Synopses & Reviews
This book is the first intellectual biography of Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), the father of modern ethnology and a leading early figure in the French school of sociology. Mauss left a rich intellectual legacy in the social sciences, influencing the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss and others. His masterpiece, the 1925 essay
The Gift, on reciprocity and gift economies among archaic societies, remains required reading in anthropology, and his work more broadly resonates today with students and scholars in fields from the history of religion to sociology. Mauss taught the first generation of French field researchers in anthropology and helped secure the legacy of his uncle, émile Durkheim, the founder of modern sociology.
In Marcel Mauss: A Biography, Marcel Fournier situates Mauss's ideas in their biographical context, focusing not only on the details of Mauss's life but also on the people and the academic milieus with which he was associated in early twentieth-century France. He shows how Mauss--through his writings, teaching, and socialist politics--found himself at the center of the intellectual and political life of his country and of Europe through two world wars. The book addresses, among other topics, the effect of the Dreyfus Affair and the First World War on Mauss's thought, and the inner dynamics of the group of scholars around Mauss and Durkheim at the journal they helped establish, Année Sociologique.
The fruit of vast research, Marcel Mauss: A Biography is the life story both of a legendary scholar and of the institutionalization of sociology and anthropology.
Review
"Fournier's book is an intellectual biography rather than just the biography of an intellectual, and has plenty of value to say about Mauss' ideas."--Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books
Review
"Fournier achieves with flying colors the ambitious goals of intellectual biography . . . [T]he book is overall very fluid and engaging. It has great potential as a teaching tool and also makes excellent anthropologist bedtime reading."--Evelyn Dean, Anthropological Quarterly
Synopsis
"This book captures the intricacies of the person and oeuvre of Marcel Mauss, whose impact has not subsided nor should it. Mauss's work and example deserve consideration by anyone intent on challenging easy economistic approaches to social practices, historical dynamics, cultural life, and religious observation. Mauss is a model for resisting reductionism."
--James A. Boon, Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University, author of Verging on Extra-vagance: Anthropology, History, Religion, Literature, Arts . . . ShowbizPraise for the original, French edition: "Fournier's book is by far the most informed and comprehensive study of Mauss yet to appear in any language. It is an indispensable source of information about Mauss and his colleagues and no student of the Durkheimians or Durkheimian sociology can do without it. For all those who wish to understand the lives and intellectual context of Durkheim and the Durkheimians and of Mauss in particular, and who do not read French, an English translation of this work will prove of great value."--Steven Lukes, New York University, author of Émile Durkheim: His Life and Work
Praise for the original, French edition: "Absolutely fascinating. Mauss is a much talked about figure-by anthropologists, by historians of the French Third Republic and the Vichy regime, and by scholars of Jewish history."--Natalie Zemon Davis, Professor Emeritus of History, Princeton University, author of The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France
About the Author
Marcel Fournier is Professor of Sociology at the Université de Montréal. This book is his abridgment of his monumental Marcel Mauss, published in France (Fayard, 1994). He is the editor of the international French journal Sociologie et Sociétés. Jane Marie Todd is the translator of some thirty books, including, most recently, Julia Kristeva's Colette.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
PART I: DURKHEIM'S NEPHEW 7
CHAPTER 1: Épinal, Bordeaux, Paris 9
CHAPTER 2: Student at the École Pratique des Hautes Études 37
CHAPTER 3: Rites of Institution: Early Publications and Travel Abroad 56
PART II: THE TOTEM AND TABOO CLAN 81
CHAPTER 4: In the Cenacle 85
CHAPTER 5: Citizen Mauss 96
CHAPTER 6: Rue Saint-Jacques 113
CHAPTER 7: Journalist at Humanité 123
CHAPTER 8: Collective Madness 133
CHAPTER 9: A Heated Battle at the Collège de France: The Loisy Affair 149
CHAPTER 10: Not a Very Funny War 168
PART III: THE HEIR 185
CHAPTER 11: (The Socialist)Life Goes On 189
CHAPTER 12: A Burdensome Inheritance 215
CHAPTER 13: The Institut d'Ethnologie 233
CHAPTER 14: Sociology, a Lost Cause? 246
PART IV: RECOGNITION 259
CHAPTER 15: A Place at the Collège de France 263
CHAPTER 16: Where Professors Devour One Another 276
CHAPTER 17: Enough to Make You Despair of Politics 303
CHAPTER 18: The Time of Myths 315
EPILOGUE: The War and Postwar Years 333
Notes 351
Index 427