Through the application of anthropological techniques for analysing myth the essays in this 1983 volume offer interesting and thought-provoking structuralist insights for a variety of particular cases in the Scriptures. They also give some account of past interactions between anthropologists and Christian theologians, and enter the debate on the historicity of Biblical events. Edmund Leach has been interested for many years in the implications of a structuralist mode of myth analysis for the explanation of scriptural texts and problems. His essays in this book continue the line of enquiry he first developed in Genesis as Myth (1969) and he pursues his arguments here with characteristic colour and brilliance of exposition. With the two pieces by Dr Alan Aycock on related themes, this volume makes a fascinating and controversial contribution to the study and interpretation of the Bible.
Edmund Leach's book investigates the writings of 'structuralists,' and their different theories: the general incest theory and of animal sacrifice. This book is designed for the use of teaching undergraduates in anthropology, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy and related disciplines faced with structuralist argument. It provides the prolegomena necessary to understand the final chapter of Levi-Strauss's massive four-volume Mythologiques. Some prior knowledge of anthropological literature is useful but not essential. The principal ethnographic source is the Book of Leviticus; this guide should help anyone who is trying to grasp the essentials of 'seminology' - the general theory of how signs and symbols come to convey meaning. The author's core thesis is that: 'the indices in non-verbal communication systems, like the sound elements in spoken language, do not have meaning as isolates, but only as members of set'; the book's special merit is that it makes this kind of jargon
A study of elitism particularly concerned with Indian elites in the context of British influence and its aftermath. The problems delineated are by no means peculiar to the Indian subcontinent. Nearly all the developing countries of contemporary Asia, Africa and Latin America are entangled with their post-colonial heritage and the history of political elitism in all these countries has been similar. The papers consider who were members of the elites, in the sense of 'men at the top'. They enquire how they got there, how they continued to recruit themselves and what was their relationship with the British. The contributors, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, political scientists and historians, present each other with forms of evidence which are unfamiliar and, in sum, result in a study which destroys many of the conventional clichés of colonial historians.
In this lucide guide to the often abstruse works of Claude L?vi-Strauss, Edmund Leach synthesizes the thought of one of the twentieth century's greatest anthropologists and provides a thoughtful intr
