Primitive Classification - Paperbackby Emile Durkheim (Author) Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss maintain that society is the source of the very categories of human thought. First published in the Ann? e Sociologique in 1903, this classic essay has been translated by Rodney Needham, who also provides a critical introduction. "[Primitive Classification] will impress the reader with its quiet elegance, its direct, logical form, its clarity of style, its spirit of careful, yet bold,