Page "Marcel Mauss" Paragraph 1

Mauss was born in Épinal, Vosges to a Jewish family, and studied philosophy at Bordeaux, where his uncle Émile Durkheim was teaching at the time, and passed the agrégation in 1893.

Instead of taking the usual route of teaching at a lycée, however, Mauss moved to Paris and took up the study of comparative religion and the Sanskrit language.

His first publication in 1896 marked the beginning of a prolific career that would produce several landmarks in the sociological literature.