaque culture a codifie a sa maniere par des pratiques que nous nommons par exemple- epreuves initiatiques, actes de sorcellerie, possession, ou cannibalisme. Tant at si bien que le corps agresse, possed, supplicie, cannibalise, devient en retour un moyen prvilegie d''analyser les cultures. Aux ethnologues at aux historiens de le mettre en oeuvre et de l''ecouter. Neuf d''entre eux se sont attaches a le faire dans des textes nourris de recherches menees en Asie, en Amerique du Sud, en Afrique at en Oceanie.

Pourquoi mourir? Comment survivre? De la naissance a la mort, c''est par le corps, c''est dans l''habitacle du corps que l''homme se situe dand l''unvers et fair l''expereince de ses congeneres. A l''occasion des rite de passage notamemnt, c''est par le coprps que la societe revendique l''individu comme sien, at c''est sure son corps qu''elle inscrit cette appartenance. Mais nulle branche de la famille humaine ne s''est jamais resignee aux limites naturelles que le corps assignait aux experiences vecues ou aux transformations subies par sa matiere jusqu''a la mort incluse. Toujours at partout on a imagine une ou plusieurs entites qui asurent la continuite de la personne a travers le temps et en illuminent le traits: ame, ombre, double, esprit, etc. Les noms variet, le metaphores aussi. Comment de telles entites accompagnent le corps, le forifient, s''en detachent ou se dressent contre lui, c''est ce que chaque culture a codifie a sa maniere par des pratiques que nous nommons par exemple- epreuves initiatiques, actes de sorcellerie, possession, ou cannibalisme. Tant at si bien que le corps agresse, possed, supplicie, cannibalise, devient en retour un moyen prvilegie d''analyser les cultures. Aux ethnologues at aux historiens de le mettre en oeuvre et de l''ecouter. Neuf d''entre eux se sont attaches a le faire dans des textes nourris de recherches menees en Asie, en Amerique du Sud, en Afrique at en Oceanie.

This book is the result of a research project begun by the author in 1958 with the aim of answering two questions:First, what is the rationality of the economic systems that appear and disappear throughout history-in other words, what is their hidden logic and the underlying necessity for them to exist, or to have existed?Second, what are the conditions for a rational understanding of these systems-in other words, for a fully developed comparative economic science?The field of investigation opened up by these two questions is vast, touching on the foundations of social reality and on how to understand them. The author, being a Marxist, sought the answers, as he writes, 'not in philosophy or by philosophical means, but in and through examining the knowledge accumulated by the sciences.' The stages of his journey from philosophy to economics and then to anthropology are indicated by the divisions of his book.Godelier rejects, at the outset, any attempt to tackle the question of rationality or irrationality of economic science and of economic realities from the angle of an a priori idea, a speculative definition of what is rational. Such an approach can yield only, he feels, an ideological result. Rather, he treats the appearance and disappearance of social and economic systems in history as being governed by a necessity 'wholly internal to the concrete structures of social life.

With marriage in decline, divorce on the rise, the demise of the nuclear family, and the increase in marriages and adoptions among same-sex partners, it is clear that the structures of kinship in the modern West are in a state of flux.In The Metamorphoses of Kinship, the world-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier contextualizes these developments, surveying the accumulated experience of humanity with regard to such phenomena as the organization of lines of descent, sexuality and sexual prohibitions. In parallel, Godelier studies the evolution of Western conjugal and familial traditions from their roots in the nineteenth century to the present. The conclusion he draws is that it is never the case that a man and a woman are sufficient on their own to raise a child, and nowhere are relations of kinship or the family the keystone of society.Godelier argues that the changes of the last thirty years do not herald the disappearance or death agony of kinship, but rather its remarkable metamorphosis-one that, ironically, is bringing us closer to the "traditional" societies studied by ethnologists.

This book is the result of a research project begun by the author in 1958 with the aim of answering two questions:First, what is the rationality of the economic systems that appear and disappear throughout history-in other words, what is their hidden logic and the underlying necessity for them to exist, or to have existed?Second, what are the conditions for a rational understanding of these systems-in other words, for a fully developed comparative economic science?The field of investigation opened up by these two questions is vast, touching on the foundations of social reality and on how to understand them. The author, being a Marxist, sought the answers, as he writes, ''not in philosophy or by philosophical means, but in and through examining the knowledge accumulated by the sciences.'' The stages of his journey from philosophy to economics and then to anthropology are indicated by the divisions of his book.Godelier rejects, at the outset, any attempt to tackle the question of rationality or irrationality of economic science and of economic realities from the angle of an a priori idea, a speculative definition of what is rational. Such an approach can yield only, he feels, an ideological result. Rather, he treats the appearance and disappearance of social and economic systems in history as being governed by a necessity ''wholly internal to the concrete structures of social life.

Anthropologist Claude L�vi-Strauss was among the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. In this rigorous study, Maurice Godelier traces the evolution of his thought. Focusing primarily on L�vi-Strauss''s analysis of kinship and myth, Godelier provides an assessment of his intellectual achievements and legacy. Meticulously researched, L�vi-Strauss is written in a clear and accessible style. The culmination of decades of engagement with L�vi-Strauss''s work, this book will prove indispensible to students of his thought and structural anthropology more generally.

