ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a discussion of Marcel Mauss and continues with one of his intellectual heirs, Marshall Sahlins, recognizing both as worthy descendants of that "wicked company" who populated the European Enlightenment. It highlights some major works, some contributions to method, and action research or what some in critical theory might call positive critique. The Maussian model shows that people, objects, and social relations form a cogenerative whole, a significant accomplishment that is still not widely digested. The basic idea Mauss explored in The Gift is that things have motivational force. And this idea is very much alive today in posthumanist scholarship for example. The Gift constitutes an intentional critique of utilitarian philosophy. Evolutionary psychology and neuromarketing and neuro-consumer research would seem to have it that humans are a product of their bodies, but Mauss took pains to demonstrate that it is the other way around.
