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Article ID: CBB687142450

The Algebra of Marriage: An Episode in Applied Group Theory (2016)

British Society for the History of Mathematics Bulletin
Volume: 31
Issue: 3
Pages: 230-244
Publication date: 2016
Language: English

DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2016.1222478

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2016.1222478

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Kinship Anthropology Marriage Group theory Mathematics 20th century Lévi-Strauss, Claude Weil, André

In 1949, André Weil contributed a mathematical appendix to Claude Lévi-Strauss's landmark book, The elementary structures of kinship. In this appendix, Weil (one of the Bourbaki mathematicians) used group-theoretic techniques to model Australian marriage systems. Weil's paper marked the beginning of mathematical anthropology. This essay describes Weil's analysis of marriage systems and traces the uneasy history of the application of group theory to kinship studies.

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