If “gift” has become a major category of recent thought, it is largely because of the influence of anthropology. A contribution to the history of an idea in anthropology Denis Vidal, Université Paris Diderot Translated by Eléonore Rimbault Marcel Mauss’ The gift is one of the most revered texts of social anthropology. Valeri characterizes Mauss as having inaugurated a “new anthropology” that breaks decisively with its predecessors. Marcel Mauss however, didn’t confine his work to the principles of sociology but went ahead and related it to many other concepts of anthropology and ethnography. It is also one of the most debated. 1 It has been the subject of many readings and commentaries and two English translations. Marcel Mauss, The Gift, trans. He looked into the historical development of forces of each society, notably known as … Anthropology - the study of mankind - includes the cross cultural studies of human societies through time. History of anthropology in this article refers primarily to the 18th- and 19th-century precursors of modern anthropology. Jane I. Guyer Essai sur le don (1925; The Gift), an analysis of “the gift,” including an examination of the concepts of reciprocity and exchange.The long-term work on West African worldviews (Dieu d’eau: entretiens avec Ogotemmêli [1948]) by the group around Marcel Griaule has perhaps been more admired than really influential. Modern anthropology emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century, when a new generation of scholars, notably Franz Boas, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Marcel Mauss, rejected evolutionism replacing it with cultural relativism, also refining research methodologies and methods of … Editor’s Abstract: “One cannot merely refer to Mauss; with him, one must debate.” In this essay, Valerio Valeri takes on precisely this task of critical dialogue with Mauss’ work. Marcel Mauss's The Gift (Essai sur le Don) has been an inspiration to many, including Claude Lévi-Strauss. The term anthropology itself, innovated as a New Latin scientific word during the Renaissance, has always meant "the study (or science) of man".The topics to be included and the terminology have varied historically. Marcel Mauss, “Essai Sur Le Don: Forme et Raison de l’Échange Dans Les Sociétés Archaïques,” L’Année Sociologique 1ère Année (1923): 33. Marcel Mauss’ The Gift: The … 3 (2002): 343. Even the superior version of W.D. Lygia Sigaud, “The Vicissitudes of The Gift,” Social Anthropology 10, no. Her most long-last ing contributions to the anthropology of … In anthropology: Anthropology in Europe.