Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale

Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale
Name	Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale
Established	1969
Founder	Claude Lévi-Strauss
Discipline	Anthropology
City	Paris
Country	France
Affiliations	École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale is a Paris-based research laboratory founded in 1969 that has been central to structuralist and post-structuralist currents in social science. The laboratory has influenced comparative studies across Europe and the Americas through fieldwork, theoretical innovation, and institutional partnerships. Its work has intersected with major figures and institutions in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and history.

History

The laboratory emerged under the aegis of Claude Lévi-Strauss in the context of debates involving Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Fernand Braudel, and the intellectual networks of Collège de France, École Pratique des Hautes Études, and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Early collaborations connected the laboratory to projects associated with Cambridge University, Harvard University, University of Chicago, Columbia University, University of Oxford, and University of Paris. The 1970s and 1980s saw exchanges with scholars from São Paulo, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Lima, and Bogotá, alongside visits from Claude Lévi-Strauss protégés and critics such as Maurice Godelier, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Derrida. Institutional crises and reform debates engaged actors like André-Georges Haudricourt, Georges Canguilhem, Jean Rouch, Claude Lévi-Strauss's contemporaries in the Sorbonne, and funders including Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and European Research Council. Later periods incorporated influences from Marshall Sahlins, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, Edmund Leach, Marcel Griaule, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir through conferences and edited volumes.

Research and Theoretical Contributions

Research agendas at the laboratory synthesized themes from structural anthropology linked to Claude Lévi-Strauss, comparative kinship analysis associated with Lewis Henry Morgan and David M. Schneider, symbolic systems examined by Mary Douglas, and ritual studies developed by Victor Turner and Archaic Religions Research. The laboratory engaged in debates over language and semiotics inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, Noam Chomsky, Jacques Lacan, and Julia Kristeva, and intersected with historiographical approaches of Fernand Braudel and Natalie Zemon Davis. Comparative work drew on ethnographies by Bronisław Malinowski, Franz Boas, Bronisław Malinowski, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Clifford Geertz, and Edward Said in discussions of symbolism, exchange, and colonial histories. Theoretical output influenced studies in legal anthropology with links to research by E. P. Thompson, Max Gluckman, and Paul Bohannan, and informed analyses in urban anthropology relating to Lewis Mumford and Henri Lefebvre. Cross-disciplinary dialogues included connections to psychoanalysis through Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, and to philosophy via Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Gaston Bachelard.

Key Figures and Directors

Directors and senior researchers affiliated with the laboratory have included founders and successors in the lineage of Claude Lévi-Strauss, alongside influential anthropologists such as Maurice Godelier, Jean Rouch, Pierre Bourdieu, Marcel Mauss, Mary Douglas, Edmund Leach, Marshall Sahlins, Claude Meillassoux, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Visiting scholars and collaborators have included Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, Arjun Appadurai, Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Paul Rabinow, Tim Ingold, Donna Haraway, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, Seymour-Smith, Georges Bataille, and Henri Bergson. Administrative and curatorial ties linked the laboratory with directors and chairs from Collège de France, CNRS, and the EHESS network.

Organizational Structure and Affiliations

The laboratory operates within the institutional framework of École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and maintains formal associations with Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paris Nanterre, Musée de l'Homme, Collège de France, Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and international partners such as Smithsonian Institution, British Museum, Max Planck Society, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Consortium of Social Science Associations, and funding bodies like European Research Council and Agence Nationale de la Recherche. Governance combines research units, doctoral programs, and laboratory technicians, coordinated with editorial boards from journals linked to Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Éditions de l'EHESS.

Fieldwork and Major Projects

Fieldwork programs have spanned regions including the Amazon Rainforest, Andes Mountains, Sahel, Sahara Desert, Maghreb, West Bank, Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Polynesia, Melanesia, and urban sites such as Paris, Lagos, São Paulo, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Istanbul. Major projects addressed kinship and exchange in studies referencing Trobriand Islands ethnographies, comparative kinship drawing on Lewis Henry Morgan and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, ritual and religion investigations in dialogue with Victor Turner and Claude Lévi-Strauss, and colonial/postcolonial studies engaging Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Edward Said. Collaborative expeditions and long-term participant-observation involved partnerships with museums and archives like Musée du Quai Branly, Bibliothèque nationale de France, The British Library, and field training with organizations such as UNESCO and World Bank social assessments.

Publications and Journals

The laboratory's output includes monographs, edited volumes, and journal articles published in venues such as Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, American Anthropologist, Current Anthropology, Man (journal), L'Homme (journal), Anthropological Theory, Cahiers d'Études Africaines, Critique, Revue de l'EHESS, Social Anthropology, Ethnos, and book series from Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Éditions de l'EHESS, and Presses Universitaires de France. Edited collections have featured contributors like Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Clifford Geertz, Mary Douglas, Marshall Sahlins, James Clifford, Arjun Appadurai, Bruno Latour, and Paul Rabinow.

Category:Research institutes in France Category:Anthropological research