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79-593: Victoriana is a term used to refer to material culture related to the Victorian period (1837–1901). It often refers to decorative objects, but can also describe a variety of artifacts from the era including graphic design, publications, photography, machinery, architecture, fashion, and Victorian collections of natural specimens . The term can also refer to Victorian-inspired designs, nostalgic representations, or references to Victorian-era aesthetics or culture appropriated for use in new contexts The term "Victoriana"

158-459: A deeper level of structure and meaning unattainable by typical fieldwork . According to Lévi-Strauss, material culture can recall the mindset of a people, regardless of intervening time or space. Also in the 20th century, Mary Douglas thought that anthropology was about studying the meaning of material culture to the people who experience it. Marvin Harris , a contemporary of Douglas, put forward

237-505: A feeling, or an experience. Material can contain memories and mutual experiences across time and influence thoughts and feelings. A study found that couples who have more items that were jointly acquired and more favorite items among them had higher-quality relationships. Researchers from the fields of sociology, psychology, and anthropology have also been fascinated by gift-giving, a universal phenomenon that holds emotional meaning using material culture. According to Schieffelin, "gift-giving

316-522: A goal. One must always have in view a project to carry out.” During their time in Bordeaux, Durkheim was a strict and responsible tutor to Mauss. In their interactions through letters,  Durkheim frequently demands Mauss to provide timely updates on his studies and his interactions with Rosine and his tutors. He stressed his responsibility to train him: “I’m the one [your mother] asked to train you. I trained you according to my ideals. One must accept

395-418: A human culture, an anthropologist studies the material culture of the people in question as well as the people themselves and their interactions with others. To understand the culture in which an object is featured, an anthropologist looks at the object itself, its context, and the way that it was manufactured and used. The first anthropologist interested in studying material culture was Lewis Henry Morgan , in

474-452: A large Western city. Donor and receiver do not know each other and are unlikely ever to meet again. In this context, the donation certainly creates no obligation on the side of the beggar to reciprocate; neither the donor nor the beggar have such an expectation. Testart argues that only the latter can actually be enforced. He feels that Mauss overstated the magnitude of the obligation created by social pressures, particularly in his description of

553-505: A marine biologist and mother of Maurice Bloch , who became a noted anthropologist. Instead of taking the usual route of teaching at a lycée following college, Mauss moved to Paris and took up the study of comparative religion and Sanskrit. His first publication in 1896 marked the beginning of a prolific career that would produce several landmarks in sociological literature. Like many members of [[[L'Année sociologique]]] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) group, Mauss

632-483: 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 solidarity , Mauss's argument is that solidarity is achieved through the social bonds created by gift exchange. Mauss emphasizes that exchanging gifts resulted from

711-413: A philosophy agrégé and a member of the exam board, tutored Mauss for the exam. Durkheim also helped connect Mauss with Octave Hamelin , who became Mauss's close friend and an important tutor. Durkheim defined his correspondence with Mauss as: “This correspondence which I would have liked to have been more regular was precisely intended to allow me to follow you and to prevent you from working without

790-556: A significant impact on Anglophile post-structuralist perspectives in anthropology, cultural studies, and cultural history. He modified post-structuralist and post-Foucauldian intellectuals because he combines an ethnographic approach with contextualization that is historical, sociological, and psychological. Mauss served as an important link between the sociology of Durkheim and contemporary French sociologists. Some of these sociologists include: Claude Levi Strauss , Pierre Bourdieu , Marcel Granet , and Louis Dumont . The essay on The Gift

869-479: A society. At the same time in France, Émile Durkheim wrote about the importance of material culture in understanding a society. Durkheim saw material culture as one of the social facts that functions as a coercive force to maintain solidarity in a society. Claude Lévi-Strauss , in the 20th century, included the study of material culture in his work as an anthropologist because he believed that it could reveal

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948-572: A variety of modes for interrogating artifacts. Professor Kiki Smith of Smith College , asserts that "…clothes can reveal much about lives from the past", and that garments preserved in collections are akin to other artifacts, including books, diaries, paintings and letters. She established the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection with 3000 items for the college's theater department. This archive of women's clothing and accessories, from all social classes,

