This book attempts (so the dust cover informs us) to 'bring more rigorous methods of thought into the tangled sciences of sociology, social psychology, and cultural anthropology'; and perhaps it succeeds in doing so although despite the unquestionable value and importance of the book, I am not altogether sure of this.

The theme of the volume is the culture of the Iatmul, a head-hunting tribe of New Guinea—a culture which 'continually surprises us by the mass of structural detail which it has built up around certain contexts'. An example in particular is the naven ceremony, in which the performance by a laua (sister's child) of some standard cultural act (e.g., the killing of an enemy), especially at its first accomplishment in the life of the child, is celebrated by the latter's wau (mother's brother)—a ceremonial in which, as its most conspicuous feature, men dress as women ('the bedraggled transvesticism of the men') and women dress as men ('the proud