Categories and Classification

From reflections on such works in translation as the 1938 essay, The Person, by seminal French sociocultural anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), and Primitive Classification (1903), which Mauss coauthored with his uncle-mentor sociologist Emile Durkheim, Allen offers his Maussian-influenced ideas on the origins of human society, magic, religion, and Indo- European ideology. Only the last chapter is original to this text. The titles and dates of Mauss'' lectures are appended. The author acknowledges the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford. c. Book News Inc.