Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss

Few teachings have remained so esoteric and few, at the same time, have exerted such a profound influence as that of Marcel Mauss. This thought sometimes made opaque by its very density, but all furrowed with flashes, these tortuous steps which seemed to lead astray at the moment when the most unexpected of routes led to the heart of the problems, only those who have known and listened to the man can appreciate fertility fully and take stock of their debt to it. We will not dwell here on its role in French ethnological and sociological thought. It has been reviewed elsewhere. Suffice it to recall that Mauss's influence was not limited to ethnographers, none of whom could say they escaped it, but also to linguists, psychologists, historians of religions and orientalists, so much so that, in the field social sciences and humanities, a plethora of French researchers are, in some way, indebted to him for their orientation. For the others, the written work remained too dispersed and often difficult to access. The chance of a meeting or a reading could awaken lasting echoes: one would gladly recognize some of them in Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, Firth, Herskovits, Lloyd Warner, Redfield, Kluckhohn, Elkin, Held and many others. On the whole, the work and the thought of Marcel Mauss acted rather through the intermediary of colleagues and disciples in regular or occasional contact with him, than directly, in the form of words or writings...