Mauss, Marcel (1872–1950)
Mauss, Marcel (1872–1950)
The father figure of contemporary social and cultural
anthropology in France, Mauss was among the most
influential social scientists of the early twentieth
century. His scholarly activities and achievements
were closely connected to the birth, organization, and
coming to power in the French academe of the
‘Sociological School’ headed by Emile Durkheim and
gathering among other luminaries Ce! lestin Bougle! ,
Maurice Halbwachs, Robert Hertz, Henri Hubert, or
Franc: ois Simiand, the intellectual heritage of which
is still being largely claimed, discussed, and studied
worldwide (see Durkheimian Studies, Oxford) as one of
the major foundation acts of modern social sciences
proper.
Mauss was born on May 10, 1872 in Epinal (Vosges
county) in a middle class Jewish family long estab-
lished in Eastern France and having fully adopted the
pattern of French Liberal patriotism. His personal
career followed in many respects the rise of the first
generation of famous French–Jewish intellectuals
represented by Bergson, Durkheim, or Lucien Le! vy-
Bruhl. He shared with them their Republican com-
mitment, notably as a young activist engaged in the
battle in defense of Captain Dreyfus, as one of the
earliest contributors (reporting on the cooperative
movement) to the socialist journal L’HumaniteT
founded by Jean Jaure' s and, in the interwar years, as
a dedicated expert of the (anti-Bolshevik) French
socialist party (notably in matters financial and those
related to the stock exchange). Mauss died on
February 10, 1950 in Paris.
With formal university training in philosophy (a
quasi must for would-be social scientists in his time),
Mauss skipped the then almost inescapable stint of
secondary school teaching, but also the stages of a
normal academic career in the network of the Faculties
of Letters. Several study trips and stays in Britain,
Holland, and Germany enabled him to commit himself
from the outstart to research and the training of
scholars. He was first appointed as a lecturer on
archaic religions (The Religion of Peoples Without
Ci
ilization) at the 5th Section (Sciences of Religion) of
the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (1901), a unique
agency housed in, but independent from, the Sorbonne
and aiming at the instruction of specialists in various
fields of erudition. He combined later (1926) these
courses with seminars on ‘descriptive ethnology’ at the
newly founded Institut d’Ethnologie under the aegis of
the Sorbonne, only to occupy the chair of sociology at
the ColleZ ge de France (1931), an even more prestigious
institution of higher learning. While lecturing there he
also shared in a Socratic manner with a number of
(often mature) students the insights of a uniquely
ingenious armchair anthropologist, until he was forced
to early retirement under the German occupation in
1941. His positions in these both central, but aca-
demically marginal Parisian institutions helped him to
achieve a rather atypical career of a scholar exclusively
dedicated to research on exotic societies without
visiting any of them and producing neither a thesis,
nor even books proper, but, instead, a number of
substantial studies which—though highly specialized
by their thematic focus—refer equally to various tribal
civilizations of Australia, Amerindia, Africa, and
Oceania as well as to a vast variety of relevant ‘social
facts’ of the Hindu, Hebrew or Muslim world.
His education, intellectual development, and aca-
demic options were directed and supervised by
Durkheim, his uncle and life long tutor. Their
works—though intimately linked—appear to be con-
siderably divergent. With the benefit of historical
hindsight Mauss is credited nowadays as a less theory-
bound, more inspiring and heuristically rewarding
ancestor for contemporary successors of the ‘French
School of Sociology,’ his personal impact extending
upon many significant anthropologists, sociologists,
folklorists, political scientists, social psychologists, or
even human geographers or social historians starting a
career in France after the First World War, especially
after 1945. His association with Durkheim took a
decisive form by his participation in the empirical
elaboration of databanks for Durkheim’s Suicide
(1897) and continued, more importantly, with the
editorial work of the AnneT e sociologique (12 volumes
between 1898 and 1913), the central scholarly organ of
the ‘Sociological School.’ This quasi yearly survey
of relevant publications embodied the first major
attempt since August Comte (see Comte, Auguste
(1798–1857)) to organize empirically the burgeoning
social sciences into an inter-related system of dis-
ciplines. In charge of a large sector of the AnneT e
covering ‘religious sociology,’ Mauss became the
author of one-quarter, approximately, of the 10,000
odd pages of review articles published in the AnneT e
under Durkheim, and took over the direction of the
AnneT e—transformed in the interwar years into the
irregularly published Annales sociologiques—follow-
ing the uncle’s untimely death in 1917.
