Editing Marcel Mauss (section)

==Theoretical views==

===Marcel Mauss and Émile Durkheim===

Marcel Mauss's studies under his uncle Durkheim at Bordeaux led to their doing work together on Primitive Classification which was published in ''L'Année Sociologique''. In this work, Mauss and Durkheim attempted to create a French version of the [[sociology of knowledge]], illustrating the various paths of human thought taken by different cultures, in particular how space and time are connected back to societal patterns. They focused their study on tribal societies in order to achieve depth.

While Mauss called himself a Durkheimian, he interpreted the school of Durkheim as his own. His early works reflect the dependence on Durkheim's school, yet as more works, including unpublished texts were read, Mauss preferred to start many projects and often not finish them. Mauss concerned himself more with politics than his uncle, as a member of the Collectivistes, French workers party, and Revolutionary socialist workers party. His political involvement led up to and after World War I.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fournier |first1=Marcel |title=Marcel Mauss: A Biography |date=1994 |publisher=Arthème Fayard |location=Italy}}</ref>

===''The Gift''===

Mauss has been credited for his analytic framework which has been characterized as more supple, more appropriate for the application of empirical studies, and more fruitful than his earlier studies with Durkheim. His work fell into two categories, one being major ethnological works on exchange as a symbolic system, body techniques and the category of the person, and the second being social science methodology.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Dictionary of Cultural Theorists|last1=Cashmore|first1=Ellis|last2=Rojek|first2=Chris}}</ref> In his ''[[The Gift (essay)|The Gift]]'', Mauss argued that gifts are never truly free, rather, human history is full of examples of gifts bringing about reciprocal exchange. The famous question that drove his inquiry into the anthropology of the gift was: "What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?".<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://libcom.org/files/Mauss%20-%20The%20Gift.pdf|title=The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchanges in Archaic Societies|last=Mauss|first=Marcel|publisher=Routledge|year=2002|isbn=978-0-203-71568-0|location=London|pages=4}}</ref> The answer is simple: the gift is a "total prestation" (see [[law of obligations]]), imbued with "spiritual mechanisms", engaging the honour of both giver and receiver (the term "total prestation" or "[[total social fact]]" (''fait social total'') was coined by his student [[Maurice Leenhardt]] after [[Social fact|Durkheim's ''social fact'']]). Such transactions transcend the divisions between the spiritual and the material in a way that, according to Mauss, is almost "magical". The giver does not merely give an object but also part of himself, for the object is indissolubly tied to the giver: "the objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them" (1990:31). 
Because of this bond between giver and gift, the act of giving creates a social bond with an obligation to reciprocate on the part of the recipient. Not to reciprocate means to lose honour and status, but the spiritual implications can be even worse: in [[Polynesia]], failure to reciprocate means to lose ''[[Mana (Oceanian mythology)|mana]]'', one's spiritual source of authority and wealth. To cite Goldman-Ida's summary, "Mauss distinguished between three obligations: giving, the necessary initial step for the creation and maintenance of social relationships; receiving, for to refuse to receive is to reject the social bond; and reciprocating in order to demonstrate one's own liberality, honour, and wealth" (2018:341). Mauss describes how society is blinded by ideology, and therefore a system of prestations survives in societies when regarding the economy. Institutions are founded on the unity of individuals and society, and capitalism rests on an unsustainable influence on an individual's wants. Rather than focusing on money, Mauss describes the need to focus on faits sociaux totaux, total social facts, which are legal, economic, religious, and aesthetic facts which challenge the sociological method.<ref name="Marcel Mauss: In Pursuit of the Who"/>	

An important notion in Mauss's conceptualization of [[gift exchange]] is what Gregory (1982, 1997) refers to as "[[inalienable right|inalienability]]". In a [[commodity economy]], there is a strong distinction between objects and persons through the notion of [[private property]]. Objects are sold, meaning that the [[ownership rights]] are fully transferred to the new owner. The object has thereby become "[[Alienation (property law)|alienated]]" from its original owner. In a [[gift economy]], however, the objects that are given are unalienated from the givers; they are "loaned rather than sold and ceded".<ref>(
  Gregory, C. A. (2015) Gifts and commodities. 1st ed. Chicago, Illinois: HAU Books.
 Page 13)</ref> It is the fact that the identity of the giver is invariably bound up with the object given that causes the gift to have a power which compels the recipient to reciprocate. Because gifts are unalienable they must be returned; the act of giving creates a gift-debt that has to be repaid. Because of this, the notion of an expected return of the gift creates a relationship over time between two individuals. In other words, through gift-giving, a social bond evolves that is assumed to continue through space and time until the future moment of exchange. Gift exchange therefore leads to a mutual interdependence between giver and receiver. According to Mauss, the "free" gift that is not returned is a contradiction because it cannot create social ties. Following the Durkheimian quest for understanding [[social cohesion]] through the concept of [[social solidarity|solidarity]], Mauss's argument is that solidarity is achieved through the social bonds created by gift exchange. Mauss emphasizes that exchanging gifts resulted from the will of attaching other people{{snd}}'to put people under obligations', because "in theory such gifts are voluntary, but in fact they are given and repaid under obligation".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://mcser-org.ervinhatibi.com/journal/index.php/mjss/article/view/5567/5370|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150208184420/http://mcser-org.ervinhatibi.com/journal/index.php/mjss/article/view/5567/5370|url-status=usurped|title=D. Walczak. 2015. The process of exchange, solidarity and sustainable development in building a community of responsibility. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6 (1S1), p. 506.|archive-date=8 February 2015}}</ref>

===Mauss and Hubert===

Mauss also focused on the topic of sacrifice. The book ''Sacrifice and its Function'' which he wrote with [[Henri Hubert]] in 1899 argued that sacrifice is a process involving sacralising and desacralising. This was when the "former directed the holy towards the person or object, and the latter away from a person or object."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Dictionary of Cultural Theorists|last1=Cashmore|first1=Ellis|last2=Rojek|first2=Chris|pages=350}}</ref> Mauss and Hubert proposed that the body is better understood not as a natural given. Instead, it should be seen as the product of specific training in attributes, deportments, and habits. Furthermore, the body techniques are biological, sociological, and psychological and in doing an analysis of the body, one must apprehend these elements simultaneously. They defined the person as a category of thought, the articulation of particular embodiment of law and morality. Mauss and Hubert believed that a person was constituted by personages (a set of roles) which were executed through the behaviors and exercise of specific body techniques and attributes.

Mauss and Hubert wrote another book titled ''A General Theory of Magic'' in 1902 [see external links for PDF]. They studied magic in 'primitive' societies and how it has manifested into our thoughts and social actions. They argue that social facts are subjective and therefore should be considered magic, but society is not open to accepting this. In the book, Mauss and Hubert state: <blockquote>In magic, we have officers, actions, and representations: we call a person who accomplishes magical actions a ''magician'', even if he is not professional; ''magical representations'' are those ideas and beliefs which correspond to magical actions; as for these actions, with regard to which we have defined the other elements of magic, we shall call them ''magical rites''. At this stage it is important to distinguish between these activities and other social practices with which they might be confused.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Social Thought from the Enlightenment to the Present|last=Sica|first=Alan|pages=308}}</ref></blockquote>They go on to say that only social occurrences can be considered magical. Individual actions are not magic because if the whole community does not believe in efficacy of a group of actions, it is not social and therefore, cannot be magical.