1027-401: A “list of important works that he think it would be useful to have” and “catalog them by subject.” The collaboration between the uncle and nephew was not always smooth. Durkheim frequently scolded Mauss in their correspondence about his punctuality and over-complication: “We are thus approaching the month of July. Do you not feel the march of time? Two months have passed since Easter. That

1106-508: Is a long time to draw up a list of books.” “Your list is arriving; it is a real desolation for me. For I see that you do not at all represent to yourself what there is to do, and instead of helping me to resolve the difficulties, you complicate them in such proportions, that, seeing the obstacles reappear as I believed to have overcome them, I had a moment of discouragement.” Marcel Mauss's studies under his uncle Durkheim at Bordeaux led to their doing work together on Primitive Classification which

1185-541: Is a resource for courses in costume design, history, material culture, and literary history and curatorial practices. Gerd Koch , associated with the Ethnological Museum of Berlin , is known for his studies on the material culture of Tuvalu , Kiribati and the Santa Cruz Islands . During his early field work in 1951 to 1952, Koch developed techniques in the recording of culture, including

1264-460: Is a vehicle of social obligation and political maneuver." Mauss defines the gift as creating a special bond between the giver and the receiver. According to Mauss, the giver never really leaves the gift but becomes part of the receiver's future by inserting the gift into their life. A gift leads at some point to another gift in response, which creates a special reciprocal bond between people. Material culture studies as an academic field grew along

1343-499: Is called material culture studies . It is an interdisciplinary field and methodology that tells of the relationships between people and their things: the making, history, preservation and interpretation of objects. It draws on both theory and practice from the social sciences and humanities such as art history , archaeology, anthropology, history, historic preservation , folklore , archival science , literary criticism and museum studies . Research in several areas looks into

1422-442: Is fueled by a cycle of people visiting museums, historic sites, and collections to interact with ideas or physical objects of the past. In turn, the institutions profit through monetary donations or admission fees as well as the publicity that comes with word-of-mouth communications. That relationship is controversial, as many believe that the heritage industry corrupts the meaning and importance of cultural objects. Often, scholars in

1501-547: Is happening in Paris. You must write to me for the sake of writing to me, so that I do not lose sight of you and not to send me chronicles. That, secondarily, you tell me everything that is happening, nothing better, since it is in my interest to be informed, but that is secondary. Now here we are at the end of the year and I know nothing of what you have done. I expect that you will stop your malpractices. What did Brochard tell you about your work? How are your other projects going? That

1580-528: Is important to distinguish between these activities and other social practices with which they might be confused. 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. While Mauss is known for several of his own works – most notably his masterpiece Essai sur le Don (' The Gift ') – much of his best work

1659-455: Is not open to accepting this. In the book, Mauss and Hubert state: 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

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1738-532: Is the origin for anthropological studies of reciprocity . His analysis of the Potlatch has inspired Georges Bataille ( The Accursed Share ), then the situationists (the name of the first situationist journal was Potlatch ). This term has been used by many interested in gift economies and open-source software , although this latter use sometimes differs from Mauss's original formulation. See also Lewis Hyde 's revolutionary critique of Mauss in "Imagination and

1817-455: 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

1896-469: Is what I want to be informed about. After that, when you know something about me, you will tell me.” Mauss started assisting Durkheim in organizing and launching the L’Année Sociologique between 1895 and 1902. Mauss helped his uncle to recruit potential collaborators, including Paul Fauconnet , Henri Hubert , and Albert Milhaud . Durkheim envisioned the role of his nephew to be the “linchpin” in

1975-563: The University of Notre Dame , wrote about philosophies and methods of teaching history outside the traditional classroom. In his book Artifacts and the American Past , Schlereth defines material culture study as an attempt to explain why things were made, why they took the forms they did, and what social, functional, aesthetic, or symbolic needs they serve. He advocates studying photographs, catalogues, maps and landscapes. He suggests

