ABSTRACT
Marcel Mauss' philosophical training was nevertheless open to psychology and sociology and, other than Durkheim, the professors who had a profound intellectual influence on him were Alfred Espinas and Octave Henri Hubert and Mauss were in fact animated by a desire to understand the institutions and wanted to demonstrate that sacrifice and magic were social phenomena. In July 1906, the Ministry of Public Education accorded Mauss a free mission in Russia for the purpose of engaging in ethnographic research there. Mauss became increasingly interested in ethnography, defined as the "description of so-called primitive peoples", a discipline which had experienced a "true eclipse" in France and the present development of which was stagnant and therefore very worrisome, unlike in English-speaking countries. In February 1938, Mauss was elected president of the section of religious sciences at the Ecole pratique, a responsibility he accepted without enthusiasm.
