Primitive Classification

Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss maintain that society is the source of the very categories of human thought. First published in the *Année Sociologique* in 1903, this classic essay has been translated by Rodney Needham, who also provides a critical introduction. "[*Primitive Classification*] will impress the reader with its quiet elegance, its direct, logical form, its clarity of style, its spirit of careful, yet bold, exploration."-Harry Alpert, *American Journal of Sociology* "Particularly instructive for anyone who wonders what social anthropology is: how, if at all, it differs from sociology and whether it has any unifying theoretical problem."-F. K. Lehman, *American Sociological Review*