Food for Thought: Systems of Categorization in Leviticus 11
In two interconnected theoretical works published in 1962, Lévi-Strauss argued that the tendency among primitive societies to formulate animal classification systems and to express these systems ritually cannot be explained as a side-effect of social classification, as Durkheim and Mauss had argued,...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2008
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 2008, Volume: 101, Issue: 2, Pages: 203-229 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | In two interconnected theoretical works published in 1962, Lévi-Strauss argued that the tendency among primitive societies to formulate animal classification systems and to express these systems ritually cannot be explained as a side-effect of social classification, as Durkheim and Mauss had argued, nor can it be explained on the narrow materialistic grounds posited by Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski. The negative evidence adduced by Lévi-Strauss is empirical: animal classification systems are neither limited to societies in which there exists a fixed correlation between social groups and animal species, nor do they pertain to species that are of significant material or symbolic value to the classifying culture. According to Lévi-Strauss, the ritual expression of the mental act of classification functions like a language, containing “stressed” and “unstressed” elements and aiming to convey theoretical messages. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816008001788 |