Marcel Granet
Encyclopedia
Marcel Granet was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 sociologist, ethnologist and sinologist. As a follower of Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...

 and Édouard Chavannes
Édouard Chavannes
Édouard Chavannes was a French sinologist.He is best known for his translations from Sima Qian's Shiji , sections of the Hou Hanshu relating to the 'Western Regions', the Weilüe, his studies of Han dynasty stone carvings Édouard Chavannes (Chinese: ) (1865–1918) was a French sinologist.He is best...

, Granet was one of the first to bring sociological methods to the study of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. Granet was revered in his own time as a sociological sinologist, or sinological sociologist, and member of the Durkheimian school of sociology.

Biography

Granet was born in Luc-en-Diois
Luc-en-Diois
Luc-en-Diois is a commune in the Drôme department in southeastern France. It is situated on the Drôme River.-History:...

 (Drôme), France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. His father was an engineer, and his grandfather, a landowner. He attendend lycée at Aix-en-Provence and then at the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand
Lycée Louis-le-Grand
The Lycée Louis-le-Grand is a public secondary school located in Paris, widely regarded as one of the most rigorous in France. Formerly known as the Collège de Clermont, it was named in king Louis XIV of France's honor after he visited the school and offered his patronage.It offers both a...

 in Paris, the latter which traditionally attracted bright students striving to gain entrance to the École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...

 in Paris.

Granet passed the baccalauréat examination and entered the École Normale in 1904, just as the tumultuous Dreyfus Affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...

 was coming to a close and the French educational system, in the context of French political life, was changing. The École Normale was reunited with the University of Paris at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

 in 1903, and the former’s students, called normaliens, took classes at the Sorbonne with University students. Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...

, the sociologist and founder of the Année Sociologique in 1898, would greatly influence the life and work of Granet, and began teaching a course on pedagogy at the Sorbonne, which was compulsory for all students from 1904 until 1913. Therefore, Granet first became introduced to Durkheim and his theories during his first year at the École.

At the École Normale, Granet embraced philosophy, law, and history, along with sociology, though his work in any field would adopt a Durkheimian character. He became part of an elite group of students which included future ancient Greek historian and founder of the Annales school
Annales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...

of history Marc Bloch
Marc Bloch
Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch was a French historian who cofounded the highly influential Annales School of French social history. Bloch was a quintessential modernist. An assimilated Alsatian Jew from an academic family in Paris, he was deeply affected in his youth by the Dreyfus Affair...

, the geographer Philippe Arbos, sociologist Georges Davy, Hellenist and future librarian of the École Normale Paul Étard, mathematician Paul Lévy, and more. In 1905, Granet joined a socialist study group whose membership included Durkheimian sociologist, anthropologist, major contributor to the Année and nephew of Durkheim himself, Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...

, along with future ancient Greek specialist and editor of the Année Louis Gernet
Louis Gernet
Louis Gernet, 1882–1962, was a French philologist and sociologist.- Life :A student at the École Normale Supérieure , he received a licentiate in law and agrégation in grammar...

, and future Durkheimian sociologist, philosopher and contributor to the Année, Maurice Halbwachs
Maurice Halbwachs
Maurice Halbwachs was a French philosopher and sociologist known for developing the concept of collective memory.Born in Reims, Halbwachs attended the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. There he studied philosophy with Henri Bergson, who influenced him greatly. He aggregated in Philosophy in 1901...

.

After earning his agrégation in history in 1907, Granet was appointed to teach history at a lycée at Bastia, on the island of Corsica. In 1908, he received a grant through the Fondation Thiers to pursue research on feudalism. He apparently spoke to Lucien Herr
Lucien Herr
Lucien Herr was a French intellectual, librarian at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and mentor to a number of well-known socialist politicians and writers, including Jean Jaurès and Charles Péguy...

—the librarian of the École Normale from 1888 to 1926 who was associated with Durkheim and his students, and who was active in the socialist movement and the Dreyfus Affair—who advised Granet, when the latter thought of considering the Japanese case, to seek the advice of respected sinologist Edouard Chavannes
Édouard Chavannes
Édouard Chavannes was a French sinologist.He is best known for his translations from Sima Qian's Shiji , sections of the Hou Hanshu relating to the 'Western Regions', the Weilüe, his studies of Han dynasty stone carvings Édouard Chavannes (Chinese: ) (1865–1918) was a French sinologist.He is best...

, then apparently the nearest Granet could get in Paris to an expert on Japan. Chavannes in turn counseled Granet to begin with Chinese as the necessary first step towards Japanese studies, warning him that he would get entangled in Chinese, never to reach Japanese.

Granet spent three years at Thiers, working alongside fellow pensioners Bloch and Gernet, both former normaliens. Granet’s own work on feudalism, often framed in Durkheimian sociological theory, apparently influenced and oriented the work of Bloch and Gernet, in particular Bloch’s interest in rites and myths.

In 1911, Granet published his first work, a socialist pamphlet titled “Contre l’alcoolisme, un programme socialiste,” and that same year, left the Fondation Thiers upon receiving a grant from the French government to study classical Chinese texts in China. Interest in the country was high at the time. In Beijing (then spelled "Peking"), he met the Frenchman André d’Hormon who possessed great knowledge of Chinese and Chinese scholars. In 1912 Granet sent Chavannes a paper, “Coutumes matrimoniales de la Chine antique” upon the latter’s request, which Chavannes submitted for publication in the T’oung Pao
T'oung Pao
T’oung Pao , founded in 1890, is the first international journal of sinology.It was originally named T’oung Pao ou Archives pour servir à l’étude de l’histoire, des langues, la geographie et l’ethnographie de l’Asie Orientale . It is published by the Leiden publisher E. J...

