Maurice Émile Félix Bloch (born 21 October 1939) is a British

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

. 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 Emile or Émile may refer to: * Émile (novel) (1827), autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life * Emile, Canadian film made in 2003 by Carl Bessai * '' Emile: or, On Education'' (1762) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a treatise o ...

and a much younger first cousin of anthropologist

Marcel Mauss Marcel Israël 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 sociolo ...

. Maurice attended the Lycée Carnot in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. 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, 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 The Perse School is a Private schools in the United Kingdom, private school (English Private schools in the United Kingdom, fee-charging Day school, day and, in the case of the Perse, a former boarding school) in Cambridge, England. Founded i ...

in Cambridge. He studied as an undergraduate at the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...

(LSE), attending lectures at the

School of Oriental and African Studies The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) 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 area ...

. He continued his training in anthropology at

Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge Fitzwilliam College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college has origins from 1869, with 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 (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

. He was until 2009 visiting professor at the Free University of Amsterdam. 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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, at the

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

in Baltimore, and at the

New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University, is a graduate-level educational division of The New School in New York City, United States. NSSR enrolls more than 1,000 stud ...

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 or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

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 (post-nominal letters 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 t ...

Research

Bloch's field research has been mainly carried out in two different areas of

Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...

. One field site has been among the peasants of central Imerina; and the other in a remote forest inhabited by a group of people called Zafimaniry. His writing deals with religion, kinship, economics, politics and language. His research has been much influenced by French

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

ideas. He has been an innovator in relating social anthropology to

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human 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, whi ...

. 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.

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 British people of French-Jewish descent 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