In the division of labor of what became the ‘French
School of Sociology’ Mauss was, from the outset,
dealt out the sector or archaic civilizations, especially
that of ‘primitive religion,’ strategic field for the
experimentation of Durkheim’s basic methodological
precepts. In this view indeed the main ‘social functions’
appear to be apprehensible in a straightforward form
in archaic societies, so much so that they may inform
the interpretation of more complex societal realities as
well. Thus, tribal societies—not without ambiguity—
can be equated to the simplest, the most essential, and
the historically earliest patterns of social organization.
To boot, following the ‘religious turn’ occurring
around 1896 in Durkheim’s scholarly evolution,
religion was considered as central among ‘social repre-
sentations’ or objectivations of ‘collective conscious-
ness,’ instrumental in the integration of archaic and,
9419
Mauss, Marcel (1872–1950)
by implication, of all social formations. Hence the
epistemological priority granted to the study of
‘elementary religion’ and the allocation of such pur-
suits to sociology proper as a master discipline, what-
ever the degree of development, power, extension, or
complexity of societies concerned could be. Thus most
of Mauss’ work centered on comparative problems
related to belief systems, rituals, and mental habits,
and other collective practices serving as a foundation
for ‘social cohesion’ in extra-European and pre-
industrial civilizations, could qualify for being so-
ciological, without much reference to anthropology,
ethnology, ethnography, or folklore; such terms being
practically absent from the topical listing of ‘branches
of social sciences’ in the AnneT e.
Mauss’ major early studies are the outcome of
his brotherly collaboration with Henri Hubert, the
ancient historian and archeologist of the ‘Sociological
School.’ They deal with the social functions of ‘Sacri-
fice’ (1899) (biblographic details of Mauss’ studies are
listed by years of publication at the end of the third
voume of his Oeu
res (pp. 642–94) and propose ‘A
general theory of magic’ (1904), to which Mauss added
a number of personal essays, especially those con-
cerning ‘The sources of magic power in Australian
societies’ (1904) and the first part of his unpublished
(and unpresented!) doctoral dissertation on ‘Prayer’
(1909). Some of these essays will be published in their
common book (MeT langes d’histoire des religions,
1909), where the authors offer in their introduction
the outline of a sociological theory of religion.
Denominational systems of faith are social facts and
should hence be put on the agenda of sociology. They
divide the life world of societies into a sacred and a
secular (profane) sphere. The former is invested with
essential collective values, so much so that most if
not all moral customs, legal, educational, artistic,
technical, and scientific practices display religious
foundations. Mauss’ first ever review article discussed
already a book on ‘Religion and the origin of penal
law’ (1896). In the light of his and his companions’
comparative studies concerning ‘religious represen-
tations’ (including totemism, ‘positive and nega-
tive rites’ and their mythical rationalizations, the
Melanesian notion of mana as the paradigm of socio-
religious force, the religious origins of values—like
that of money, etc.), religion emerges as a fundamental
‘social function,’ even if secularized modern societies
tend to replace it by functional equivalents (like
patriotic rituals) to bring about a desired degree of
integration.
