In and Out of the West: Reconstructing Anthropology

Drawing from the 2002 Page-Barbour Lectures he delivered at the U. of Virginia and adding four additional lectures and articles, Godelier, an anthropologist at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris, deconstructs "truths" in social anthropology about family, kinship, sexuality, and the construction of self. He places social anthropology in its historical perspective, including its origins in the West and colonialism, and describes how it is in the process of being reconstructed, transcending its origins to achieve scientific objectivity beyond the colonial efforts and no longer situated in the West. He also discusses his experience as the first head of the science department of the Quai Branly anthropological museum in Paris and issues relating to the presentation of non-Western cultural artifacts to a Western public. The lectures have been translated by Nora Scott. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Maurice Godelier is an internationally acclaimed anthropologist best known for his fieldwork among the Baruya, a New Guinea Highlands tribe, detailed in his ethnography The Making of Great Men. He is also the author of The Enigma of the Gift and The Mental and the Material, among other important contributions. He is Directeur d’etudes at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris.