Seminar: Reading of J. Goody's Domestication of the Savage mind, chapter 1.

The flaws in R. Needham's "binary opposition" (in Reconaissances, Counterpoints and in Politethic opposition) and the absurdity of L. Dumont's "hierarchic opposition" ( Homo hiearachicus) as two possible outcomes of the ambiguity of the Durkheimean model.

Neddham and Dumont reviewed by R. H. Barnes ( Hierarchy without caste) and J. C. Gomes da Silva (L'identité volée): misreadings of Aristote's Catagories and Organon, evocation of Porphiry's platonism in his neo-aristotean proposal, and of Thomas Aquinas' "hiearachic opposition".

The forgotten categorical relations in Aristote: reversibility and ambiguity as essential to an understanding of the dynamics symbolic thought: Luc de Heusch's critical conception of "sacred royalty" in Africa ( Sacrifice dans le religions africaines), and J. C. Gomes da Silva's view on inversion and reversibility (and notes on dialogism from M. Baktine to J. Kristeva).

Lévi-Strauss and its British readers: R. Needham, E. Leach and J. Goody

The impact of C. Lévi-Strauss' ideas and writings in the reshaping of British anthropology, criticisms and adoptions of structural methods.

The prominence of the taxonomic principle. Review of the notion of "dual opposition".

R. Needham: from acolyte to critic to censor. A review of his troubled relation with structuralism.

Right and Left: Essays in dual symbolic classification. Readings of R. Needham's defense of the tabular method in the presentation of Meru and Nyoro ethnography.

The utopian model behind the structural method proposal: analysis of Anthropologie strcturale II (the equalitarian future and the anthropologist's role; the paradigm of the "good savage") and of Structures Élementaires de la parenté (the primal dualist organisation of the Nambikwara).