The Gift: the Form and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (1966)
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THE GIFT ESSAI SUR LE DON in SOCIOLOGIE ET ANTHROPOLOGIE Published by PRESSES UNIVERSITAIRES DE FRANCE Paris, 1950 THE GIFT Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies by MARCEL MAUSS Translated by IAN GUNNISON With an Introduction by . E. EVANS-PRITCHARD Professor of Social Anthropology and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford COHEN & WEST LTD 68-74 Carter Lane, London, E.C.4 1966 Copyright PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY LOWE AND BRYDONE (PRINTERS) LTD, LONDON INTRODUCTION By E. E. Evans-Pritchard Fellow of All Souls College and Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford MARCEL MAUSS (i 872-1 950), Emile Durkheim's nephew and most distinguished pupil, was a man of unusual ability and learning, and also of integrity and strong convictions. After Durkheim's death he was the leading figure in French sociology. His reputation was closely bound up with the fortunes of the Annee Sociologique which he helped his uncle to found and make famous; some of the most stimu- lating and original contributions to its earher numbers were written by him in collaboration with Durkheim and Hubert and Beuchat: Essai sur la nature et la fauction du sacrifice (1899), De quelques formes primitives de classification : contribution a f etude des representations collectives (1903), Esquisse d'une theorie generale de la magie (1904), and Essai sur les variations saisonnieres des societes eskimos : essai de morphologic sociale (1906). The war of 19 14-18, during which Mauss was on opera- tional service, almost wiped out the team of brilliant younger scholars whom Durkheim had taught, inspired, and gathered around him^—his son Andre Durkheim, Robert Hertz, Antoine Bianconi, Georges Gelly, Maxime David, Jean Reynier. The Master did not survive them (d. 191 7). Had it not been for *X these disasters Mauss might have given us in ampler measure CK the fruits of his erudition, untiring industry, and mastery of ^2 method. But he not only wrote about social solidarity and ^ collective sentiments. He expressed them in his own life. For . him the group of Durkheim and his pupils and colleagues had ^ a kind of collective mind, the material representation of which ^was its product the Annee. And if one belongs to others and not to oneself, which is one of the themes, perhaps the basic theme, 1539716 VI THE GIFT of the present book, one expresses one's attachment by sub- ordinating one's own ambitions to the common interest. On the few occasions I met Mauss I received the impression that this was how he thought and felt, and his actions confirmed it. He took over the labours of his dead colleagues. Most un- selfishly, for it meant neglecting his own researches, he under- took the heavy task of editing, completing and publishing the manuscripts left by Durkheim, Hubert (who died in 1927), Hertz and others. He undertook also, in 1923-24, the even heavier task of reviving his beloved Annee^ which had ceased publication after 191 3. This imposed an added burden on him and farther deflected him from the field of his own chief interest. Mauss became a Sanskrit scholar and a historian of religions at the same time as he became a sociologist, and his main interest throughout his life was in Comparative Religion or the Sociology of Religion. But he felt that the new series of the Annie must, like the old one, cover all the many branches of sociological research, and this could only be done if he took over those branches other than his own which would have been the special concern of those who had died. Consequently, though he pubUshed many reviews and review-articles, his only major works after 1906 were the Essai sur le don, forme archaique de rSchange (1925), which Dr. Cunnison now presents in an EngUsh translation. Fragment d'un plan de sociologie generate descrip- tive (1934), and Une categorie de V esprit humain: la notion de per- sonne, celle de 'moi' (1938). His projected works on Prayer, on Money and on the State were never completed. But he was active all the time. The second series of the Annee had to be abandoned, but a third series was started in 1934. Then came the war of 1939-45. Paris was occupied by the Nazis, and Mauss was a Jew. He was not himself injured, but some of his closest colleagues and friends, Maurice Halbwachs and others, were killed. For a second time he saw all around him collapse, and this, combined with other and personal troubles, was too much for him and his mind gave way. This is not the place to make a critical assessment of Mauss's part in the development of sociological thought in France—it INTRODUCTION Vll has been admirably done by Henri Levy-Bruhl and Claude Levi-Strauss.