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The first half of the article presents a critique of Lévi‐Strauss' well‐known analysis of the Oedipus myth. A consideration of Greek beliefs suggests that Lévi‐Strauss is incorrect in tying certain events in that myth to the "overvaluation of blood relations" and in asserting that the myth is concerned with the "affirmation/denial of man's autochthonous origins." The second half of the article presents a different structural analysis of the entire Theban Saga, of which the Oedipus myth is but a part. It concludes (1) that Lévi‐Strauss is correct in identifying a series of events in the myth which indicate the devaluation of blood relations, but that these events specifically refer to the devaluation of patrilineal kin ties and that the range of events indicating the devaluation of patrilineal ties is broader than his analysis would suggest, and (2) there is another series of repeated events (unmentioned by Lévi‐Strauss) which indicates the affirmation of patrilineal kin ties. The final hypothesis— that the opposition between the devaluation/affirmation of patrilineal kin ties underlies the Theban Saga— "makes sense" in terms of Greek history, as the period in which the Olympian myths look their present form is also the period in which the Greeks moved from a society organized along patrilineal kin ties to one organized around allegiance to the polis. [structuralism, Oedipus myth, myth and social structure, Lévi‐Strauss, anthropological theory]

This article attempts to resolve certain ambiguities within Lévi‐Strauss's structuralist approach to myth by using the theory of cognitive dissonance to clarify the concept "opposition" and Heiderian social psychology to specify a procedure whereby a myth can be decomposed into its constituents units. The value of the refinements suggested here is illustrated through structural analyses of the Biblical account of the Flood and of Lévi‐Strauses theory itself.

In a 1985 article, Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne argued that the tendency to treat "gender" as an unproblematized dichotomous variable functioned to contain feminist influence in sociology. Although there has clearly been a revolution in gender studies since that time, there are still whole areas of sociological investigation where this revolution is at best incomplete. One such area involves the literature on the care that adult children provide to aging parents. Using arguments relating to gender-as-performance and hegemonic masculinity, the authors investigate conceptualizations of gender and masculinity in a sample of fifty-eight adult sons who provide care to an aging parent. What emerges from the interviews with these male caregivers is a vision of masculinity that is in some ways quite different from the hegemonic ideal. And yet, like earlier investigators who have studied hegemonic masculinity, the authors also find that the existence of a nonhegemonic vision of masculinity does not threaten the hegemonic ideal.

Psychoanalysis and Theism starts with a critique of psychoanalysis and its application to religion which, surprisingly, ends up expressing enthusiastic support for some classical psychoanalytic ideas. Following this essay by Adolf Grünbaum, one of the world's leading philosophers of science, nine senior scholars offer their own critical reflections on Freud's work and its hidden motives, on the potential of psychoanalytic ideas for the study of religion, and on the interpretation of the Virgin Birth and other doctrines

This study was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/H019456/1) to CJvdG, by the Wellcome Trust (WT 098051) to AWW and JP for sequencing costs, and by The Anna Trust (KB2008) to KDB. AWW and The Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Aberdeen, receive core funding support from the Scottish Government Rural and Environmental Science and Analysis Service (RESAS). We thank Paul Scott, Richard Rance and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute's sequencing team for generating 16S rRNA gene sequence data. ; Peer reviewed ; Publisher PDF