Richard Fardon is Professor in West African Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and has intensively researched among Chamba-speaking people in Cameroon and Nigeria. He is currently completing an intellectual biography of Mary Douglas.

List of Illustrations
Contents of Volume II
Acknowledgements
A Note on Quotations

PART I: INTRODUCTIONS

Franz Steiner. A Memoir
Mary Douglas

An Oriental in the West: The Life of Franz Baermann Steiner
Jeremy Adler and Richard Fardon

PART II: TABOO

Chapter 1. The Discovery of Taboo
Chapter 2. Taboo in Polynesia (I)
Chapter 3. Taboo in Polynesia (II)
Chapter 4. A Victorian Problem: Robertson Smith
Chapter 5. Taboo and Contagion
Chapter 6. Taboo and the 'Holy'
Chapter 7. The Hebrew Bible: Snaith and Frazer
Chapter 8. Frazer and His Critic, Marett
Chapter 9. Taboo as Negative Mana
Chapter 10. Van Gennep and Radcliffe-Brown
Chapter 11. Wundt and Freud
Chapter 12. The Problem of Taboo

Bibliography. Reviews of Taboo

PART III: RELIGIOUS TRUTH

How to Define Superstition?

Enslavement and the Early Hebrew Lineage System: An Explanation of Genesis 47: 29-31, 48: 1-16

Chagga Law and Chagga Truth

Bibliography and References to Volumes I and II
Name Index to Volume I
Subject Index to Volume II

Franz Steiner's study of Taboo is internationally recognized as a classic in its field. In a newly researched introductory chapter, based on a thorough study of Steiner's unpublished papers, this edition for the first time places the book in its context and offers a new reading of the text. More than just a critique of existing taboo theories, as it has often been seen, this study offers a profound analysis of danger behavior and pollution in "non-civilized" societies. This provided an important starting-point for Mary Douglas' Purity and Danger. A key aspect of Steiner's achievement lies in his attempt to reconcile detailed, faithful ethnographic analysis with anthropological comparison. His analysis of taboo thus provides a case study with wide-ranging ramifications.
This new edition makes a classic text available once again to students and general readers. A major new introduction based on archival research offers, for the first time, a biography and critical study of Franz Steiner; it not only places him in the context of British and European thought but also shows his importance for contemporary debates, among them deconstruction and Orientalism.