Preface

Summary

This comparative study belongs to a collective research project directed by Louis Dumont and Daniel de Coppet and based at the RCP 436 of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, which considers the relation, in a given society, between the patterns assumed by the hierarchy of values and those which feature in the circuits of ceremonial exchange. It is based upon a shorter, unpublished study (1977: Diplôme d'études approfondies, under the supervision of Marc Augé, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) of Nyamwezi classification, which had made use of the method developed by Masao Yamaguchi in his study of Jukun symbolism (see chapter 4 note 7 below). These arguments were discussed at the RCP's seminar (Atelier d'anthropologie sociale), and also at seminars led by Louis Dumont and by Marc Augé. I would like to thank the participants at these seminars for their suggestions, which have enabled me to broaden my discussion. I have drawn heavily upon Louis Dumont's works in my own analysis, and his comments, his encouragement, and the interest he has taken in my research have played a crucial part in stimulating me and in helping me to complete this book. My intellectual debt to Claude Lévi-Strauss is self-evident. I would never even have conceived of this book had it not been for the ever-renewed sense of discovery that my reading of The savage mind, and of the other pages devoted by him to the logic of classification, has aroused in me. It is Claude Lévi-Strauss's work which provides the context for the investigations into aspects of the structural method that I have sought to develop here.