born May 10, 1872, Épinal, Fr.
died Feb. 10, 1950, Paris
French sociologist and anthropologist.
Mauss was the nephew of Suicide (1897) and Primitive Classification (1901–02). 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 {{link=L%C3%A9vi-Strauss, Claude">Claude Lévi-Strauss , A.R. Radcliffe-Brown , Bronisław Malinowski , and Edward Evans-Pritchard .