Maurice Godelier

Maurice Godelier (born February 28, 1934 in Cambrai ) is considered the founder of neo-Marxist economic ethnology . He is a specialist in the societies of Oceania and research director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

Maurice Godelier, 1977

Life

Godelier attended the École normal supérieure of Saint Cloud , from which he graduated with an agrégation (teaching qualification for high schools and universities) in philosophy and a license (state examination) in psychology and modern philology. After studying in Lille and Paris, he worked from 1963 at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, initially as a lecturer and from 1975 to 1982 as professor of economic ethnology. There he was also a project manager at Fernand Braudel and senior assistant to Claude Lévi-Strauss . Between 1970 and 1988 he carried out numerous field studies with the Baruya in Papua New Guinea . From 1982 to 1986 he headed the department for human and social sciences at the Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), where he held the chair for the social logic of production and power. In 1989 he was awarded the Gay Lussac Humboldt Prize . In 2001 Godelier received the gold medal from the management of the CNRS . He enjoys international renown as an anthropologist and is considered a specialist in the societies of Oceania.

Godelier is a student of the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and, together with the ethnologists Claude Meillassoux and Emmanuel Terray, is considered the founder of the so-called neo-Marxist school of French ethnology .

Godelier's theoretical position

Godelier is considered a representative of neo-structuralism . His continuation of structuralism builds a bridge to neo-Marxism , which is why he is considered the founder of neo-Marxist economic ethnology.

Neostructuralism

His theoretical approach takes structuralism further by combining it with historical materialism or the dialectical approach of Marx in order to "get to the bottom of the hidden logic of the economic system and the necessity of its historical development and decay" and thus the contradiction between historical dynamics and socially long-term structures.

Neo-Marxism

Godelier's neo-Marxist economic ethnology is also known as the "new economic ethnology". This direction emerged in France in the sixties and seventies and replaced the “old economic ethnology”, which had reached its climax in the substantivism-formalism debate . In his work “Rationalité et irrationalité en économie” from 1966, Godelier opens up a theoretical perspective that assumes that economic activities are embedded in the social structures (such as religion and politics) of a society. Godelier sees these social structures as the basis for the production and reproduction of the economy.

Field research

Maurice Godelier began his field research in 1967 with the Baruya, a classless society of around 2000 people living in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Field research among the Baruya took a total of seven years of his time between 1966 and 1988. He focused on problems that are more of a general theoretical nature (the power and role of the imagination in social reproduction ). There he examined the relationship between economy and social structure , with the emergence of political power and the importance of ideal constructs. In 1982 he created his first work “La Production des Grands Hommes” ( big men , great men concept) from his summarized materials , which became central to the analysis of power relations in Melanesia . Topics that Godelier dealt with during his field research:

• the role of the ideal (mental construct) in social relationships
• the distinction between imagination and symbolism (symbolic practice)
• the distinction between gift, present and inalienable things ( reciprocity )

Numerous publications and films have emerged from his field research.

Works

In his works, Godelier deals on the one hand with the way Australian colonial rule dealt with different ethnic groups and the resulting social change in Oceania . He also deals with the development of societies that are dependent on kinship structures and shows the importance of sexual figures and the unequal distribution of gender roles within them. In doing so, he tries to explain male dominance in power. Godelier's works have been translated into numerous languages.

Main work

Godelier's main work "La production des Grands Hommes" was published in 1982. The central question arises from the title, namely how the “Grands Hommes” came about, what distinguishes them and how they have established themselves as such in society. The book describes the result of his field research from 1966 with the Baruya, an ethnic group of the high mountains of Papua New Guinea. The Baruya lived both stateless and classless until the submission of the colonial administration of Australia in 1960 . In his work, Godelier tries to analyze the social organization of the Baruya, which is strongly influenced by male rule and thus by inequality between the sexes. “One part of society, the men, directed the other, the women; they governed society not without women, but against them. This adds the case of the Baruya, a classless society, to all those who already clearly show that gender inequality, subordination, oppression, and even exploitation of women are social realities that do not only begin with the emergence of classes originated, but existed before, even if the rule of men with the thousand forms of human exploitation by humans that preceded ours has been consolidated and renewed in a thousand ways. ”The book received a prize from the Académie française and has lasting influence in anthropology.

More fonts

• L'idéel et le matériel. Paris, Ed. Fayard (1984).
• L'énigme you don. Ed. Fayard (1996), German: The riddle of the gift. Beck (1999).
• La production du corps. Approches anthropologiques et historiques et Le corps humain, supplicié, possédé, cannibalisé. Text collection compiled and edited by Maurice Godelier and Michel Panoff. Amsterdam, Archives contemporaines (1998).
• Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, Frankfurt am Main 1972. (French 1966).
• Economic anthropology. Studies on the concept of the social structure of primitive societies, Reinbek b. Hamburg 1973.
• The production of the great men, power and male supremacy among the Baruya in New Guinea, Frankfurt am Main 1987. (French 1982)
• Nature, work, history. On a universal historical theory of economic forms, Hamburg 1990.
• The riddle of the gift. Money, gifts, holy objects, Munich 1999. (French edition 1996, limited preview of the English edition from 1999 )
  • Review of Elisabeth von Thadden in Die Zeit (December 1999)
• Métamorphoses de la parenté. Paris, Ed. Fayard (2004) (by Nora Scott, The Metamorphoses of Kinship . London, Verso 2011)
  • Review by Jack Goody (December 2005, in English)

literature

• Fischer, Hans (1998): Ethnology: Introduction and overview. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.
• Rössler, Martin (2005 [1999]): Economic Ethnology. An introduction. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.
• Vered, Amit (2004): Biographical dictionary of social and cultural anthropology. London: Routledge. Pp. 199-200.

Web links

• Literature by and about Maurice Godelier in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biographical details at www.arte-tv.com
• A short introduction of Godeliers to the society of the Baruya at www.arte-tv.com
• interview
• Biography Godeliers on the website of the Austrian Latin America Institute ( Memento from March 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (December 1, 2008)
• Presentation of the production of the great men on the website of the Austrian Latin America Institute ( Memento from May 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (December 1, 2008)
• Biography on the University of Virginia website ( February 7, 2009 memento on the Internet Archive ) (December 1, 2008)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fischer 1989: 317.
2. ↑ See Karsten Kumoll: Culture, History and the Indigenization of Modernity. An analysis of the complete works of Marshall Sahlins. Bielefeld 2007, pp. 91-95 .
3. ↑ Rössler 1998: 132.
4. ↑ Vered 2004: 199.
5. ↑ Godelier's biography on the website of the Austrian Latin America Institute ( Memento from February 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ Biography on the University of Virginia website ( February 7, 2009 memento in the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ ^{a b} http://www.arte.tv/de/Willkommen/Die-Welt-der-Papuas/Partner/220076,CmC=401682.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was created automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ↑ Godelier, 1987: 10.