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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.
Mauss was born on 5 June 1928 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and grew up in California, graduating from Oakland High School in 1946. [2] A lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as a young adult he served a full-time, two-year mission for the church in New England, and he served throughout his life in many other lay ecclesiastical roles.
[6] [7] Although the church does not publish attendance figures, researchers estimate that attendance at weekly LDS worship services globally is around 4 million. [8] Members living in the U.S. and Canada constitute 46 percent of membership, Latin America 38 percent, and members in the rest of the world 16 percent. [9]
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 is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: François Mauss, the founder and president of the Grand Jury Européen; Karl Mauss (1898–1959), German military commander; Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), French sociologist and ethnologist; Werner Mauss (born 1940), German private investigator
For Marcel Mauss (Durkheim's nephew and sometime collaborator) a total social fact (French fait social total) is "an activity that has implications throughout society, in the economic, legal, political, and religious spheres". [8] Diverse strands of social and psychological life are woven together through what he came to call total social facts.
It is a "total prestation" as Mauss called it, as it carries the power to create a system of reciprocity in which the honour of both giver and recipient are engaged. Social relationships are therefore based on exchange; Durkheimian solidarity, according to Mauss, is best achieved through structures of reciprocity and related systems of exchange.
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 ...