Schick Johannes F.M., Schmidt Mario, Zillinger Martin (eds.) The Social Origins of Thought: Durkheim, Mauss, and the Category Project

Berghahn Books, 2022. — 332 p.By studying how different societies understand categories such as time and causality, the Durkheimians decentered Western epistemology. With contributions from philosophy, sociology, anthropology, media studies, and sinology, this volume illustrates the interdisciplinarity and intellectual rigor of the “category project” which did not only stir controversies among contemporary scholars but paved the way for other theories exploring how the thoughts of individuals are prefigured by society and vice versa.Johannes F.M. Schick is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities (University of Cologne). He was the head of the DFG-research Project “Action, Operation, Gesture: Technology as Interdisciplinary Anthropology”.Mario Schmidt is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School of the Humanities at the University of Cologne. He has published in distinguished academic journals such as Africa, Journal of Eastern African Studies, Ethnohistory, and Journal of Cultural Economy.Martin Zillinger is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. His major field research has been in Morocco on trance, ritual, and new media.