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Marcel Israël Mauss (French:; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950) was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". [1] The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology.
The Gift has been very influential in anthropology, [3] where there is a large field of study devoted to reciprocity and exchange. [4] It has also influenced philosophers, artists, and political activists, including Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and more recently the work of David Graeber and the theologians John Milbank and Jean-Luc Marion.
Mauss argued that gifts are not free, but rather oblige the recipient to reciprocate. Through the gift, the givers give part of themselves, imbuing the gift a certain power that compels a response. Gift exchanges, therefore play a crucial role in creating and maintaining social relationships by establishing bonds of obligations.
While remittances are also a subject of international development and policy debate [3] and sociological and economic literature, [4] this article focuses on ties with literature on gifting and reciprocity or gift economy founded largely in the work of Marcel Mauss and Marshall Sahlins. While this entry focuses on remittances of money or goods ...
HAU took inspiration for its name from Marcel Mauss' usage of the Māori concept of hau in his book The Gift. Mauss' anthropological concept of hau invites people to explore how encounters with alterity occasion the opportunity to build theory from indigenous knowledge practices. The journal addresses topics such as indigenous ontologies and ...
A third influence came from Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), who had written on gift-exchange systems. Based on Mauss, for instance, Lévi-Strauss argued an alliance theory—that kinship systems are based on the exchange of women between groups—as opposed to the 'descent'-based theory described by Edward Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes.
David Graeber attempts to synthesize the insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss. He sees value as a model for human meaning-making.Starting with Marxist definitions of consumption and production, he introduces Mauss's idea of "objects that are not consumed" and posits that the majority of human behavior consists of activities that would not be properly categorized as either consumption or ...
Embodiment theory speaks to the ways that experiences are enlivened, materialized, and situated in the world through the body.Embodiment is a relatively amorphous and dynamic conceptual framework in anthropological research that emphasizes possibility and process as opposed to definitive typologies. [1]