The kitchen, the house, and the kinship, the sacrifice, the magic, the game and the things, rituality, performativity, and theatricality are the themes of this introduction to the history of cultural theories. The volume emphasizes theories that engage with cultural practices, rites, culture, reproduction, and body techniques, and places the classics of modern cultural theory in a transformative relationship with relevant authors from antiquity and modern times: John L. Austin, Roland Barthes, Roger Caillois, Norbert Elias, Arnold van Gennep, Erving Goffman, Martin Heidegger, Johan Huizinga, Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Simmel, Victor Turner, Jean-Pierre Vernant.