Legacy
While Mauss is known for several of his own works - most notably his masterpiece Essai sur le Don ('The Gift') - much of his best work was done in collaboration with members of the Année Sociologique, including Durkheim (Primitive Classification), Henri Hubert (Outline of a General Theory of Magic and Essay on the Nature and Function of Sacrifice), Paul Fauconnet (Sociology) and others.
Like many prominent French academics, Mauss did not train a great number of students. Nonetheless, many anthropologists claim to have followed in his footsteps, most notably Claude Lévi-Strauss. The essay on The Gift is the origin for anthropological studies of reciprocity. His analysis of the Potlatch has inspired Georges Bataille (The Accursed Share); then the situationists (the name of the first situationist journal was "Potlatch"); and has been used by many interested in gift economies and Open Source software, although this latter use sometimes differs from Mauss's original formulation. See also Lewis Hyde's revolutionary critique of Mauss in "Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property".
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“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)