Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss maintain that society is the source of the very categories of human thought. First published in the Ann©e Sociologique in 1903, this classic essay has been translated by Rodney Needham, who also provides a critical introduction.

"[Primitive Classification] will impress the reader with its quiet elegance, its direct, logical form, its clarity of style, its spirit of careful, yet bold, exploration."€"Harry Alpert, American Journal of Sociology

"Particularly instructive for anyone who wonders what social anthropology is: how, if at all, it differs from sociology and whether it has any unifying theoretical problem."€"F. K. Lehman, American Sociological Review