2054-489: The humanities take a critical view of the heritage industry, particularly heritage tourism, believing it to be a vulgar oversimplification and corruption of historic fact and importance. Others believe that the relationship and the financial stability it brings is often the element that allows curators , researchers, and directors to conserve material culture's legacy. Marcel Mauss Marcel Israël Mauss ( French: [mos] ; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950)

2133-409: The ownership rights are fully transferred to the new owner. The object has thereby become " 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". 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

2212-534: The potlatch amongst North American Indians . Gift Economy theorist Genevieve Vaughan (1997) criticizes the French school of thought based on Mauss, exemplified by Jacques Godbout and Serge Latouche and the Mouvement Anti-utilittarisse des Sciences Sociales, for defining gift-giving as consisting of "three moments: giving, receiving, and giving back. The insistence upon reciprocity hides

2291-543: The Bolshevik's coercive resort to violence and their destruction of the market economy . Like many other followers of Durkheim, Mauss took refuge in administration. He secured Durkheim's legacy by founding institutions to carry out research, such as [l'Institut Français de Sociologie] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) (1924) and [l'Institut d'Ethnologie] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) in 1926. These institutions stimulated

2370-732: The Erotic Life of Property". He also impacted the Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales and David Graeber . Mauss's views on the nature of gift exchange have had critics. Main critiques against Mauss stem from beliefs that Mauss's essay is analyzing all primitive and archaic societies, but rather his essay is used to apply to one society and relationships within. French anthropologist Alain Testart (1998), for example, argues that there are "free" gifts, such as passers-by giving money to beggars, e.g. in

2449-470: The Study of American Life , written in 1978, tried to bridge the gaps between the museum world and the university and between curator and historian. Quimby posits that objects in museums are understood through an intellectual framework that uses non-traditional sources. He also describes the benefits of work on exhibit design as a vehicle for education. Thomas Schlereth, Professor Emeritus of American Studies at

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2528-515: The Vosges. Following the death of his grandfather, the Mauss and Durkheim families grew close and at this time Mauss began to feel concerned about his education and took initiatives in order to learn. Mauss obtained a religious education and was bar mitzvahed, yet by the age of eighteen he stopped practicing his religion. Mauss studied philosophy at Bordeaux , where his maternal uncle Émile Durkheim

2607-457: The [École pratique des hautes études] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) . [7] Two years later in 1931 Mauss was elected as the first holder of the Chair of Sociology in the [Collège de France] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) , and soon after he married his secretary in 1934 who soon was bedridden after a poisonous gas incident. Later, in 1940, Mauss

2686-469: The anthropology of the gift was: "What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?". 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 Durkheim's social fact ). Such transactions transcend

2765-499: 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. In his 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

2844-771: The aspects of the Maussian notion of the gift unless the moral and non-material qualities of gifting are considered. These aspects are, of course, at the heart of the gift, as demonstrated in books such as Annette Weiner's (1992) Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping While Giving . Mauss's view on sacrifice was also controversial at the time. This was because it conflicted with the psychologisation of individuals and social behavior. In addition to this, Mauss's terms like persona and habitus have been used among some sociological approaches. French philosopher Georges Bataille used The Gift to draw new conclusions based on economic anthropology, in this case, an interpretation of how money

2923-676: 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

3002-461: The communicative character of simple giving and receiving without reciprocity and does not allow this group to make a clear distinction between gift-giving and exchange as two opposing paradigms." In subsequent works, for example, The Gift in the Heart of Language: The Maternal Source of Meaning (2015) Vaughan elaborated on gift-giving as a relation between giver and receiver that takes its form from

3081-516: The consequences of what one desired. She is free to regret it, but she cannot hold it against you.” The interactions between Durkheim and Mauss were not one-way help and guidance. When working on his book Suicide , Durkheim asked Mauss to help him annotate articles on suicide cases in the German army, England and Wales, and Spain, with a special focus on ranks and years of service in the army, gender, and professions. Mauss then helped Durkheim compile

