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of the Histories of Anthropology

Florence Weber (1958–) is a French sociologist and anthropologist. In the mid-1980s, she conducted her doctoral research in a small, single-industry town in Burgundy and became interested in working-class culture in rural areas, working-class leisure activities, the domestic economy and the gendered division of domestic tasks (Le travail à-côté. Étude d’ethnographie ouvrière, 1989, republished 2009). After starting her career as a sociologist at the Institut national de recherche agronomique (INRA), she became a lecturer at the École normale supérieure, where she headed the social sciences department. Her most recent work focuses on economic anthropology, the anthropology of the family, and the place of dependent aged people with mental disabilities within the family unit. She has given considerable thought to the conditions and methodology of ethnographic observation (Guide de l’enquête de terrain, with S. Beaud, 1997). She directs the ‘Série Mauss’ collection for Presses universitaires de France, which republishes articles and essays by Marcel Mauss and his close sociologist friends. She is the author of Brève histoire de l’anthropologie (2015).

Keywords: Anthropology of France | Sociology | Reflexive Ethnography | Ethnography | Last quarter of the 20th century | 21st century | France | Methodology | Family and kinship | Economic anthropology | Gender | Working-Class Leisure | Working-Class culture | Aging studies | Pierre Bourdieu | Jean-Claude Chamboredon | Marcel Mauss

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