, a major sinological journal. In March of that year, Granet was caught in the middle of the Chinese revolution, as the Republic of China was replacing the Ch’ing (Qing) Dynasty. Granet wrote to friends at home, “we pack up: the twenty-four historians, in their frail cases, decorated with green characters, make a shaky structure. The Année Sociologique is in my hand bag. I stuff my suitcases.” (Freedman)

Upon returning from China in 1913, Granet earned a teaching position in the history department at the Lycée de Marseille in March, and in October, at the Lycée de Montpellier. In December, he replaced Chavannes as Directeur d’Études pour les religions d’Extrême-Orient at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, after Chavannes resigned his post.

Like most men of his era, and of his promotion, Granet served in World War I from 1914–1918, earning the Croix de Guerre. He stayed briefly in Beijing in 1918 while on a mission there. Throughout the war he continued his studies of China and worked on two doctoral theses.

In 1919, Granet returned to France and in June, married Marie Terrien, after which he resumed his academic life. In January 1920, he was examined for his doctorate, the jury for which included the British anthropologist Sir James Frazer. In 1922, upon a request from Maurice Solovine to write a short book for the series “science et civilization,” Granet composed La religion des Chinois (The Religion of the Chinese People) in six weeks while traveling back and forth between Paris and Tonnerre (Yonne), where his wife taught at a lycée while caring for their infant son. In December 1922, Granet replaced Mauss, when the latter scalded his foot, as a member of the committee for Georges Davy’s thesis “The Swearing of Faith,” and subsequently published harsh criticism of it in the Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologie.

Acknowledging the decline of the Année following Durkheim’s death in 1917, several Durkheimians met in March 1923 in Paris to design a plan to resuscitate the journal. Also in attendance at the meeting were Henri Hubert
Henri Hubert
Henri Hubert was an archaeologist and sociologist of comparative religion who is best known for his work on the Celts and his collaboration with Marcel Mauss and other members of the Annee Sociologique....

, Henri and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
Lucien Lévy-Brühl was a French scholar trained in philosophy, who made contributions to the budding fields of sociology and ethnology. His primary field of study involved primitive mentality....

, and Mauss. Granet was to work on the sections of religious sociology and legal sociology. In 1925, he was named professor of geography, history, and institutions of the Far East at the École Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and in 1926, helped to establish the Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises. From then on, he acted there as administrator and professor of Chinese and Chinese civilization.

Two years after his friend and colleague Mauss became president of the fifth section of religious science at l’École Pratique, Britain declared war on Germany, and in 1940, Granet replaced his friend upon the latter’s resignation. Mauss, of Jewish heritage, sought to “safeguard the interests” of the school. (Fournier)

One month later, after the defeat of the French Republic, Granet died at Sceaux, outside Paris, at the age of 56. Mauss had considered Granet “one of [his] best and most beloved friends.” (Fournier)

As a teacher, Granet, “a bristling and cantankerous disputant, a rich mind powerfully stimulating those of others” (Gille) apparently instructed his students to “read slowly and always slowly.” According to one student, Polish sinologist Witold Jablonski, Granet did “not care for popularity”: “he is a scholar, he is a thinker, sometimes, perhaps, a wizard.” (Jablonski) The sinologist shared his commitment to learning the language of the texts he studied, and analyzing all materials, whether primary or secondary, critically. He divided his teaching into the mythique and the juridique (the latter primarily consisting of rights and duties of kinship and marriage), though he did not necessarily succeed in eliciting in his students the same enthusiasm he possessed for both areas simultaneously. Among his students were also Korean-Japanese Itsuo Tsuda
Itsuo Tsuda
was a Japanese philosopher and a practitioner and teacher of Aikido and Seitai.Tsuda was born in Japanese-ruled Korea. When he was 16 years old, he defied his father, who wished for his eldest son to remain home and manage his family's estate...

, who developed the école de la respiration and several future sinologists. Granet’s work, meanwhile, brought Durkheimian sociology into the classical Chinese realm, from his analysis of the Book of Odes
Shi Jing
The Classic of Poetry , translated variously as the Book of Songs, the Book of Odes, and often known simply as its original name The Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems and songs. It comprises 305 poems and songs, with many range from the 10th to the 7th centuries BC...

, to a sociological breakdown of Chinese numerology. Although he is remembered as a significant figure of both Durkheimian sociology and French sinology, his two roles are rarely recognized or thoroughly understood in tandem.

Essays

  • “Contre l’alcoolisme, un programme socialiste,” 1911
  • “Coutumes matrimoniales de la Chine antique”, 1912
  • “La polygynie sororale et le sororat dans la Chine féodale”, 1920
  • “Quelques particularités de la langue et de la pensée chinoises”, 1920
  • “La vie et la mort. Croyances et doctrines de l’antiquité chinoise”
  • “Le dépôt de l’enfant sur le sol, Rites anciens et ordalies mythiques”, 1922
  • “Le langage de la douleur, d’après le rituel funéraire de la Chine classique”, 1922
  • “Remarques sur le Taoïsme ancien”, 1925
  • “L’esprit de la religion chinoise”, 1929
  • “La droite et la gauche en Chine”, 1933
  • “Catégories matrimoniales et relations de proximité dans la chine ancienne”, 1939
  • “Etudes sociologiques sur la Chine”, 1953

Major Works

  • Fêtes et chansons anciennes de la Chine, 1919 ("To the memory of Emile Durkheim and Edouard Chavannes.")
  • La religion des Chinois, 1922
  • Danses et légendes de la Chine ancienne, 1926 (dedicated to Marcel Mauss
    Marcel Mauss
    Marcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...

    )
  • La civilisation chinoise, 1929
  • La pensée chinoise, 1934
  • La féodalité chinoise, 1952
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