3160-561: The development of culture rested primarily on technology and that the history of human technology could be understood through the study of human-produced materials. American anthropologist James Deetz , known for his work in the field of historical archaeology , wrote the book "In Small Things Forgotten" in 1977 and published a revised and expanded version in 1996. He pioneered there the ideas of using neglected substances such as trash pits, potshards, and soil stains to reveal human actions. By analyzing objects in association with their location,

3239-499: The development of fieldwork-based anthropology by young academics. Among the students he influenced were George Devereux , Jeanne Cuisinier, Alfred Metraux , Marcel Griaule , Georges Dumezil , Denise Paulme , Michel Leiris , Germaine Dieterlen , Louis Dumont , Andre-Georges Haudricourt , Jacques Soustelle , and Germaine Tillion . In 1901, Mauss was appointed to the Chair of the History of Religions of Non-Civilized Peoples at

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3318-492: The diet of Jain renouncers and compels them to avoid preparing food, as this could potentially involve violence against microscopic organisms. Since Jain renouncers do not work, they rely on food donations from lay families within the Jain community. However, the former must not appear to be having any wants or desires, and only very hesitantly and apologetically receives the food prepared by the latter. "Free" gifts therefore challenge

3397-435: 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

3476-407: The effect increases over time. Another way in which material can hold meaning and value is by carrying communication between people, just like other communication forms such as speech, touch and gesture. An object can mediate messages between time or space or both between people who are not together. A work of art, for example, can transfer a message from the creator to the viewer and share an image,

3555-637: The ephemeral aspects of culture and history. With more recent societies, written histories, oral traditions, and direct observations may also be available to supplement the study of material culture. Beginning in the European Renaissance and the culture's fascination with classical antiquities, the study of artifacts from long-lost cultures has produced many forms of archaeological theory , such as trans-cultural diffusion , processual archaeology , and post-processual archaeology . Additionally, archaeological sub-disciplines have emerged within

3634-435: The field of anthropology and so began by studying non-Western material culture. All too often, it was a way of putting material culture into categories in such a way that marginalized and hierarchized the cultures from which they came. During the "golden age" of museum -going, material cultures were used to show the supposed evolution of society from the simple objects of non-Westerners to the advanced objects of Europeans. It

3713-443: The field, including prehistoric archaeology , classical archaeology , historical archaeology , cognitive archaeology , and cultural ecology . Recently, a scientific methodology and approach to the analysis of pre-historic material culture has become prevalent with systematic excavation techniques producing detailed and precise results. Anthropology is most simply defined as the study of humans across time and space. In studying

3792-402: The formation of the journal and the broader theoretical transformation it would bring. Mauss was assigned to work on the religious sociology section, the most important section for Durkheim, as he envisioned the journal to “create religious sociology” and to “make religion, no longer economics, the matrix of social facts .” Other than recruitment, Mauss was assigned by Durkheim to work up

3871-497: The history and sociology of religion. In 1887, Émile Durkheim was appointed to the Université de Bordeaux . He was later joined by his nephew in 1890, who was preparing for his degree in philosophy at Bordeaux. During their time at Bordeaux , Durkheim constantly interacted with Mauss through letters, guiding him in academic work and personal life. Between 1893 and 1894, when Mauss started to prepare for Agrégation , Durkheim,

3950-399: The history of that location, the objects they were found with, and not singling out the most valuable or rarest ones, archaeologists can create a more accurate picture of daily life. Deetz looks at the long view of history and investigates the impact of European culture on other cultures across the globe by an analysis of the spread of everyday objects. Ian M. G. Quimby's Material Culture and

4029-443: The importance of material in understanding relationships and human social behavior. The social aspects in material culture include the social behavior around it: the way that the material is used, shared, talked about, or made. An object cannot hold meaning in and of itself and so when one focuses on the social aspects of material culture, it is critical to keep in mind that interpretations of objects and of interactions with them are

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4108-416: The intellectual life and I am enjoying the life war is giving me" (Fournier 2006: 175). While liberating, he also dealt with the devastation and violence of the war as many of his friends and colleagues died in the war, and his uncle Durkheim died shortly before its end. Mauss began to write a book "On Politics" that remained unfinished, but the early 1920s emphasized his energy for politics through criticism of

