The Ethnological Revolution: On Marcel Mauss

An overview of the scholarly work of French ethnologist Marcel Mauss, detailing the linkages between Mauss's research & the sociological perspectives introduced by Emile Durkheim. It is suggested that, as evidenced in the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, certain lines of inquiry have been obfuscated, & the origins of Mauss's thought have been overlooked due to rigid interpretation. The reconciliation between sociology & the ethnological revolution indirectly achieved in Mauss's work & the structuralist perspective postulated by Levi-Strauss are considered. T. Francis