Mauss will be less systematic (some would say, less
dogmatic) than his uncle in the generalization and
theoretical exploitation of observations gained from
the study of archaic religions. But he shares with
Durkheim the conviction that the social prevails over
the individual among norms commanding human
behavior and, more specifically, that sociohistorical
models are the sources of mental categories epitomized
9420
in the ‘reason’ or ‘logos’ of Western philosophy,
permitting the intelligence of time, space, causality,
genres, force, etc., though this approach was often
condemned as ‘sociocentrism’ or ‘sociological im-
perialism’ by contemporary critics. In concrete terms
Mauss’ main interest lay, on the one hand, in the
exploration of interconnections between collective
practices and ideas, in the manner how mental
elaborations respond to the organizational patterns of
societies contributing thus to their cohesion and, on
the other hand, in the exemplification of the arbitrary
nature of cultural facts which become meaningful in
particular social configurations only. The first focus
would lead to decisive methodological insights for the
sociology (or the social history) of knowledge. The
latter would inspire developments in structuralist
social anthropology.
Major statements about the covariation and the
fundamental integrity of various fields of collective
conduct are made in the essay of comparative anthro-
pology published together with Durkheim on Primi-
ti
e social classifications (1903) and in a Study of
social morphology, produced with the collaboration of
Mauss’ disciple Henri Beuchat on Seasonal Changes
of Eskimo Societies (1906).
In the much cited (and not less criticized) first study
a vast array of evidence, drawn from a number of
extremely different Australian and American societies,
is presented and analyzed in order to illustrate
the functional unity of societies (as totalities) in
which mental habits, religious ideas, and even basic
categories guiding the perception of environment and
other—residential, economic, technical—practices are
demonstrably interconnected. Thus, ‘the classification
of things reproduces that of people,’ as exemplified
in many tribal civilizations where membership in
phratries, matrimonial classes, clans, gender, or age
groups serves as a principle for the organization of
religious and other social activities as well as for the
interpretation of reality in ‘logical classes.’ The spatial
situation of the tribe is a basic model for categories of
orientation, like cardinal points. Hence the intimation,
that categories of reasoning, instead of following
universal patterns, are sociohistorical products and
even modern science owes some of its principles to
primitive categorizations. Such results will later en-
courage Mauss to affirm the pretensions of ‘social
anthropology to be once in the position of substituting
itself to philosophy by drafting the history of the
human mind.’
The study of Eskimo life offers a more empirical
evidence for a case of covariation in time of the
material substratum—morphology—of societies (‘the
mass, density, shape, and composition of human
groups’) and the moral, religious, and legal aspects of
collective existence. The approach is, exceptionally,
not comparative—though references are made to other
exotic and even European societies too—only to be
more closely focused on a privileged example where

even the pattern of settlement of families concerned
(gathering in winter, dispersion in summer) differs
with the seasons, together with the intensity of social
interactions, religious activities, and kinship relations.
Winter represents the high point of social togetherness
accompanied by festivities, the unity of residence of
partner families, and various forms of economic,
sexual and emotional exchange among their members,
generating in them a strong sense of political and
moral integrity.
In the second part of his career after World War
I Mauss’ work appears to be thematically more
diversified without losing its initial foci centered upon
the ways and means by which society determines
individual behavior and the conditions of collective
‘solidarity’ or ‘cohesion,’ the latter—while realized
thanks to contingent or ‘arbitrary’ assets—forming an
operational whole called ‘culture’ or ‘civilization.’ This
helps to restate the historical and ethnographically
localized nature of mental categories. These problems
and ideas inform some major studies published by
Mauss in his elderly years like ‘Relations between
psychology and sociology’ (1924), ‘The physical im-
pact of the idea of death suggested by society’ (1926),
‘The problem of civilisations’ (1929), ‘Bodily tech-
niques’ (1935), ‘A category of the mind, the concept of
person, that of the self’ (1938). But the masterpiece
emerging from that period remains the famous com-
parative essay On Gift, Form and Reason of Exchange
in Archaic Societies (1925).
