The forgotten contributions of the French schools of anthropology to the foundations of anthropological perspectives in the Anglophone universe: a comment on Morey and Luthans

Citation

Chanlat, J.-F. (2014), "The forgotten contributions of the French schools of anthropology to the foundations of anthropological perspectives in the Anglophone universe: a comment on Morey and Luthans", Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Vol. 3 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-02-2014-0004

The forgotten contributions of the French schools of anthropology to the foundations of anthropological perspectives in the Anglophone universe: a comment on Morey and Luthans

Article Type: Viewpoint From: Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Volume 3, Issue 1

The reprinted text of Morey and Luthans, originally published in 1987, is very interesting for several reasons: it gives us a synthesis of what two American researchers thought about the influence of anthropology on organizational behavior 25 years ago; and it recalls important contributions to the field of management studies, which is so often ahistorical. So, republishing a 1987 paper is fighting against some contemporary bibliographic amnesia in a field that looks something like a smorgasbord: one can find a great diversity of epistemological, theoretical and methodological stances there, reflecting various societal and intellectual traditions.

Invited to comment briefly on this paper as a Francophone researcher who defines himself as an anthropologist of organizations (Chanlat, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2007, Chanlat et al., 2013), I shall focus on some of the forgotten influence of the founder of French anthropology, Marcel Mauss, principally with respect to the development of Anglo-Saxon anthropology and the link with the Chicago school of ethnology. I shall finish briefly with some more recent contributions in Francophone writings inspired more or less by anthropological influences.

The missing Mauss

In their paper, Morey and Luthans referred to Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown as the key figures who influenced the early anthropological roots of organizational studies, notably in the work of Elton Mayo and Mary Parker Follett. What is striking, for a French researcher, is the total absence of reference to the French school of sociology and, especially, to Marcel Mauss, one of the founders of modern anthropology and one of the great intellectual figures of the discipline (and a nephew of Emile Durkheim, founder of French sociology). Mauss played a major role in the development of British anthropology and, particularly, in the development of Radcliffe-Brown's thinking (Firth, 1951; Leacock, 1954; James, 1998).

Anglophile and fluent in English, Mauss was very aware of how the English-speaking world of anthropology worked. At one Oxford meeting, he presented himself as a disciple of Edward Tylor, considered the founder of English anthropology (James, 1998). He maintained links with such noted English anthropologists as Frazer, Malinowski, Marett, Rivers, Seligman and Radcliffe-Brown. After the First World War, Mauss visited England to meet his British colleagues again. In Paris, Mauss convened a famous seminar from 1900 to 1914, attended by many notable anthropologists, including Marius Barbeau, who was to become one of the founders of Canadian anthropology (Fournier, 1994). Malinowski also came to Paris and presented some seminars directly linked with Mauss’ work on kinship (although Mauss, while admiring Malinowski's ability to collect and expose his field research data, was critical of his theoretical weaknesses and lack of erudition; Letter to Radcliffe-Brown in Fournier, 1994, p. 637). As a full professor, Mauss was regularly requested by colleagues to give lectures and to support their candidacies for university positions. Such was the case with Hoccart, Evans-Pritchard, Fortune, Firth and Radcliffe-Brown. The latter (who, inspired by Durkheim and Mauss's thought, refused to be considered a functionalist) wanted to return to Europe, and, in 1936, Mauss strongly recommended him for a Chair of Anthropology at Oxford (Fournier, 1994, p. 650).

In addition to his strong links with British anthropology, Mauss was also well known to American anthropologists and sociologists. The president of the American Sociological Association, Charles A. Ellwood, wrote him in 1924: “We look at France as the homeland of Sociology and we expect you still lead us in our endeavors to promote the development of Science” (quoted in Fournier, 1994, p. 496). Some American scholars wrote to him (Charles Ellwood of Duke University; Edward Sapir, Robert Faris, Ernest Burgess, and William F. Ogburn, of the University of Chicago); others came to see him in Paris (Herbert Blumer, W. Lloyd Warner and Stephan Bogardus in 1932, and Howard Becker and Earle Edward Eubank in 1934; Fournier, 1994, p. 637). He made a tour of the USA in 1936, giving seminars at Harvard and Chicago (James, 1998). Edwin Seligman, Professor of Political Economy at Columbia, invited him to contribute several entries to The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, but Mauss had no time to do so. Nevertheless, he agreed to be an editorial consultant and wrote a brief note on Henri Hubert.