Lévi-Strauss held that "the real, the symbolic and the imaginary" are three separate orders. Maurice Godelier demonstrates the contrary: the real is not separate from the symbolic and the imaginary. Godelier's book goes to the strategic heart of the social sciences, for to examine the nature and role of the imaginary and the symbolic is also to attempt to account for the basic components of all societies and ultimately of human existence. And these aspects in turn shape our social and personal identity.

What you imagined is not always imaginary, but everything that is imaginary is imagined. It is by imagining that people make the impossible become possible. In mythology or religion, however, those things that are imagined are never experienced as being imaginary by believers. The realm of the imagined is even more real than the real; it is super-real, surreal.L�vi-Strauss held that "the real, the symbolic and the imaginary" are three separate orders. Maurice Godelier demonstrates the contrary: that the real is not separate from the symbolic and the imaginary. For instance, for a portion of humanity, rituals and sacred objects and places attest to the reality and therefore the truth that God, gods or spirits exist. The symbolic enables people to signify what they think and do, encompassing thought, spilling over into the whole body, but also pervading temples, palaces, tools, foods, mountains, the sea, the sky and the earth. It is real.Godelier''s book goes to the strategic heart of the social sciences, for to examine the nature and role of the imaginary and the symbolic is also to attempt to account for the basic components of all societies and ultimately of human existence. And these aspects in turn shape our social and personal identity.

With marriage in decline, divorce on the rise and the demise of the nuclear family, it is clear that the structures of kinship in the modern West are in a state of flux.In The Metamorphoses of Kinship, the world-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier contextualises these developments, surveying the accumulated experience of humanity with regard to such phenomena as the organisation of lines of descent, sexuality and sexual prohibitions. In parallel, Godelier studies the evolution of Western conjugal and familial traditions from their roots in the nineteenth century to the present. The conclusion he draws is that it is never the case that a man and a woman are sufficient on their own to raise a child, and nowhere are relations of kinship or the family the keystone of society.

What is the specificity of the human race within nature? How is its history to be explained? What impact do material realities, natural and man-made, have on human beings? What role does thought, in all its dimensions, play in the production of social relations? How are the human sciences to be advanced today? These are among the crucial questions confronted by Godelier in this key book of contemporary social theory. Its point of departure lies in a fact and a hypothesis. The fact: in contrast to other social animals, human beings do not just live in society; they produce society in order to live. The hypothesis: because they have the unique capacity to appropriate and transform nature, they produce culture and create history.Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork and ranging over the most diverse ethnographic data, Godelier substantiates his case by attending to the analysis of both social relations of production and the production of social relations. In a sustained challenge to currently dominant schemas, he offers a series of highly original theses on the constitution, reproduction and transformation of societies, recasting the distinction between infrastructure and superstructures, illuminating the relations between economic determination and political/ideological dominance, and clarifying the character of ideology and its central role in the perpetuation of dominance and exploitation.

What is incest? Is it universally prohibited? Does this prohibition concern only "biological" kinships or does it extend to various "social" kinships, such as those that are formed today in so-called blended families but which also exist in many other societies?This prohibition plays a fundamental role in the functioning of the multiple kinship systems studied throughout the world. But where does it come from? Can we think, with Claude Lévi-Strauss, that the prohibition of incest alone marks the passage from nature to culture? And how can we understand, then, the persistent tension between the proclaimed, institutionalized prohibition and the incestuous practice which, everywhere, remains?World-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier highlights an essential fact, the spontaneously asocial and undifferentiated character of human sexuality and the need for a social regulation of this spontaneity. It thus brings to light the main teachings of anthropology on the question of incest, a major social fact of burning relevance today.

What is incest? Is it universally prohibited? Does this prohibition concern only "biological" kinships or does it extend to various "social" kinships, such as those that are formed today in so-called blended families but which also exist in many other societies?This prohibition plays a fundamental role in the functioning of the multiple kinship systems studied throughout the world. But where does it come from? Can we think, with Claude L�vi-Strauss, that the prohibition of incest alone marks the passage from nature to culture? And how can we understand, then, the persistent tension between the proclaimed, institutionalized prohibition and the incestuous practice which, everywhere, remains?World-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier highlights an essential fact, the spontaneously asocial and undifferentiated character of human sexuality and the need for a social regulation of this spontaneity. It thus brings to light the main teachings of anthropology on the question of incest, a major social fact of burning relevance today.

What is the specificity of the human race within nature? How is its history to be explained? What impact do material realities, natural and man-made, have on human beings? What role does thought, in all its dimensions, play in the production of social relations? How are the human sciences to be advanced today? These are among the crucial questions confronted by Godelier in this key book of contemporary social theory. Its point of departure lies in a fact and a hypothesis. The fact: in contrast to other social animals, human beings do not just live in society; they produce society in order to live. The hypothesis: because they have the unique capacity to appropriate and transform nature, they produce culture and create history.Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork and ranging over the most diverse ethnographic data, Godelier substantiates his case by attending to the analysis of both social relations of production and the production of social relations. In a sustained challenge to currently dominant schemas, he offers a series of highly original theses on the constitution, reproduction and transformation of societies, recasting the distinction between infrastructure and superstructures, illuminating the relations between economic determination and political/ideological dominance, and clarifying the character of ideology and its central role in the perpetuation of dominance and exploitation.