Description
Since its publication in 1969, Émile Benveniste’s Vocabulaire—here in a new translation as the Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society—has been the classic reference for tracing the institutional and conceptual genealogy of the sociocultural worlds of gifts, contracts, sacrifice, hospitality, authority, freedom, ancient economy, and kinship. A comprehensive and comparative history of words with analyses of their underlying neglected genealogies and structures of signification—and this via a masterful journey through Germanic, Romance, Indo-Iranian, Latin, and Greek languages—Benveniste’s dictionary is a must-read for anthropologists, linguists, literary theorists, classicists, and philosophers alike.
This book has famously inspired a wealth of thinkers, including Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Giorgio Agamben, François Jullien, and many others. In this new volume, Benveniste’s masterpiece on the study of language and society finds new life for a new generation of scholars. As political fictions continue to separate and reify differences between European, Middle Eastern, and South Asian societies, Benveniste reminds us just how historically deep their interconnections are and that understanding the way our institutions are evoked through the words that describe them is more necessary than ever.
Chapter
Section I: Livestock and Wealth
Chapter One: Male and Sire
Chapter Two: A Lexical Opposition in Need of Revision: sūs and porcus
Chapter Three: Próbaton and the Homeric Economy
Chapter Four: Livestock and Money: pecu and pecunia
Section II: Giving and Taking
Chapter Five: Gift and Exchange
Chapter Six: Giving, Taking, and Receiving
Chapter Seven: Hospitality
Chapter Eight: Personal Loyalty
Chapter Nine: Two Ways of Buying
Chapter Ten: Purchase and Redemption
Chapter Eleven: An Occupation without a Name: Commerce
Section IV: Economic Obligations
Chapter Twelve: Accountancy and Valuation
Chapter Thirteen: Hiring and Leasing
Chapter Fourteen: Price and Wages
Chapter Fifteen: Credence and Belief
Chapter Sixteen: Lending, Borrowing, and Debt
Chapter Seventeen: Gratuitousness and Gratefulness
Book II: The Vocabulary of Kinship
Chapter One: The Importance of the Concept of Paternity
Chapter Two: Status of the Mother and Matrilineal Descent
Chapter Three: The Principle of Exogamy and its Applications
Chapter Four: The Indo-European Expression for “Marriage”
Chapter Five: Kinship Resulting from Marriage
Chapter Six: Formation and Suffixation of the Terms for Kinship
Chapter Seven: Words Derived from the Terms for Kinship
Chapter One: Tripartition of Functions
Chapter Two: The Four Divisions of Society
Chapter Three: The Free Man
Chapter Five: The Slave and the Stranger
Chapter Six: Cities and Communities
Book IV: Royalty and its Privileges
Chapter Two: xšay- and Iranian Kingship
Chapter Three: Hellenic Kingship
Chapter Four: The Authority of the King
Chapter Five: Honor and Honors
Chapter Eight: Royalty and Nobility
Chapter Nine: The King and His People
Chapter Three: Ius and the Oath in Rome
Chapter Four: *med- and the Concept of Measure
Chapter Six: The Censor and Auctoritas
Chapter Seven: The Quaestor and the *Prex
Chapter Eight: The Oath in Greece
Chapter One: The “Sacred”
Chapter Two: The Libation
Chapter Three: The Sacrifice
Chapter Five: Prayer and Supplication
Chapter Six: The Latin Vocabulary of Signs and Omens
Chapter Seven: Religion and Superstition
Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society
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