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Abstract

Mauss’s Essay on the Gift was the only article to be included when the journal L’Année sociologique was relaunched after the Great War. Prepared during 1923/1924, it appeared in 1925. The Essay was preceded by Mauss’s eulogy to colleagues who had died since the last edition (1912), including five killed in action and its founder, Émile Durkheim (1917). Hundreds of pages of reviews followed, many written by Mauss himself. This article places the essay back in its original context by exploring the resonance of the whole issue with the Jewish ritual of chesed shel emet (generally translated into English as ‘the true gift’) which takes care of the body between death and burial. The three parts of the paper cover: the empirical method of The Gift (very briefly); the eulogy and the reviews; and the concept of chesed (‘kindness’) in Jewish thought. This reading follows Mauss’s own method of combining empirical profusion with a hermeneutics of consonance.

Keywords

death gift kindness Mauss memorial

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The true gift: Thoughts on L’Année sociologique of 1925

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