4187-406: The last in collaboration with Georges Sorel . In 1901, Mauss began drawing more on ethnography, and his work began to develop characteristics now associated with formal anthropology. Mauss served in the French army during World War I from 1914 to 1919 as an interpreter. The military service was liberating from Mauss's intense academics, as he stated, "I'm doing wonderfully. I just wasn't made for

4266-892: The machinery of the Industrial Revolution are incorporated into urban, romanticized pastiches with fantastic creatures and imagined mechanical contraptions. Material culture Material culture is contrasted with symbolic culture or non-material culture , which include non-material symbols, beliefs and social constructs. However, some scholars include in material culture other intangible phenomena like sound, smell and events, while some even consider it to include language and media. Material culture can be described as any object that humans use to survive, define social relationships, represent facets of identity, or benefit peoples' state of mind, social, or economic standing. The scholarly analysis of material culture, which can include both human made and natural or altered objects,

4345-519: The mid-19th century. He is most known for his research on kinship and social structures, but he also studied the effect of material culture, specifically technology, on the evolution of a society. Later in the 19th century, Franz Boas brought the fields of anthropology and material culture studies closer together. He believed that it was crucial for an anthropologist to analyze not only the physical properties of material culture but also its meanings and uses in its indigenous context to begin to understand

4424-452: The need to focus on faits sociaux totaux, total social facts, which are legal, economic, religious, and aesthetic facts which challenge the sociological method. An important notion in Mauss's conceptualization of gift exchange is what Gregory (1982, 1997) refers to as " 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

4503-411: The ones to evoke importance and meaning. Museums and other material culture repositories, by their very nature, are often active participants in the heritage industry . Defined as "the business of managing places that are important to an area's history and encouraging people to visit them," the heritage industry relies heavily on material culture and objects to interpret cultural heritage. The industry

4582-503: 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 , 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

4661-475: The primal human experience of mothering and being mothered. Another example of a non-reciprocal "free" gift is provided by British anthropologist James Laidlaw (2000). He describes the social context of Indian Jain renouncers, a group of itinerant celibate renouncers living an ascetic life of spiritual purification and salvation. The Jainist interpretation of the doctrine of ahimsa (an extremely rigorous application of principles of nonviolence ) influences

4740-408: The reasons for perceiving an object as having meaning. Common reasons for valuing material lie in their monetary or sentimental value. A well-known related theory is Daniel Kahneman 's endowment effect theory. According to Kahneman, people infuse objects they own with a higher value than they do if they do not own the object. The endowment effect is found to occur as soon as an item is acquired and

4819-443: 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

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4898-574: The revival of interest in Victoriana in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher , then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, promoted an interest in Victoriana by emphasizing " Victorian family values " as part of a roadmap to cultural, moral, and economic improvement. In science fiction circles (especially in genres like steampunk ), Victoriana is used loosely to describe mock-Victorian worlds, where visual references to

4977-621: 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. Mauss has been credited for his analytic framework which has been characterized as more supple, more appropriate for

5056-558: The statistical tables in Suicide . Durkheim, being a controversial figure in academia at the time, also seeks information about himself and other scholars’ interests in L’Année Sociologique from Mauss, although stressing it to be “secondary” when compared to updating on what Mauss was doing: “Its [Mauss's correspondence with Durkheim] purpose is to keep me informed of what you are doing, not to give me studied reports on what

5135-438: The theory of cultural materialism and said that all aspects of society have material causes. In archaeology, the idea that social relations are embodied in material is well known and established, with extensive research on exchange, gift giving and objects as part of social ceremonies and events. However, in contradiction to archaeology, where scientists build on material remains of previous cultures, sociology tends to overlook

5214-494: The two children of Rosine Mauss and Gerson Mauss, alongside his younger brother Camille Henri Mauss. Both the uncle and nephew were born in Épinal, France , with a fourteen-year age difference. Religion is a keyword in the family life of both Mauss and Durkheim, with Moïse Durkheim being the rabbi of Épinal and chief rabbi of Vosges. Although both Mauss and Durkheim later set themselves away from religious beliefs and practices, this contributed to their mutual interest in studying

