Alain Caillé

Alain Caillé ( born 1944 in Paris ) is a French sociologist. Caillé is Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris- Nanterre. He searches for Reziprozitätssoziologie and in particular to the work of Marcel Mauss. Alluding to his name Caillé founded in 1981 MAUSS Movement ( Mouvement Anti- Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales ), which criticizes utilitarianism in the social sciences.

Alain Caillé tries to give more weight in today's sociological discourse again with his anthropology of the gift of the French sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss. Mauss's thinking, so Caillé could provide a "third paradigm " of social science available in order to overcome the one-sidedness of the other two major paradigms, methodological individualism and holism. Basis of this new paradigm is the essay The Gift, in which Mauss, setting out the example of the gift exchange archaic peoples, the triple obligation of giving, accepting and Erwiderns. The genesis of sociality and society is only understandable for Caillé about the gift.

Writings (selection )

• Critique de la raison utilitaire, 1989
• Don interet, et disinterestedness, 1994
• Anthropology you don, 2000 ( in German translation: anthropology of the gift, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2008)
• Dé - penser l' économique - Contre le fatalisme, 2005
• Théorie de l'action anti- utilitariste: Fragments d'une sociologie générale, 2009.