View source for Revue du Mauss



URL = http://www.revuedumauss.com

=Description=

"I  intend to  give  here  a  sketchy  presentation  of the  academic  work
accomplished by an interdiciplinary  review in social science, La Revue du
MAUSS,  The  Review  of  the  anti-utilitarian  Movement  in  Social  Science
(www.revuedumauss.com)

More than  1000 articles have appeared in the Review and about 30 books have been published in the collection (La Bibliothèque du MAUSS, Editions La Decouverte)   linked to the Review and to the anti-utilitarian school. The Review counts contributors,   readers and subscribers all over the world, but is really well known only in France,  in Italy (where  an  italian  version  of  the Review  is  published  by Bollati-Bollinghieri, Casa Editrice, Turin), and a little less in Brazil. 

This  Review  was  founded  in  1981,  by
economists,  anthropologists  and  sociologists  as  a  reaction  to  the
overwhelming  development  and  imperialism  of  what  has  been  called the
“Economic model” in the social sciences. In the years 1960’ , and especially
with the Chicago School and the work of Gary Becker (or Hayek in another
way), economists began to to believe that their Rational Action (or Choice)
Theory (RAT) was likely to explain not only what is going on on the market
and through monetary exchanges, but any kind of social behavior : learning,
wedding, religious belief, love or crime etc.; And, what is more surprising, the
other social sciences, starting with sociology, have at this time largely agreed
with  this  contention  (Let  us  think  for  instance  of  James  Coleman  and
Raymond  Boudon.  Or,  in  another  way,  Pierre  Bourdieu).  In  fact,  this
enlargement  of  the  traditional  scope  of  economic  science  has  been  the
intellectual and ideological prelude and the starting point to neo-liberalism
which is nowadays triumphing as well in academic economic science as in
the real world.

What  can  be  opposed  on  a  theoretical  level  to  this  overwhelming
victory of the economic model ?

1°)  One  must  show  first  that  the  vision  of  Man  as  an  homo
economicus ,  which  underlies  this  economic  model,  is  the
cristallisation  and the  condensation  of  a broader  and more  ancient
anthropology and philosophy : utilitarianism. If this is true, criticizing
the imperialism of economic science on thought and of the hegemony
of  the  market  on  society  implies  to  criticize,  more  deeply,  the
utilitarian  anthropology,  i. e. the  instrumental  vision  of  Man
underlying them.

2°) And now, what can be objected to this utilitarian vision ? Our main
intellectual ressource can be found, I believe, in the discovery made in
1923–24 by the french anthropologist Marcel Mauss (the nephew and
intellectual heir to Emile Durkheim) of the fact that primitive, archaic
and traditional societies – and in some sense modern societies too - do
not rely upon contract and commercial exchange but on what he terms
the  gift,  or,  more  precisely,  the  triple  obligation  to  give,  take  and
return. The obligation to display one’s generosity.

This discovery, I think, can and must be used as a foundational basis
for  social  sciences  (including  economics)  as  well  as  for  moral  and
political philosophy. It permits to  show how and why the nowadays
dominating human type (the Menschentum as Max Weber said), homo
œconomicus, the  economic man, the man  who  is  only  intersted  in
maximizins  his  own  satisfaction,  utility  or  preferences,  is  not  the
natural and universal one – whatever economists may think - but one
among  many  others  which  have  appeared  and  existed  throughout
History.  And  this  is  particularly  important  to  state  in  order  to
understand  that  giving  less  room  to  economic  necessities,  to  the
market, and more to society, implies to give less importance to homo
œconomicus and more to other types of Man, for instance to homo
politicus, to homo ethicus or to homo religiosus.


...

The  specificity  of  the  anti-utilitarian  school  is  to  link  together  the
question  of  the  political  and  religious  foundation  of  societies  with  the
question  of the  gift,  of  recognition  and  of the  building  of  individual  and
collective  identities.  Its  main  hypothesis  is  that  men  are  not  only  selfinterested animals,  eager only to get and own more and more things and
riches, but that first of all they desire to be recognized (the craving for money
and richness being interpretated as the mots current translation of the need
of  recognition).  The  main  present  international  philosophical  discussion
(which is now substituting the debate abour Rawls’ Theory of Justice) now
bears  on  the  problem  of  recognition  and  identity  (Charles  Taylor,  Axel
Honneth,  Nancy  Fraser).  The  anti-utilitarian  hypothesis  is  that  Human
beings’ first desire is to be recognized and valued as givers."
(http://www.revuedumauss.com.fr/media/ACstake.pdf)

==More Information==
#[[Allain_Caillé]]
#[[David_Graeber_Give_It_Away|David Graeber 'Give It Away' article on MAUSS]]
[[Category:Commons Economics]]