De quelques formes primitives de classification

by Marcel Mauss

Dans ce classique de la sociologie de la connaissance, Durkheim et Mauss proposent de réécrire la table kantienne des catégories : l’acquisition de nos concepts fondamentaux et la maîtrise des jugements logiques qu’ils rendent possibles ne sont pas, selon eux, le fruit des seules forces de l’individu, mais ont en fait une origine sociale. Cette hypothèse, ils la testent sur les concepts de genres et espèces. Ils entendent ainsi établir qu’en Amérique du Nord, chez les aborigènes d’Australie, tout autant que dans le système divinatoire chinois, stratification sociale et genres naturels primitifs se font écho : la classification des choses reproduit celle des hommes. Ce faisant, Durkheim et Mauss suggèrent qu’il y a continuité entre la faculté de classification déployée dans les sociétés primitives et celle à l’œuvre dans nos sciences contemporaines – belle et généreuse manière de mettre en cause le Grand Partage.

Genres: Anthropology, Sociology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Social Science, Theory, Academic

150 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Mauss was born in Épinal, Vosges to a Jewish family, and studied philosophy at Bordeaux, where his uncle Émile Durkheim was teaching at the time and agregated in 1893. Instead of taking the usual route of teaching at a lycée, however, Mauss moved to Paris and took up the study of comparative religion and the Sanskrit language. His first publication in 1896 marked the beginning of a prolific career that would produce several landmarks in the sociological literature.

Like many members of Année Sociologique Mauss was attracted to socialism, particularly that espoused by Jean Jaurès. He was particularly active in the events of the Dreyfus affair and towards the end of the century he helped edit such left-wing papers as le Populaire, l'Humanité and le Mouvement Socialiste, the last in collaboration with Georges Sorel.

Mauss took up a chair in the 'history of religion and uncivilized peoples' at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1901. It was at this time that he began drawing more and more on ethnography, and his work began increasingly to look like what we would today call anthropology.

The years of World War I were absolutely devastating for Mauss. Many of his friends and colleagues died in the war, and Durkheim died shortly before its end. The postwar years were also difficult politically for Mauss. Durkheim had made changes to school curricula across France, and after his death a backlash against his students began. Like many other followers of Durkheim, Mauss took refuge in administration, securing Durkheim's legacy by founding institutions such as l'Institut Français de Sociologie (1924) and l'Institut d'Ethnologie in 1926. In 1931 he took up the chair of Sociology at the Collège de France. He actively fought against anti-semitism and racial politics both before and after World War II. He died in 1950.

Reviews

[versarbre]

Men's classification of the world invariably started from the classification of the social groups. And they observe things in the forms of groups instead of individuals. Such collective representations arises from special social sentiments. For a social scientist, then, his task would be to reveal the sentiments and more elaborated collective representations of one society. It's both of intellectual benefits and practical utility.

[Alex]

Good question: what is the history of the idea of 'concept,' that certain things or abstractions 'belong' to each other? Have people always conceived the concept in the same way?

Bad answer: People got the idea to classify things because they were already classified into moeities, clans, and subclans, and all categorizations stemmed from people taking a good look at themselves.

[Alexander]

The translator's note is extensive and acts as a history and compilation of criticisms relating to this text. Most of which are provided to disprove what you're about to read. Like most early works of cultural anthropology, someone should read them with a grain of salt and interrogate how concepts have changed. I don't need the translator doing that for me, seemingly to invalidate the work before it's read.

[Luis Ignacio]

"Se ha afirmado con harta frecuencia que el hombre comenzó por representarse las cosas relacionándolas consigo mismo. Lo que precede permite precisar mejor en qué consiste este antropocentrismo, que sería preferible llamar sociocentrismo. El centro de los primeros sistemas de la naturaleza no es el individuo, sino la sociedad"

[Brooklyn Butler]

Booo tomatoes tomatoes throwing tomatoes

[Dyan]

Originally published in 1903, this text has not aged well at all. Rodney Needham's introduction goes some way to highlight its many, many flaws. That being said, this was one of the first anthropological and sociological works to focus specifically on "classification" as a concept - and moreover, to contend that classification is a social process and not an inherently cognitive one, as had been argued by the psychology of the day. In that way it is indeed a "classic" academic text, and interesting to read as such.

[Anna]

just awesome!

[Phoenix2]

A good athropologiacl study on the classification.