5293-478: The use of tape recorders and cinematographic cameras. Archaeology is the study of humanity through the inferential analysis of material culture to ultimately gain an understanding of the daily lives of past cultures and the overarching trend of human history. An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of the artifacts from a specific time and place, most often that has no written record. These physical artifacts are then used to make inferences about

5372-399: The will of attaching other people – 'to put people under obligations', because "in theory such gifts are voluntary, but in fact they are given and repaid under obligation". 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

5451-414: The world. Mauss had a significant influence upon Claude Lévi-Strauss , the founder of structural anthropology . His most famous work is The Gift (1925). Mauss was born in Épinal , Vosges , to a Jewish family, his father a merchant and his mother an embroidery shop owner. Unlike his younger brother, Mauss did not join the family business and instead he joined the socialist and cooperative movement in

5530-426: Was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". The nephew of Émile Durkheim , Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology . Today, he is perhaps better recognised for his influence on the latter discipline, particularly with respect to his analyses of topics such as magic , sacrifice and gift exchange in different cultures around

5609-530: Was a way of showing that Europeans were at the end of the evolution of society, with non-Westerners at the beginning. Eventually, scholars left the notion that culture evolved though predictable cycles, and the study of material culture changed to have a more objective view of non-Western material culture. The field of material culture studies as its own distinct discipline dates to the 1990s. The Journal of Material Culture began publishing in 1996. Collecting habits date back hundreds of years. Leslie White

5688-593: Was an American anthropologist, known for his advocacy of theories of cultural evolution , sociocultural evolution , and especially neoevolutionism and for his role in creating the department of anthropology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. He was president of the American Anthropological Association (1964). He wrote The Science of Culture in 1949 in which he outlined schema of the world as divided into cultural, biological, and physical levels of phenomenon. White believed that

5767-574: Was attracted to socialism, especially that espoused by Jean Jaurès . He was particularly engaged around the anti-semitic political events of the Dreyfus affair . Towards the end of the century, he helped edit such left-wing papers as [[[Le Populaire (French newspaper)|Le Populaire]]] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) , [[[L'Humanité]]] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) and [[[Le Mouvement socialiste]]] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) ,

5846-797: Was coined in 1918, just before a wave of interest in Victorian objects and artifacts began in the 1920s. Another increased period of collecting of Victoriana emerged in the 1950s. In 1951, the Festival of Britain commemorated the centenary of the Victorian era's first world's fair, the 1851 Great Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace . In the 1960s and 1970s, the eclectic character of Victorian era wood type inspired graphic designers like Seymour Chwast and Push Pin Studios . Items such as Stevengraphs were popular collectable items during

5925-656: Was done in collaboration with members of the Année Sociologique , including Durkheim ( Primitive Classification ), Henri Hubert ( Outline of a General Theory of Magic and Essay on the Nature and Function of Sacrifice ), Paul Fauconnet ( Sociology ) and others. Mauss influenced French anthropology and social science. He did not have a great number of students like many other Sociologists did, however, he taught ethnographic method to first generation French anthropology students. In addition to this, Mauss's ideas have had

6004-407: Was forced out of his job as the Chair of Sociology and out of Paris due to the German occupation and anti-Semitic legislation passed. Mauss remained socially isolated following the war and died in 1950. Moïse Durkheim and Mélanie Isidor, the parents of Émile Durkheim , had four children: Rosine (1848-1930), Félix (1850-1889), Céline (1851-1931), and Émile (1858-1917). Marcel Israël Mauss was one of

6083-425: 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

6162-407: Was teaching at the time. In the 1890s, Mauss began his lifelong study of linguistics , Indology , Sanskrit , Hebrew , and the ' history of religions and uncivilized peoples' at the [[[École pratique des hautes études]]] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |label= ( help ) . He passed the agrégation in 1893. He was also the first cousin of the much younger Claudette (née Raphael) Bloch,

6241-412: Was when the "former directed the holy towards the person or object, and the latter away from a person or object." 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

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