Overview

Lévi-Strauss held that ""the real, the symbolic and the imaginary"" are three separate orders. Maurice Godelier demonstrates the contrary: the real is not separate from the symbolic and the imaginary. Godelier's book goes to the strategic heart of the social sciences, for to examine the nature and role of the imaginary and the symbolic is also to attempt to account for the basic components of all societies and ultimately of human existence. And these aspects in turn shape our social and personal identity.

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9781786637680

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With his characteristic limpidity of thought and expression, Godelier explores major features of what makes us distinctive social beings: our capacity to imagine and inhabit other worlds beyond and within the ones we are living in. How the symbols we live by render plausible, even compulsory, the absurdities of our collective imagination; how what we imagine becomes imaginary in certain conditions, real in others; how the symbolic which binds collectives together becomes effective through the domination it exerts; how social life stabilizes imagined possibilities through play, art and religion. These basic questions receive here new and illuminating answers, which throw light on the most pressing issues of our time. -- Philippe Descola, Collège de France, author of <i>Beyond Nature and Culture</i>

With his characteristic limpidity of thought and expression, Godelier explores major features of what makes us distinctive social beings: our capacity to imagine and inhabit other worlds beyond and within the ones we are living in. How the symbols we live by render plausible, even compulsory, the absurdities of our collective imagination; how what we imagine becomes imaginary in certain conditions, real in others; how the symbolic which binds collectives together becomes effective through the domination it exerts; how social life stabilizes imagined possibilities through play, art and religion. These basic questions receive here new and illuminating answers, which throw light on the most pressing issues of our time. -- Philippe Descola, College de France, author of <i>Beyond Nature and Culture</i>

Author Information

Maurice Godelier is a world-renowned anthropologist. Among the many honours he has received are the CNRS Gold Medal and the Alexander von Humbolt prize. His major works include The Making of Great Men, Metamorphoses of Kinship, The Enigma of the Gift, In and Out of the West, and more recently Lévi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought.

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