In short, Mauss enjoyed great prestige within American social science. In 1936, Alfred Métraux, a former student of his, during a stay in Chicago, wrote to Mauss:

This contact […] has confirmed [for] me what I have told you before about the great influence of Durkheim and you on the Chicago school. Lloyd Warner […] is a pure Durkheimian […] Do you know that nobody can pass his graduation without knowing Les Formes élémentaires and without having read one of your articles? It is not just the case of a group of advanced students but of all the students (quoted in Fournier, 1994, pp. 634-635).

In the last three decades, Mauss’ work has become very inspirational for the French and Latin academic communities, including in organizational studies. His fundamental essay on the gift has invigorated reflections on social links in modern societies (Godbout and Caillé, 1992/2007; Godbout, 2000; Caillé, 2007) and organizations (Alter, 2010). And his vision of a unity of social sciences and the complexity of human experience has inspired many to criticize a very narrow model of what it is to be human, the so-called homo economicus. He proposed better analyses of social links, as Lévi-Strauss (1950/1985) writes in his introduction to Mauss’ (1950/1985, p. XXV) writings. With the idea of “le fait social total” (a total social fact), Mauss (1950/1985) tried to establish anthropology as “a system of interpretation which can report simultaneously on the physical, physiological, psychical and sociological aspects of all social conducts” (p XXV). Mauss introduced this notion of “fait social total” to underline that certain facts of social life cannot be understood at one level only, but in some cases mobilize the totality of a society and of its institutions. As James (1998) writes: “The totality” of the social phenomena lay not in some bland integrative principle, but in the paradigmatic engagement of the material, the organic and bodily, the psychological and political in a wider choreography of social forms which itself had a lasting historical character (p. 20). One can understand now why Marcel Mauss’ reflections and works have interested researchers from many social science disciplines: linguistics, sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology and history.

Blind spots in the Morey and Luthans paper

As one can see, given Mauss’ influence on both American and British sociology and anthropology, his neglect in Morey and Luthans’ account is a serious oversight. The linguistic barrier may be one of the main causes of the omission of French contributions to the history of anthropology in organizational studies, many of Mauss’ and other relevant works not yet being translated into English. Since 1981, for example, an outstanding French social sciences journal, La revue du Mauss (Mouvement anti-utilitariste en sciences sociales/An anti-utilitarian movement in social sciences), has been dedicated to the interdisciplinary approach that his thinking spawned; and several interesting works have been published since then within the organizational studies field. But also, the account neglects the contributions of other important, non-English writing, notably European, scholars (Van Marrewick, 2010). We might think, for example, of Max Weber's classical Verein Studies, done at the beginning of the twentieth century, which, according to Kaesler (1988), were very modern in their objectives and their scope.

Still, the logic underlying American science, broadly speaking, including organizational studies, as an institution is also responsible for such ignorance. Its importance, not to say hegemony, among contemporary social sciences applied to management; the recently developed career-related importance of publishing mainly in American journals; together with the lack of foreign language skills among many North American researchers of management and organizational studies, taken together have developed an insular self-sufficient feeling within the American mainstream. Except for a few handbooks (Sorge and Warner, 1997; Ritzer, 2006; Bailey and Clegg, 2007) which give a real international flavour to the research they present, it is often difficult to find an openness to non-Anglo-Saxon thought, including the Francophone contribution. The debate launched three years ago in the pages of Organization Studies (2010) on this issue has been quite illustrative.

In conclusion, this brief comment suggests that Nancy Morey and Fred Luthans’ paper, beyond its great interest for organizational researchers, illustrates two main limitations of contemporary scholarship in this area: the lack of non-American works in their overview, even British; and the forgotten influence of the French schools of sociology and anthropology, notably Marcel Mauss’ works on the emergence of American and British thinking. These two main assertions include the seeds of their own solutions. One is the need for more English translations of important works written in other languages. As a corollary, we need more opportunities for non-English-as-a-first-language researchers to publish in English-language journals and book series. Second, we need to develop networks and exchanges across national traditions and language divisions, including the development of exchanges and of foreign languages as an important part of doctoral training. In some respects, the emergence of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography is clearly an opportunity to give a new space to this essential intellectual dialogue.

