Augé, Marc

French anthropologist Marc Augé belongs to the generation of scholars who were trained in the 1960s in Paris—that is, the generation for whom the likes of Louis Althusser, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault can be counted as teachers and crucial influences or antagonists, as the case may be. A prolific, witty, and complex author, Augé considers himself to be an anthropologist; but his lifelong project has been one of reinventing what it means to anthropology in the rapidly changing times we refer to as “postmodernity.” While his work has only recently come to the attention of mainstream AngloAmerican social theory, where it is generally read as part of a tradition of writing on the city and everyday life that includes the writings ...