‘The gift’ is a vast, though fragmentary accomplish-
ment of a program to study primitive economic
systems where much of the exchange of goods is
carried out by apparent donations accompanied by
other—mostly symbolic or ritual—services, which
make it a ‘total social phenomenon.’ The main focus
of the study is what some North American Indians
name potlatch, a system of ‘total exchange’ of
‘agonistic’ nature, whereby rivalry between groups,
relationships of prestige and force, forms of social
inequality and alliance are expressed, confirmed and
enforced. The exchange in question may equally imply
the circulation of goods, honors, courtesy, rituals,
women, etc., and its essential principle is the obligation
to offer and accept as well as return gifts, even if the
things given hold purely symbolic value only, since
many acts of donation consist of the ritualized
destruction of a maximum of goods—which is the very
meaning of the potlatch. Destruction of valuables is in
such systems an essential source of power and prestige
by the demonstration of one’s possessions and the
capacity to dispense with them on an apparently
voluntary, but in fact strictly compulsory basis.
Survivals of such arrangements, proper to several
archaic societies, can be traced in the code of behavior
of industrial societies as well. Modern contractual
trading relations are still often completed or accomp-
anied by moral customs of inescapable reciprocities
grounded in gifts, sacrifice, symbolic grants, acts of
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Mauss, Marcel (1872–1950)
generosity, the generalization and institutionalization
of which (possibly in the regime of social welfare)
appears in Mauss’ view as a desirable development. He
will extend the scope of the study of ‘total social facts’
in several essays, especially in one on ‘Joking relation-
ships’ (1926), socially organized delivery of jokes and
insults among kins, destined to strengthen the co-
hesion of the clan by the enforcement of verbal
reciprocities.
Mauss’ scholarly achievement has left a consider-
able mark on the social sciences in France and
elsewhere. In contemporary French sociological tra-
dition he is considered—alongside may be with
Maurice Halbwachs—as the most ‘legitimate’ ancestor
from the ‘Sociological School.’ The historic impor-
tance of his work has been selectively and critically
received but warmly appraised by men like Pierre
Bourdieu (who is holding a chair of sociology illus-
trated by Mauss at the ColleZ ge de France), Roger
Caillois, Georges Dume! zil, Louis Dumont, Georges
Gurvitch, Michel Leiris, Claude Le! vi-Strauss (who
succeeded Mauss at the ColleZ ge de France).
See also: Anthropology, History of; Belief, Anthro-
pology of; Civilizational Analysis, History of; Classifi-
cation: Conceptions in the Social Sciences; Collective
Beliefs: Sociological Explanation; Communes, An-
thropology of; Community\Society: History of the
Concept; Durkheim, Emile (1858–1917); Exchange
in Anthropology; Exchange: Social; Folk Religion;
Folklore; Functionalism in Anthropology; Habit:
History of the Concept; Individual\Society: History
of the Concept; Magic, Anthropology of; Potlatch
in Anthropology; Religion: Evolution and Develop-
ment; Religion: Family and Kinship; Religion, History
of; Religion: Morality and Social Control; Religion,
Phenomenology of; Religion, Sociology of; Ritual;
Sacrifice; Social History; Sociology, History of; Soli-
darity: History of the Concept; Solidarity, Sociology
of; Totemism; Tribe
Bibliography
Fournier M 1994 Marcel Mauss. Fayard, Paris
Karsenti B 1997 L’homme total. Sociologie, anthropologie et
philosophie chez Marcel Mauss. Presses Universitaires de
France, Paris
James W, Allen N J (eds.) 1998 Marcel Mauss, A Centenary
Tribute. Berghahn Books, New York
Mauss M 1950 Sociology et anthropologie. Presses Universitaires
de France, Paris
Mauss M 1968–1969 Oeuvres. Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 3
Vols.
Mauss M 19997 Écrits politiques. Fayard, Paris
Mauss M 1998 Lettres eT crites aZ Marcel Mauss. Presses Uni-
versitaires de France, Paris
V. Karaday
Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
9421
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ISBN: 0-08-043076-7