Marcel Mauss, a gift to the social sciences

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Marcel Mauss (May 10, 1872—Feb. 10, 1950), celebrated author of The Gift and nephew of Émile Durkheim, was a French sociologist and anthropologist whose contributions include a highly original comparative study of the relation between forms of exchange and social structure. His views on the theory and method of ethnology are thought to have influenced many eminent social scientists.

In the spirit of his birthday, we are delighted to present volumes from the Publications of the Durkheim Press series, with special attention to The Nature of Sociology and Techniques, Technology, and Civilization. Recently released in paperback, these volumes offer students an ideal introduction to Mauss’s writings and theories.

 

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Karl Marx as a Young Journalist

By Rolf Hosfeld

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Excerpted by Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography by Rolf Hosfeld, Translated from the German by Bernard Heise

Karl Marx was born May 5, 1818. As a young man he was a journalist and an editor for Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal-socialist newspaper published in Germany. The paper was previously edited by Adolf Friedrich Rutenberg, who favored opinionated feuilletons, before Marx replaced him and gained recognition for his practical, evidence-based approach.

Moses Hess was the first communist Karl Marx personally encountered. Both were from the Rhineland, came from bourgeois families, and were under the influence of Hegel’s philosophy. Marx made an “impos­ing impression” on Hess upon their first acquaintance in Septem­ber 1841. After their initial encounter Hess had the sense of having met the “greatest, perhaps the only real philosopher now living,” one who would soonHess was referring here to the lecture halls of Bonn Univer­sity“draw upon him the eyes of Germany.”
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Excerpt: Autism and Affordances of Achievement

Excerpted from Olga Solomon’s “Autism and Affordances of Achievement: Narrative Genres and Parenting Practices,” in The Social Life of Achievement

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF ACHIEVEMENT
Edited by Nicholas J. Long and Henrietta Moore
Vol. 2, Wyse Series in Social Anthropology
What happens when people “achieve”? Why do reactions to “achievement” vary so profoundly? And how might an anthropological study of achievement and its consequences allow us to develop a more nuanced model of the motivated agency that operates in the social world? These questions lie at the heart of this volume. Drawing on research from Southeast Asia, Europe, the United States, and Latin America, this collection develops an innovative framework for explaining achievement’s multiple effects—one which brings together cutting-edge theoretical insights into politics, psychology, ethics, materiality, aurality, embodiment, affect and narrative. In doing so, the volume advances a new agenda for the study of achievement within anthropology, emphasizing the significance of achievement as a moment of cultural invention, and the complexity of “the achiever” as a subject position.

Available in eBook and paperback

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