The Nation As Greek Gift? Marcel Mauss on the Ambiguities of the Nation Form

In 2013, Marcel Fournier and Jean Terrier published posthumously a book by Marcel Mauss, entitled The Nation. An article bearing the same name, collected in Mauss’s Œuvres at Editions de Minuit, had long been known to scholars. That article, in fact, is only the first part of a much longer book covering three topics: 1) a historical sociology of the national phenomenon, 2) a presentation of what a sociology of international relations may look like, 3) a reflection on the relationship between socialism and nationhood. Mauss started working on this book project during the war. To it, he devoted most of his research time in the subsequent years, until approximately 1924. The book was never brought to completion, but its huge manuscript can still be consulted in Mauss’s archive.

It is this manuscript that Fournier and Terrier, after many years of archival work, have entirely transcribed and made public. This book sheds a new light on Marcel Mauss. It gives us a much better sense of his political thinking. It provides a new background against which to re-read and re-interpret his celebrated Essay on the Gift. Depending on the reception this book will enjoy, Mauss may soon be seen as one of the most articulate exponents of a “civic” concept of nationhood and as the spiritual father of the sociology of international relations. In this paper, I will present and explain Mauss’s position on the nation and provide an assessment of the historical significance of this work.