* All that is required are some very brief indica- tions of the importance of Mauss's work and of the Essai sur le don as a particular example of it. Mauss was in the line of philosophical tradition running from Montesquieu through the philosophers of the Enlighten- ment—Turgot, Condorcet, St. Simon—to Comte and then Durkheim, a tradition in which conclusions were reached by analysis of concepts rather than of factSj_the facts being used as illustrations of formulations reached by other than inductive methods. But while that is true, it is also true that Mauss was far less a philosopher than Durkheim. In all his essays he turns first to the concrete facts and examines them in their entirety and to the last detail. This was the main theme of an excellent lecture on Mauss delivered recently (1952) at Oxford by one of his former pupils, M. Louis Dumont. He pointed out that though Mauss, out of loyalty and affection, studiously avoided any criticism of Durkheim such criticism is nevertheless implicit in his writings, which are so much more empirical than Durk- heim's that it might be said that with Mauss sociology in France reached its experimental stage. Mauss sought only to know a limited range of facts and then to understand them, and what Mauss meant by understanding comes out very clearly in this Essay. Ij^isjo see social phenomena—as, indeed, Durkheim taught that they should be seen-—in their totality. 'Total' is the key word of the Essay. The exchanges of archaic societies which he examines are total social movements or activities. They are atjhejame time economic, juridical^ moral, aesthetic, religious, mythological and socio-morphological phenomena. Their meaning can therefore only be grasped if they are viewed as a complex concrete reality, and if for con- venience we iriafe abstractions in studying some institution we * H. Ldvy-Bruhl, 'In Memoriam: Marcel Mauss' in UAnrUe Sociologique, Troisieme Serie, 1948-49. C. Levi-Strauss, 'La Sociologie frangaise' in La sociologie au XX" sikle, 1947, Vol. 2 [Twentieth Century Sociology, 1946, ch. xvii) ; 'Introduction a I'oeuvre de Marcel Mauss', in Sociologie et Anthropologie, a collection of some of Mauss's essays published in 1950. Vlll THE GIFT must in the end replace what we have taken away if we are to understand it. And the means to be used to reach an under- standing of institutions? They are those employed by the anthropological fieldworker who studies social life from both outside and inside, from the outside as anthropologist and from the inside by identifying himself with the members of the society he is studying. Mauss demonstrated that, given enough well documented material, he could do this without leaving his flat in Paris. He soaked his mind in ethnographical material, including all available linguistic material; but he was successful only because that mind was also a master of sociological method. Mauss did in his study what an anthropologist does in the field, bringing a trained mind to bear on the social life of primitive peoples which he both observes and experiences. We social anthropologists therefore regard him as one of us. But to understand 'total' phenomena in their totality it is necessary first to know them. One must be a scholar. It is not sufficient to read the writings of others about the thought and customs of ancient India or ancient Rome. One must be able to go straight to the sources, for scholars not trained in socio- logical methods will not have seen in the facts what is of sociological significance. The sociologist who sees them in their totality sees them differently. Mauss was able to go to the sources. Besides having an excellent knowledge of several modern European languages, including Russian, he was a fine Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Celtic and Hebrew scholar, as well as a brilliant sociologist. Perhaps to their surprise, he was able to teach Sanskritists much that they did not know was in their texts and Roman lawyers much that they did not know was in theirs. What he says about the meaning of certain forms of exchange in ancient India and in ancient Rome in the Essai sur le don is an illustration. This was perhaps not so remarkable a feat as that he was able to show from Malinowski's own account of the Trobriand Islanders where he had misunder- stood, or had inadequately understood, their institutions. He could do this because of his vast knowledge, which Mahnowski lacked, of Oceanic languages and of the native societies of — INTRODUCTION IX Melanesia, Polynesia, America and elsewhere, which enabled him to deduce by a comparative study of primitive institutions what the fieldworker had not himself observed. The Essai sur le don, apart from its value as an exercise in method, is a precious document in itself.