Introduction

In the last few years there have been published translations by past and present members of the Institute of Social Anthropology at Oxford of two minor classics of the French sociological school, Emile Durkheim’s thesis on the relations between philosophy and sociology and Marcel Mauss’s essay on gift-exchange. ¹ A third volume is now presented, a translation of two essays by Robert Hertz, ² a pupil of Durkheim and a friend of Mauss and a little-known, because short-lived, writer. These essays I have greatly admired, and I have lectured on them at Oxford for a number of years. Dr. Needham has shared my admiration and he and Mrs. Needham have gladly devoted much time to translating them. It is appropriate that Dr. Needham should have undertaken this task, because Hertz specialized in Indonesian studies, a field in which he is himself an acknowledged authority. These three translations have been published by the same publishers both in England and in the United States and in the same format, so we hope they may be the beginning of a series of such translations, which are not just translations of unconnected essays but of essays which have a close theoretical relationship, each illustrating in the discussion of a particular topic a common point of view. If it should prove to be possible we will add to the series other translations of important essays by writers of the Année Sociologique school.