Augé, Marc (1935 - )

French anthropologist Marc Augé (1935–) conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Côte d’Ivoire and Togo from 1965 onwards, working within the Office de la recherche scientifique et technique d’Outre-Mer (ORSTOM). His research interests cover themes as diverse as power and ideology, repression, witchcraft, prophecies, illness, the person and the body, ritual, identity and otherness. In 1970, he was elected director of studies at the Ecole de hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), of which he was president between 1985 and 1995. He obtained his PhD under the supervision of Georges Balandier. He diversified his fields of study both in Latin America and France, where he practised anthropology “at home” and took an interest in places and objects of French pop culture. A staunch advocate of an anthropology of the contemporary world, he coined influential notions such as non-places and supermodernity. He is the author of a vast anthropological and literary work, including Le rivage alladian (1969), Théorie des pouvoirs et idéologie (1975), Symbole, fonction, histoire (1979), Génie du paganisme (1982), Le sens du mal. Anthropologie, histoire, sociologie de la maladie (with Cl. Herzlich, 1983), Un ethnologue dans le métro (1986), and Non-lieux, introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité (1992).