作者通过对一个没有类似于西方国家制度的非洲部落的田野研究，对规范了一代人类学者从事社会和文化研究的工作范式提出了一个挑战性的问题，即在一个没有国家和政府统治的部落中，社会是如何组织起来的？这本著作被认为真正起到了人类学认识范式更新的作用。

"Every word, like a sacred object, has its place. No "precis" is possible. This extraordinary book must be read."--Edmund Carpenter, "New York Times Book Review " "No outline is possible; I can only say that reading this book is a most exciting intellectual exercise in which dialectic, wit, and imagination combine to stimulate and provoke at every page."--Edmund Leach, "Man " "Levi-Strauss's books are tough: very scholarly, very dense, very rapid in argument. But once you have mastered him, human history can never be the same, nor indeed can one's view of contemporary society. And his latest book, "The Savage Mind," is his most comprehensive and certainly his most profound. Everyone interested in the history of ideas "must" read it; everyone interested in human institutions "should "read it."--J. H. Plumb, "Saturday Review" "A constantly stimulating, informative and suggestive intellectual challenge."--Geoffrey Gorer, "The Observer," London

Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.

100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come? In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical - and sometimes devastating - breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, palaeontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come? Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future.

在现今这个多元世界中，学习文化人类学能让所有学生洞悉、探索我们置身其中的千差万别的世界。本书将人类学家的思考方式归结为11个问题，每章都以作者从事人类学研究的亲身经历开篇，并在文中进行详细剖析，生动地讲述了人类学的主要内容，有助于学生较快地掌握人类学研究人类行为和观念的 方法，学会像人类学家一样思考自己在现实生活中遇到的问题。 这本激动人心的新书引出了文化人类学思考方式的核心方式，并通过十一个问题让它们浅显易懂，告诉我们如何通过这些问题提高自己的认识水平。每个简短章节围绕一个问题展开，并附有练习和课堂演示，是一本上佳的人类学通识教科书。

《原始社会的结构与功能》主要内容：中国从西方引进人类学是客观形势使然。1840年前的中国曾自诩为“天下”：它的语文就是世界语，它的经典就是天经地义，它的文人就是世界师表。那时的中国多的是阶序观念和自我中心意识，缺的是主权平等和文化相对理念。