Héritier, Françoise

Françoise Héritier is a noted anthropologist and an honorary professor at the Collège de France, where she has directed both the Chaire d’étude comparée des sociétés africaines and the Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale. Her research centres on the symbolic anthropology of the human body and on the workings of family structures and semi-complex marital kinship systems. Among her most notable accomplishments are the five years of groundbreaking field studies she led in Burkina Faso and in Mali. Françoise Héritier has published 10 books in her field, on everything from the anthropology of incest to the struggle against hierarchies.