born May 10, 1872, Épinal, Fr.
died Feb. 10, 1950, Paris
French sociologist and anthropologist.
Mauss was the nephew of Émile Durkheim , who contributed much to his intellectual formation and with whom he collaborated in such important works as Suicide (1897) and Primitive Classification (190102). His most influential independent work was The Gift (1925), a highly original comparative study of the relation between forms of gift exchange and social structure. He taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and Collège de France and cofounded the University of Paris's Institut d'Ethnologie. His views on ethnological theory and method influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss , A.R. Radcliffe-Brown , Bronis 0142; aw Malinowski , and Edward Evans-Pritchard .