David Maybury-Lewis (Editor)
Dialectical Societies: The Ge and Bororo of Central Brazil.
Harvard University Press, 1979. Harvard Studies in Cultural Anthropology, 1. First edition. 0674202856 xiv/340 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.75" x 9.75", is bound in light brown cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book and dust jacket are like new. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"The Gê-speaking tribes of Central Brazil have always been an anomaly in the annals of anthropology; their exceedingly simple technology contrasts sharply with their highly complex sociological and ideological traditions. Dialectical Societies, the outgrowth of extended anthropological research organized by David Maybury-Lewis, at long last demystifies Gê social structure while modifying and reinterpreting some of the traditional ideas held about kinship, affiliation, and descent.
Each of the seven contributors deals with a different lowland tribe, but all of them address an ideological focus on the dualistic tribal organization that is here defined as fundamental to the Gê As a collection, their work comprises a substantial revision of the hitherto undeveloped and largely ignored ethnography of Central Brazil."