Maurice Leenhardt
Maurice Leenhardt , (1878 with Montauban, 1954 with Paris) is a Pasteur and ethnologist French, specialist in the people Kanak of New Caledonia.
Mission in New Caledonia
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Protestant authorities are concerned with evangelization of the Kanak S, in competition with the priests Marists (catholic): Maurice Leenhardt is named Pasteur in 1902 in New Caledonia where it founds the mission of “Dö nèvâ”, valley of Houailou. Exceeding its role of Pasteur, it attempts to include/understand the mentality of these people in process of extinction.When it arrives to New Caledonia, Maurice Leenhardt is accommodated by these words of the mayor of Noumea: “What do you come to make here? In ten years there will be no more Kanaks” . Attempting to fight against this slow genocide, it fights the alcoholism which devastates the people kanak. It translates the New Testament into language Houaïlou with the assistance of its first students.
It returns in metropolis in 1927 where it founds the Société of Océanistes, the Musée of the Man and takes again the pulpit of Lucien Levy-Bruhl with EHESS. Following a second stay of almost ten years in New Caledonia, it sets up from 1944 of the lesson of languages océaniennes at the École of the Eastern languages.
Contributions with the ethnology
Without to have theorized them, the contributions of Maurice Leenhardt to the Ethnologie are considerable.Before Bronislaw Malinowski, it practices the ethnology of ground recommended by Marcel Mauss of the bottom of their Parisian office. During twenty-five years it practices the participating Observation and the Recherche activates whose virtues are redécouvertes only starting from the Années 1960.
Maurice Leehnhardt was not dogmatic and of all these contributions, he did not seek with to make school . He is one of the first to however consider the social phenomenon in his globality and studying as well the Linguistique, art, the Mythe S or the usual activities of the people kanak.
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