The contribution re-establishes Marcel Mauss's concept of body functional techniques: the social-anthropological basis, the theoretical technical position and the systematic programming of this term. According to Mauss, modern body functional techniques and their media inventions can be interpreted in different ways: as strategies for the reduction of the body and as a project of a reciprocal, psychosomatic, ritualistic and medial intensification.

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Between 1900 and 1912, Durkheim, Mauss and other contributors of the L’Année Sociologique developed the most ambitious philosophical project of modern anthropology: a comparative and worldwide social history of philosophical categories. This article briefly summarises three phases of the ‘Category Project’ and gives a preliminary characterisation of its Hegelian ambitions. Further, it points out the common denominator in the diverse success stories of the Category Project, namely the reference to the human body as the site of collective consciousness. In a second step, the article traces the intricate genesis and after-life of the most important category of bodily efficacy and epistemological insight provided by Durkheim and Mauss: the elaboration of ‘effervescence’ and its manifestation of ‘totality’.

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"Domestizierung lässt sich durch einen Nukleus aus drei technischen Tätigkeiten definieren: durch die gesteuerte Reproduktion, die eigens eingerichtete Ernährung und den Schutz von Tieren und Pflanzen vor Schädigungen. Wenn man diese Definition an einen Vergleich von Kulturen und Kollektiven anlegt, stellen sich zwei Überraschungen ein: Außerhalb jeder Domestizierung entwickeln Wildbeuter eine rituelle Domestizierung oder ein mythologisches Verständnis, ihre Welt sei bereits domestiziert. Und in der Moderne tritt an die Seite der technischen Domestizierung ihre mögliche Naturalisierung. Der Aufsatz zieht einige Konsequenzen aus diesem typologischen Vergleich. Domestication can be defined by a nucleus of three technical activities: controlled reproduction and nutrition as well as protection of animals and plants from damage. If one applies this definition to a comparison of cultures and collectives, two surprises arise: Without being in touch of any kind of domestication, hunter-gatherers develop a ritual domestication or a mythological understanding that their world already is domesticated. And in modernity, possible naturalization arises at the side of technical domestication. The paper draws some conclusions from this typological comparison. "