Mark Anspach is an American anthropologist and social theorist based in Europe. After an undergraduate degree at Harvard, he did his doctoral work in Paris, joining the Centre de Recherche en Épistemologie Appliquée in 1984. His research has focused on the ritual aspects of violence and exchange and on social and cognitive mechanisms of circular causality. He is the author of a book on vengeance, gift, and market exchange, À Charge de Revanche: Figures Élémentaires de la Réciprocité (Seuil, 2002; Italian edition: Boringhieri, 2007; Japanese edition: Shinhyoron, 2012) and the editor of a collection of essays by René Girard, Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire (Stanford, 2004). He has published articles in a number of collective works, including La Monnaie Souveraine (1998), Self-Deception and Paradoxes of Rationality (1998), Expanding the Economic Concept of Exchange (2001), Cosa Significa Donare? (2011), and Mimesis and Science: Empirical Research on Imitation and the Mimetic Theory of Culture and Religion (2011). Mark Anspach analyzes current events in the light of mimetic theory on www.imitatio.org and is a long-time contributor to the Revue du MAUSS (Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales).