Marcel Mauss — <Emphasis Type="Italic">Durkheimien</Emphasis> oder eigenständiger Klassiker der französischen Soziologie?

Since the mid-1990s, the question of an independent contribution of Marcel Mauss to social theory has been intensly debated in France. This paper shows that Mauss can be seen as a classic of a symbolic, non-structuralist, interactionist and anti-utilitarian sociology if he is more clearly set apart from Durkheim and untangled from the influences of structuralism and structuralist utilitarianism. Mauss’ contribution to French sociology is similar to Mead’s and Simmel’s contributions to American and German sociology respectively: these classical thinkers represent a third paradigm which goes beyond the dichotomy of instrumental rationality and normative action. According to Mauss, particularly the logic of the gift establishes an independent interaction order and the act of giving has to be recognised as an intrinsic symbolic as well as a social fact. Following Mauss, the gift represents and embodies symbolic interaction.     

Social funds and decentralisation: optimal institutional design

Most of the 60+ developing countries that have established social funds (SFs) are decentralising their governments as well. But the question of how to tailor SFs—originally a highly centralised model—for a decentralising context has received relatively little attention in the literature. We first examine evidence on the ability of SFs to adapt to a decentralised context. We then lay out the implications of decentralisation for SF institutional design step‐by‐step through the project cycle. The topic is doubly important because social funds can increase their effectiveness, and the sustainability of their investments, by reorganising internal processes to take advantage of the political and civic institutions that decentralisation creates. Local government has an informational advantage in local needs and characteristics (time and place), whereas SFs have access to better technology and knowledge of sectoral best practice. The key is to create institutional incentives that best combine these relative advantages. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.