Read more
Marcel Mauss famous "Essay on the Gift" has now returned to its original context. For the first time, this masterpiece essential reading for every student of anthorpology can be read in an updated and annotated English translation alongside the profound works that framed its first publication in the 1923 24 issue of the journal "L Annee Sociologique." Included here are Mauss memorial account of the work of colleagues lost during World War I, and Mauss scholarly reviews of influential works by his contemporaries (Boas, Frazer, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, and others). Now read in the context of its co-publications, the "Essay on the Gift "reveals a complementary whole, a genre of generosity both personal and political: Mauss honor and respect for his fallen colleagues; his aspiration for modern (post-war) society s recuperation of the gift as a mode of repair; and his careful, yet critical, reading of the work of his contemporaries. It was Mauss hope that from this publication, Another seed will fall and germinate. Indeed, there is probably no other work in the history of anthropology that has germinated so great an intellectual flowering. This new translation by anthropologist Jane Guyer, with a critical foreword by anthropologists Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch, is certain to become the standard English reference for Marcel Mauss greatest essay setting the scence for a whole new generation of readers to study the gift alongside the erudition, political commitment, and generous collegial exchange that first nourished it into life and growth."
About the author
Marcel Mauss (1870-1950) was a French sociologist and founding figure of twentieth-century anthropology.
Jane I. Guyer is the George Armstrong Kelly Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.
