This book analyses anthropological debates on "relationism" (referring to methodological and theoretical issues) and sets out to reconsider these discussions with regards to the notion of "substance" (generally associated with the body).

Aurélie Névot is an anthropologist and research professor at the French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS).

Introduction. Lévi-Strauss' Enfants Terribles

Part I Historiographical Overview

1 From Substantialist Premises to Relationalist Perspectives. From Aristotle to Cognitivism via Lévi-Strauss

2 Anthropo-Philosophical and Ethno-Phenomenological Relations. From Torment to Ecstasy?

Conclusion to Part I

Part II Structuralist Legacies

3 Body and Intentionality. Descola's "Relative Universalism"

4 The body-Sign. Viveiros de Castro's anti-substantialist relationism

Conclusion to Part II

Part III Chinese Relationisms and Submutances

5 The Lost Body. Wang Mingming's "Cosmology of Relationship" and Hierarchical Relationism

6 Shamanic Bodies and Submutances. The Course of Writing, Blood, Breath and Water

Conclusion to Part III

Conclusion. "What the body can do"