This work presents Sapir's most comprehensive statement on the concept of culture, on method and theory in anthropology and other social sciences, on personality organization, and on the individual's place in culture and society.

Extensive discussions of the role of language and other symbolic systems in culture, ethnographic method, and social interaction are also included. Ethnographic and linguistic examples are drawn from Sapir's fieldwork among North American Indians and from European and American society as well.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939) was one of the leading figures in American anthropology and linguistics in the twentieth century, and he planned to publish a major theoretical statement on culture and psychology. He developed his ideas in a course of lectures he presented at Yale University in the 1930s, which attracted a wide audience from many social science disciplines. Unfortunately, he died before the book he had contracted to publish could be realized.

Like de Saussure's Cours de Linguistique Generale before it, this work has been reconstructed from student notes, in this case 22 sets, as well as from Sapir's manuscript materials. Judith Irvine's meticulous reconstruction makes Sapir's compelling ideas - of surprisingly contemporary resonanceavailable for the first time.