Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2018, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (4): 1-53.

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Between Nations and the World: Marcel Mauss's Conceptualization of Civilization and Envisioning of Human Science

WANG Mingming   

  1. Department of Sociology, Institute of Sociology and Anthropology, Peking University;Institute of Yunnan Ethnic, Yunnan Minzu University
  • Online:2018-07-20 Published:2018-07-20

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Abstract:

Between 1913 and 1930, Marcel Mauss worked to re-define civilizations in terms of material, institutional, and spiritual entities and moral vitalities between the nations and the world. This paper makes an inquiry of the historical origin of Mauss's project, its intellectual and political pertinence, as well as its contemporary implications. Mauss's project of human science of civilizations was envisaged during the time of rupture between the two world wars, a period of tensions and self-contradictory syntheses between the rationalist notions of civilization and the nationalist notions of culture. The former was founded upon both religious and scientific bases and the latter took extremism in the late 19th century. The struggle of the two caused serious problems in Europe as well as other parts of the world. In his study of the "phenomena of civilization," Mauss conceptualized civilization as the in-between hyper-social spaces between the national borders. He examined the forms and geographic patterns of the spread of the phenomena and argued that for human science-in particular, ethnology and sociology-to be truer to societies and cultures, such phenomena should be systematically studied sociologically. Mauss also believed that a holistic human science would not be possible unless such civilizational phenomena were taken into account by the sociologist. Critiquing the existing territorial boundedness of sociology and the ethical indifference of ethnology, Mauss insisted on the combination of the two subjects-the ethnological sociology of the hyper-sociality, or "moral miliu" of the relation between societies. This study argues that what Mauss envisaged a century ago is still relevant to today's world. Considering that social sciences (including the post-war American sciences of "area studies") today are often constrained by the division of "specialized" and "general" fields, it is important to renew Mauss's open mindedness to see civilizations as the "intermediaries" of social existence encompassing a certain number of nations, each national culture being only a form of the whole.The introductory section here reflects on the dominance of the model of "the world of the nations" in social science, which has resulted in the unfortunate disremembering of Durkheimian sociology of civilizations. It follows with the discussion of the subject of civilizations in the life and work of Mauss. The core parts of this study outline the history of the nationalization and civilization of Annee Sociologique, offer a review of Mauss's critique of nationalism and narratives of civilization, as well as a summary of his models of forms, contents, and regions of civilizations. In the concluding remarks, the discussion of Annee Sociologique on civilizations is related to the early 20th century Chinese intellectual thinking regarding national polities and cosmopolitanism.

Key words: civilizations, Annee Sociologique, anthropology, social science, nation, the world