Marcel Mauss

Marcel Mauss (1872–1950) was a French sociologist and ethnologist, and the nephew and pupil of Émile Durkheim. He taught at the École pratique des hautes études and later became a professor at the Collège de France. Mauss was a major figure in French social and cultural anthropology and a leading contributor to the journal L’Année sociologique, helping oversee its publication after Durkheim’s death in 1917. In 1925, he co-founded the Institut d’Ethnologie in Paris with Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Paul Rivet. His best-known contributions include the theory of the gift and reciprocity, the concept of the “total social fact,” and studies of bodily techniques, religion, and magic. His most famous work is The Gift.