Marcel Granet

Marcel Granet (February 29, 1884 – November 25, 1940) was a French sociologist, ethnologist and sinologist. As a follower of Émile Durkheim and Édouard Chavannes, Granet was one of the first to bring sociological methods to the study of China. 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 (Drôme), 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 in Paris, the latter which traditionally attracted bright students striving to gain entrance to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Granet passed the baccalauréat examination and entered the École Normale in 1904, just as the tumultuous Dreyfus Affair 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 in 1903, and the former’s students, called normaliens, took classes at the Sorbonne with University students. Émile Durkheim, 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 of history Marc Bloch, 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, along with future ancient Greek specialist and editor of the Année Louis Gernet, and future Durkheimian sociologist, philosopher and contributor to the Année, Maurice Halbwachs.

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—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, 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, 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 and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, 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, 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, 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.

Bibliography

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

References

• Marc Bloch, preface by Jacques le Goff, Les rois thaumaturges: etude sur le caractère surnaturel attribute a la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en angleterre, 1924.
• Carole Fink, Marc Bloch: A Life in History, 1989.
• Michel Fournier, Marcel Mauss: a Biography, 2005.
• Maurice Freedman, ed., translator and author of the preface to Marcel Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People, 1977.
• D.R. Gille, The Spectator, March 15, 1946. Vol 176.
• Witold Jablonski, “Marcel Granet: His Work,” Yenching Journal of Social Studies, Jan., 1939.
• Yang K’un, “Marcel Granet: An Appreciation,” Yenching Journal of Social Studies, Jan. 1939.
• Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work. A Historical and Critical Study, 1973.
• “Itsuo Tsuda: une philosophie à vivre”, Generation Tao no. 27, hiver 2002/03.
• Marion J. Lévy, Jr. “Granet, Marcel,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968.

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Name	Granet, Marcel
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Date of birth	February 29, 1884
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Date of death	November 25, 1940
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