MAUSS, Marcel, (1872-1950), French sociologist and anthropologist. Mauss assisted his uncle Émile Durkheim on number of works, especially Le Suicide (1897). He was professor of primitive religion at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris (1902), a founder of the Institut d' Ethnologie at U. of Paris (1925) and taught at the Collège de France (1931-39). Mauss made original study of forms of exchange and contract of peoples of Melanesia, Polynesia, and northwestern North America. He is author of Essai sur le don (1925) and Sociologie et anthropologie (1950).
Functionalists and structuralists