Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/127

 REVIEWS.

L'Ann^e Sociologique, publiee sous la direction de Emile DuRKHEiM, Professeur de Sociologie a TUniversite de Bor- deaux. Neuvieme Annee (i 904-1 905). Paris, Felix Alcan, 1906,

U Annee Sociologique keeps up its reputation. Its contents this year are in no way inferior to any of its predecessors. An interesting Mhnoire, which does not concern us here, by Mr. A. Meillet, on the social and other influences which operate to produce a change of meaning in words, is succeeded by an elaborate study by M. Mauss, assisted by M. H. Beuchat, on the periodical variations according to season in the social organiza- tion of the Eskimo.

Having carefully defined the extent of territory inhabited by the Eskimo the writer enquires how they are organized, and decides that the basis of the organization is not the tribe but the settlement. This is defined as a group of families collected together and united by special bonds, occupying a habitat over which they are distributed unequally at different periods of the year, but which habitat constitutes their domain. The settle- ment, in a material sense, consists of the whole of the winter- houses, the places of the summer-tents, and the hunting-grounds, whether on land or water, which belong to a determinate number of individuals, as well as the network of paths, canals, and ports which these individuals use, and where they constantly meet. All these form a whole, which has its unity, and all the dis- tinctive characters by which a limited social group is recognized. It has a fixed name, borne by all the members and by them