Mauss, India, and perspectives from world history

Abstract

Mauss’s wide-ranging education included not only philosophy and sociology with Durkheim in Bordeaux, but also philology and Indology with Sylvain Lévi (his ‘second uncle’) in Paris. What was the effect on his life and work of this early but intense exposure to an ancient civilization? A few publications, notably the essay on sacrifice, are predominantly India-focused, but more typically Mauss used his regional expertise within the world-wide framework of Durkheimian sociologie. Several of his more ambitious works, including The Gift, take a world-historical approach, in which India helps to bridge the gap between tribal societies and the modern world; but the region is present in much of his other writing. Mauss’s deep immersion in early India enriched his oeuvre much as intensive fieldwork enriches that of a more typical twentieth-century anthropologist.