Malinowski and the Work of Myth (Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691631212 ISBN 13: 9780691631219

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2016

Synopsis

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) was a wide-ranging thinker whose ideas affected almost every branch of the social sciences. And nowhere is this impact more evident or more persistent than on the study of myth, ritual, and religion. He articulated as never before or since a program of seeing myths as part of the functional, pragmatic, or performed dimension of culture--that is, as part of activities that did certain tasks for particular human communities. Spanning his entire career, this anthology brings together for the first time the important texts from his work on myth. Ivan Strenski's introduction places Malinowski in his intellectual world and traces his evolving conception of mythology. As Strenski points out, Malinowski was a pioneer in applying the lessons of psychoanalysis to the study of culture, while at the same time he attempted to correct the generalizations of psychoanalysis with the cross-cultural researches of ethnology. With his growing interest in psychoanalysis came a conviction that myths performed essential cultural tasks in "chartering" all sort of human institutions and practices.

Originally published in 1992.

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About this title

About the Author

Ivan Strenski is Holstein Family and Community Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. His previous publications include "Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History" (1988), "Religion in Relation: Method, Application, and Moral Location" (1993), "Durkheim and the Jews of France" (1997), "Contesting Sacrifice: Religion, Nationalism and Social Thought "(2002), "Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice" (2003), and "The New Durkheim: Essays on Philosophy, Religious Identity and the Politics of Knowledge" (2006).

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0691631212
• ISBN 13: 9780691631219
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216
• Editor: Strenski Ivan