This volume is the first to collect the most influential essays and lectures of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Published in a wide variety of venues, and often difficult to find, the pieces are brought together here for the first time in a one major vol...

There is no female religious figure so widely known and revered as the Virgin Mary. Throughout history, Mary has inspired in a multitude of cultures around the world a deep affection, a desire to emulate her virtue, and a strong belief in the power o...

Though his work was little known outside Italian intellectual circles for most of the twentieth century, anthropologist and historian of religions Ernesto de Martino is now recognized as one of the most original thinkers in the field. This book is te...

Successor to Claude Levi-Strauss at the College de France, Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and "Beyond Nature and Culture" has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French...

Anthropology has long had a vexed relationship with literature, and nowhere has this been more acutely felt than in France, where most ethnographers, upon returning from the field, write not one book, but two: a scientific monograph and a literary ac...

One of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Claude Levi-Strauss casts a long shadow over many areas of inquiry, from ethnology and cultural anthropology to literary studies, Marxist theory, and religious studies. In recent years, i...

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the division between nature and culture has been fundamental to Western thought. In this groundbreaking work, renowned anthropologist Philippe Descola seeks to break down this divide, arguing for a departure f...

The cave art of France's Dordogne region is world-famous for the mythology and beauty of its remarkable drawings and paintings. These ancient images of lively bison, horses, and mammoths, as well as symbols of all kinds, are fascinating touchstones i...

As any reader of the "Symposium" knows, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates conversed over lavish banquets, kept watch on who was eating too much fish, and imbibed liberally without ever getting drunk. In other words, James Davidson writes, he ref...

"The Hikayat Banjar", a seventeenth-century native court chronicle from Southeast Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as "the banana tree at the gate". Michael Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor...