Maurice Émile Félix Bloch (born 21 October 1939 in
Caen
Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,[Calvados
Calvados (, , ) is a brandy from Normandy in France, made from apples or pears, or from apples with pears.
History In France
Apple orchards and brewers are mentioned as far back as the 8th century by Charlemagne. The first known record of Norm ...]
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
)
is a British
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
. He is famous for his fieldwork on the shift of agriculturalists in Madagascar, Japan and other parts of the world, and has also contributed important neo-Marxian work on power, history, kinship, and ritual.
Early life and education
Maurice Bloch was born in Caen, Calvados, to Jewish parents Claudette (née Raphael), a marine biologist, and Pierre Bloch, an engineer. His grandmother was a niece of sociologist
Emile Durkheim
Emil or Emile may refer to:
Literature
*'' Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life
*'' Emil and the Detecti ...
and a much younger first cousin of anthropologist
Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss (; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950) was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociology and a ...
. Maurice attended the
Lycée Carnot
The Lycée Carnot is a Public school (government funded), public secondary school, secondary and higher education school at 145 Boulevard Malesherbes in the XVIIe arrondissement, 17th arrondissement, Paris, France. The Lycée Carnot was founded in ...
in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. His father was killed by the Nazis while in the French Army. When Maurice was eleven, his widowed mother married British biologist
John S. Kennedy
John Stewart Kennedy (January 4, 1830 – October 30, 1909) was a Scottish-born American businessman, financier and philanthropist. He was a member of the Jekyll Island Club (also known as The Millionaires' Club) on Jekyll Island, Georgia a ...
, whom she had met at a conference. She and her son moved to England to join Kennedy, and Bloch became a British citizen, attending
The Perse School
(He who does things for others does them for himself)
, established =
, closed =
, type = Public schoolIndependent day school
, religion = Nondenominational Christian
, president =
, head_label = Head
, he ...
in Cambridge.
He studied as an undergraduate at the
London School of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £240.8 million (2021)
, budget = £391.1 millio ...
(LSE), attending lectures at the
School of Oriental and African Studies
SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury ar ...
. He continued his training in anthropology at
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Fitzwilliam College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
The college traces its origins back to 1869 and the foundation of the Non-Collegiate Students Board, a venture intended to offer academically excellent students of all ...
, where he obtained his doctorate in 1968.
Career
His subsequent career has been almost entirely at the LSE, where he was appointed a full professor in 1983.
In 2005 Bloch was appointed European Professor at the
Collège de France
The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment (''grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ne ...
. He was until 2009 visiting Professor at the
Free University of Amsterdam
The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...
. He has taught and has been an occasional visiting professor in most European countries, as well as Japan. In the US, he was a visiting professor at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, at the
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
in Baltimore, and at the
New School for Social Research
The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSSR ...
in New York City. At present, he is Emeritus Professor at the LSE and an associate member of the
Institut Jean Nicod of the
École Normale Supérieure
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
in Paris.
He has supervised many younger anthropologists, several of whom hold prestigious posts in the UK, US, Australia, Japan, France, Canada, the Netherlands, China, Argentina, Madagascar and Malaysia. His writings have been translated into at least twelve languages.
In 1990, Bloch was elected a
Fellow of the British Academy
Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are:
# Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom
# C ...
.
Research
Bloch's field research has been mainly carried out in two different areas of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
. One field site has been among the peasants of central
Imerina
The Merina Kingdom, or Kingdom of Madagascar, officially the Kingdom of Imerina (–1897), was a pre-colonial state off the coast of Southeast Africa that, by the 19th century, dominated most of what is now Madagascar. It spread outward from I ...
; and the other in a remote forest inhabited by a group of people called
Zafimaniry
The Zafimaniry are a sub-group of the Betsileo people, Betsileo ethnic groups of Madagascar, ethnic group of Madagascar. They live in the forested mountains of the southern central highlands southeast of Ambositra, between the neighboring Betsile ...
. His writing deals with religion, kinship, economics, politics and language. His research has been much influenced by French
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
ideas.
He has been an innovator in relating social anthropology to
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
and
cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
. Much of his theoretical work since the 1970s has concerned the interface between cognition and social and cultural life. What he has written on this subject faces two ways: on the one hand, he criticises anthropologists for exaggerating the particularity of specific cultures; on the other hand, he criticises cognitive scientists for underestimating it.
He has published more than a hundred articles and many books,
half of which concern Madagascar in some way.
See also
*
Cognitive anthropology
Cognitive anthropology is an approach within cultural anthropology and biological anthropology in which scholars seek to explain patterns of shared knowledge, cultural innovation, and transmission over time and space using the methods and theorie ...
Publications
His books include:
* 1971 ''Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organization in Madagascar'', London: Seminar Press (Extracts translated into Malagasy).
* 1975 ''Political Language, Oratory and Traditional Society'', (ed.) London: Academic Press.
* 1975 ''Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology'' (ed.), A.S.A. Studies. London: Malaby Press.
* 1982 ''Death and the Regeneration of Life'' (ed. with J. Parry), Cambridge: CUP.
* 1983 ''Marxism and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship'', Oxford: Clarendon.
* 1986 ''From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual of the Merina of Madagascar'', Cambridge: CUP.
* 1989 ''Money and the Morality of Exchange'' (ed. with J. Parry) Cambridge: CUP.
* 1992 ''Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience'', Cambridge: CUP
* 1998 ''How We Think They Think: Anthropological Studies in Cognition, Memory and Literacy''. Boulder: Westview Press.
* 2005 ''Essays in the Transmission of Culture''. Berg: London.
* 2012 ''Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge''. Cambridge: CUP.
* 2013 ''In and Out of Each Other's Bodies: Theories of Mind, Evolution, Truth, and the Nature of the Social.'' Boulder: Paradigm.
Interviews
"Interview of Maurice Bloch" Maurice Bloch interviewed by Alan Macfarlane on 29 May 2008
Eurozine interview of Maurice Bloch by Maarja Kaaristo on 29 July 2007
References
External links
Maurice Bloch’s webpage at the LSE* Some of Maurice Bloch's publications are available via LSE Research Online:
:http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloch, Maurice
1939 births
Scientists from Caen
Alumni of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Alumni of the London School of Economics
British anthropologists
Jewish anthropologists
French emigrants to the United Kingdom
French people of Jewish descent
Living people
Lycée Carnot alumni
People educated at The Perse School
Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society
Honorary Fellows of the London School of Economics