The Categorical Impulse

Roy describes classification in terms of its British constructionist tradition in the work of Douglas and in the cognitive tradition by Conklin and Berlin. She attempts to bridge the gap by examining them closely, then describing anthropological studies of classification, classification in its social context, anatomic classification and the semiotics of the body, the ethnology of a plant form, palms and the prototypicality of trees, the inedible and the uneatable, and the cognitive geometry of nature. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Roy Ellen was educated at the London School of Economics and is Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, where he has taught since 1973. His numerous and varied publications include Environment, Subsistence and System (1982), The Cultural Relations of Classification (1993), and most recently, On the Edge of the Banda Zone (2003).