Jean-François Chanlat
GFR Management et Organisation, Université Paris-Dauphine, Paris, France

References

Alter, N. (2010), Donner et Prendre : la Coopération en Entreprise, La Découverte, Paris

Bailey, J. and Clegg, S. (Eds) (2007), International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA

Caillé, A. (2007), Anthropologie du don. Le tiers paradigme, la Découverte, Paris

Chanlat, J.-F. (1990), L’individu dans l’organisation Les dimensions oubliées, Les Presses de L’Université Laval and Eska, Ste Foy and Paris

Chanlat, J.-F. (1994), “Francophone organizational analysis (1950-1990): an overview”, Organization Studies, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 47-80

Chanlat, J.-F. (1998), Sciences sociales et management Plaidoyer pour une anthropologie générale, Les Presses de L’Université Laval and Eska, Ste Foy and Paris

Chanlat, J.-F. (2007), “Organizational literature Francophone”, James, B. and Stewart, C. (Eds), International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies, Vol. III, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 1116-1123

Chanlat, J.-F., Davel, E. and Dupuis, J.-F. (Eds) (2013), Cross-Cultural Management, Culture and Management Across the World, Routletdge, London, 296pp

Firth, R. (1951), “Contemporary British social anthropology”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 53, pp. 474-489

Fournier, M. (1994), Marcel Mauss, Fayard, Paris

Godbout, J.T. (2000), Le don, la dette et l’identité, La Découverte, Paris

Godbout, J.T. and Caillé, A. (1992/2007), “en collaboration avec Caillé A”, L’esprit du don, La Découverte et Montréal, Boréal and Paris

James, W. (1998), “‘One of us’: Marcel Mauss and ‘English’ anthropology”, in James, W. and Allen, N.J. (Eds), Marcel Mauss: A Centenary Tribute, Berghahn Books, Oxford, pp. 3-28

Kaesler, D. (1988), Max Weber: An Introduction to His Life and His Works, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL

Leacock, S. (1954), “The ethnological theory of Marcel Mauss”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 56, pp. 58-71

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Van Marrewick, A. (2010), “European developments in business anthropology”, International Journal of Business Anthropology, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 26-44

Further reading

Chanlat, J.-F. (1994), “Towards an anthropology of organizations, chapitre 7”, in Hassard, J. and Parker, M. (Eds), Towards a New Theory of Organizations, Routledge, London, pp. 155-189

Chanlat, J.-F. (2006), “Space, organization and management: a socio-historical perspective”, in Clegg, S. and Kornberger, M. (Eds), Space, Organization and Management Theory, Chapter 2, Copenhagen Business School Press, Liber, pp. 17-45

Chanlat, J.-F. (2007), “Organizational anthropology”, James, B. and Stewart, C. (Eds), International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies, Vol. III, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 1012-1014

Chanlat, J.-F. (2009), “L’agir humain selon ‘la théorie de l’agence’: une critique anthropologique”, in Golsorkhi, D., Huault, I. and Leca, B. (Eds), Les études critiques en management une perspective française, Les Presses de L’université Laval, Ste Foy, pp. 329-360

James, W. and Allen, N.J. (Eds) (1998), Marcel Mauss: A Centenary Tribute, Berghahn Books, Oxford

La revue du Mauss (2010), “Marcel Mauss vivant”, No. 36, 2, La revue du Mauss, deuxième semestre, 380pp

Lowie, R.H. (1937), The History of Ethnological Theory, Farrar and Rinehart, New York, NY

Mauss, M. (1968/1969/1975), uvres complètes Three Volumes, Introduction, Victor Karady, Editions de Minuit, Paris

Riveline, C. (1983), “Pour une ethnographie des organisations”, Enseignement et gestion, Printemps, pp. 39-43

Corresponding author

Professor Jean-François Chanlat can be contacted at: mailto:jean-francois.chanlat@dauphine.fr