Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss maintain that society is the source of the very categories of human thought. First published in the Année 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