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| Alain Testart | |
|---|---|
| Name | Alain Testart |
| Birth date | 4 March 1945 |
| Birth place | Thonon-les-Bains, Haute-Savoie, France |
| Death date | 3 May 2019 |
| Death place | Paris, France |
| Occupation | Anthropologist, historian |
| Notable works | The Hunter and the Farmer; Reason and Morality |
| Alma mater | École Pratique des Hautes Études; École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales |
Alain Testart was a French anthropologist and historian of ideas known for comparative studies of social inequality, kinship systems, and the origins of domestication. His work crossed the boundaries of anthropology, history, and archaeology, engaging debates initiated by figures such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Émile Durkheim, and Lewis Henry Morgan. Testart's methodological rigor and critical readings of ethnographic and archaeological corpora influenced scholars across France, United Kingdom, United States, and Germany.
Testart was born in Thonon-les-Bains, Haute-Savoie, in post-war France. He trained at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he studied under mentors who traced intellectual lineages to Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Hélène Cixous, and historians working with archives in Paris. During his formative years he engaged sources from comparative studies that included materials related to Lewis Henry Morgan, Bronisław Malinowski, Franz Boas, Alfred Kroeber, and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown.
Testart held research and teaching posts at French institutions including the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and the Musée de l'Homme. He collaborated with scholars affiliated to the Collège de France, the École Normale Supérieure, and the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. His career involved exchange and debate with international centers such as Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, the University of Chicago, and the Australian National University.
Testart developed comparative frameworks addressing the emergence of social inequality, the origins of agriculture and animal domestication, kinship classification, and the institutionalization of reciprocity. He put forward critiques of evolutionary models associated with Lewis Henry Morgan, challenged functionalist interpretations linked to Bronisław Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, and revisited debt and gift theories in conversation with Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu. Testart proposed distinctions between appropriation and sharing that intersected with archaeological debates involving researchers from Cambridge University and Oxford University and with ethnohistorical work on Indigenous American societies studied by scholars such as Alfred Kroeber and Claude Lévi-Strauss. His analyses invoked comparative data from fieldwork in regions documented by scholars associated with W.E.B. Du Bois-informed traditions, Bronisław Malinowski's Melanesian studies, and archaeologists working on the Neolithic Revolution such as Gordon Childe.
Testart authored monographs and articles that entered debates alongside works by Marcel Mauss, Émile Durkheim, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Lewis Henry Morgan. Key works include books that interrogated the hunter–farmer distinction discussed in contexts with V. Gordon Childe and comparative histories of property echoing themes in John Locke and critiques of interpretations used by historians drawing on Max Weber. His publications were translated and reviewed in journals and venues connected to Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and academic reviews associated with Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales and Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.
Testart's work provoked responses from scholars in anthropology, archaeology, history, and philosophy, generating dialogue with proponents of structuralism such as Claude Lévi-Strauss and critics influenced by Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. Debates around his positions on domestication and social stratification engaged researchers at institutions including the Max Planck Institute, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Harvard University, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. His contributions influenced later comparative studies by scholars working in contexts linked to the Neolithic Revolution, Indigenous studies connected to researchers focusing on North America and Oceania, and historiographical projects in France and internationally.
Testart lived in Paris where he maintained ties with intellectual circles around the Musée de l'Homme and research networks connected to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the Collège de France. He died in Paris on 3 May 2019; commemorations took place among colleagues from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and international partners from Harvard University and University of Cambridge.
Category:French anthropologists Category:1945 births Category:2019 deaths