Bio: (1935-2023) French anthropologist. Marc Augé studied at École pratique des hautes études, and after that went on field research in Ivory Coast from 1965-1967.  Based on his research on the ethnic group of Alladian, he wrote his doctoral thesis in 1969 named The Alladian Shore: Organization and Evolution of Alladian Villages. From 1970 to 2000, he lectured at École des hautes études en sciences sociales, where he was the president of the school from 1987 to 2000. He also conducted field research in South America. 

Augé’s career can be split into three parts, with respect to his geographical focus and theoretical views: the early part focused on the anthropology of Africa, the second part focused on Europe and postmodern anthropology, and the third part focused on global issues. The first part of his career starts with his previously mentioned fieldwork in the Ivory Coast and the book The Alladian Shore (in French 1969). In that book, he takes into account colonial history when studying the relationship between spirituality and kinship in Alladian society. His second book, Theory of Centres of Power and Ideology: A Case Study in Ivory Coast (in French 1975), is also a product of additional field study in the Ivory Coast that was done between 1968 and 1971. This book is more focused on the issues of religion, symbolism, power, and ideology. In it, Augé introduced the new concept he named “ideo-logic” which relates to the inner logic of society's representation of itself. Augé’s third book based on ethnographic work in Africa was Powers of Life, Power of Death: Introduction to an Anthropology of Repression (in French 1977), and in it he states that political power is not based in a single political institution, but is various institutional, intellectual, moral and metaphysical forms. Power is an all-encompassing logic found in the virtual coherence of representations of the ideo-logical. 

Beginning in the 1980s, Augé started focusing on the anthropology of modern societies and the product of that work are books La traversée du Luxembourg (1985);  In the Metro (2002, in French 1986), and Domaines et châteaux (1989). He found that the increase and expansion of communications technologies lead to the paradoxical elevation of solitude in modern societies.

The first and most important book of the third part of Augé’s career is Non-Places (1995). The concept of the “non-place” is a crucial part of his anthropology of supermodernity, and it refers to generic public spaces like airports, bus terminals, hotels, supermarkets, shopping malls, theme parks, etc. Augé’ states that: ,, If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or  concerned with identity will be a non-place. The hypothesis advanced here is that supermodernity produces non-places, meaning spaces which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate the earlier places: instead these are listed, classified, promoted to the status of 'places of memory', and assigned to a circumscribed and specific position” (Augé 1995, in French 1992: 77-78). Non-places are transient and do not possess symbolic significance, while people in them are anonymous and devoid of their personal identities.

Augé created an anthropological theory of the global society that starts from the conviction that the local can be understood in the context of it being just a part of the complicated and interconnected global whole. He was also instrumental in establishing medical anthropology as an independent sub-field of anthropology. 

Main works

Le rivage Alladian: Organisation et évolution des villages Alladian (1969); 

Théorie des pouvoirs et idéologie: Études de cas en Côte d’Ivoire (1975);

Pouvoirs de vie, pouvoirs de mor. (1977);

Génie du Paganisme (1982); 

La traversée du Luxembourg (1985); 

Un ethnologue dan se métro (1986); 

Domaines et châteaux (1989);

Non-Lieux, Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité (1992); 

Pour une anthropologie des mondes contemporains (1994a); 

Le Sens des Autres. Actualité de l'anthropologie (1994b); 

La Guerre des rêves. Exercices d'ethno-fiction (1997);

Fictions fin de siècle (2000);

Les Formes de l’oubli (2001);

Journal de guerre (2003);

Le Temps en ruines (2003);

Pour quoi vivons-nous ? (2003);

L'Anthropologie (2004);

Le Métier d'anthropologue. Sens et liberté (2006);

Casablanca (2007);

Éloge de la bicyclette (2008);

Où est passé l'avenir (2008);

Le Métro revisité (2008);

Pour une anthropologie de la mobilité (2009);

Carnet de route et de déroutes (2010);

La Communauté illusoire (2010);

Journal d'un SDF (2011);

La Vie en double. Voyage, ethnologie, écriture (2011);

L'Anthropologue et le monde global (2013);

Les Nouvelles peurs (2013);

Une ethnologie de soi : Le temps sans âge (2014);

Éloge du bistrot parisien (2015);

La Sacrée Semaine : qui changea la face du monde (2016);

Qui donc est l'autre ? (2017).

Books translated into English

Non-Places (1995, in French 1992); 

A Sense for the Other (1998, in French 1994b); 

An Anthropology for Contemporaneous Worlds (1998, in French 1994a); 

The War of Dreams (1999, in French 1997);

In the Metro (2002, in French 1986);

Oblivion (2004, in French 2001);

The Future  (2015, in French 2008);

Casablanca: Movies and Memory (2009, in French 2007);

Everyone Dies Young: Time Without Age (2016);

In Praise of  the Bycicle (2019, in French 2008).