Research Paper on:
Clifford Geertz and Marcel Mauss Compared

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and Clifford Geertz were contemporaries agreeing on many points regarding the study of cultures. Mauss focuses on the usage and forms of movement of the body as being culturally  determined; Geertz holds that the understanding of such movements and customs is integral to the understanding of any culture. Techniques of the  Body The reading is a translation of a 1930s speech, given in France at the height of the Great Depression in the US  that affected the rest of the world. Mauss (1973) provides war stories from World War I; the second world war was yet to come. The speech and the  conclusions preceding it are from another era - one in which travel is slow and international communication is difficult at best. Mauss (1973) did not have the benefit of  access to information on the scale that is possible today. The world moved at a slower pace. Perhaps it was this difference  in the speed of the course of time that allowed Mauss (1973) the time necessary to reach his conclusions. He states that it was when he was ill in  a New York City hospital - and therefore had the time - that he first noticed the gait of the young women employed at the hospital. This was a  different style of movement than that exhibited by young French women, yet they too adopted a similar gait as French exposure to American cinema increased.  Mauss (1973) point is that movements and uses of the body are learned, and that furthermore, the lessons have a cultural base. He reveals that in contemplating