ANTHROPOLOGY

As a doctor of anthropology, I am interested in the processes of organization and transformation of human societies.

I began this exploration in the 1990s through musical practices. I thus multiplied my ethnographic fieldwork in Africa and Asia, as well as in France, documenting the historical transition between vernacular practices and globalized integration. These action research projects led me to examine sociocultural dynamics, particularly popular techniques for strengthening social cohesion, and more specifically ritual and festive gatherings.

I then turned my attention to family structures and their impact on societies. I thus devoted my doctoral thesis to the dynamic continuity between the family microcosm and the modern state, based on fieldwork in rural Madagascar, illustrating Claude Levi-Strauss's hypothesis on the importance of bilateral kinship (based on the equality of the paternal and maternal branches) in the processes of transformation of human societies.

I am currently continuing this exploration through studies on prehistory, ritual gatherings, antiquity, the nation-state, etc. My project is to sketch out an anthropological interpretation of the social and cultural transformations experienced by humanity and to highlight the fundamental principles that drive them, drawing on data from ethnology, archaeology, ethology, history, political science, the study of dynamic systems, etc.

Latest article :
Femmes, rituels, réseaux. Ethnographie malgache et archéologie génétique.
('Women, rituals, networks. Malagasy ethnography and genetic archaelogy.")
[Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française, June 2025]

I have produced a doctoral dissertation (PhD) under the supervision of Christophe Darmangeat (Université Paris Cité, LADYSS)

By cross-referencing the level of cultural complexity with the principle of descent, Georges Murdock has observed that societies with bilateral kinship are found at both the simplest and most complex levels, while unilinear systems essentially occupy the intermediate levels. Murdock deduces from the first point (the simplest systems are essentially bilateral) that bilaterality predates over the other systems. The second point (the strong presence of bilaterality at the most complex level) remains to be explained. The present work aims to explore this bimodality of bilateral kinship, and in particular to account for the second point - the close relationship between bilateral kinship and complex social organization, in this case the state.

The aim here is not to provide an exhaustive demonstration of this relationship and its causes, but to grasp its concrete expression:
- in its day-to-day operation, at the level of the family, the local community and the State and its services,
- in its historical movement, through a non-linear sequence of political organization models developed in response to various tensions and disruptions.

To this end, we will focus on a field that makes visible the properties of bilateral kinship both in its local expression and in its large-scale political evolutions. This is the Isandra district, a peasant territory located in the Highlands of Madagascar.

Centered on the autonomous conjugal cell (bilaterality), this society is structured around ritual gatherings organized at kinship and local level, which maintain intervillage networks mediated by married women. The Malagasy state, which takes a back seat but plays an essential role, produces a supralocal unity and manages security, health and education, with varying degrees of success. This system emerged after several centuries of chronic insecurity, and today the territory functions by combining local autonomy based on conjugality and a peacemaking, unifying nation-state.

This work invites the exploration of a general hypothesis that would shed light on how bilateral kinship has played a prominent role in both the historical and structural trajectory of human societies.

“Boris Lelong's academic work is as atypical as his life's journey, but no less worthy of note. In addition to the high quality of the writing and the ambition of a work based on a thorough reading of the literature and an equally thorough knowledge of the Malagasy reality it deals with, there is a quality that is unfortunately sometimes regarded with suspicion: that of being interested in questions of a general nature, in particular those concerning the biological and social evolution of humanity, kinship, social evolution and political structures.”
Christophe Darmangeat (Université Paris Cité)

“Boris Lelong formulates a real thesis, namely that of the “articulation between kinship and politics” as it manifests itself in the Betsileo country of Madagascar. He seeks to show that bilaterality is “the organizing principle of a highly autonomous peasant society”, as well as “the conceptual matrix of what is expected of the nation-state”. He applies a very sound methodological principle, which consists in differentiating between doing and saying, giving priority to the study of the former, and seeking to build the underlying structures that enable both doing and saying to be taken into account. I congratulate the author on having taken the risk of formulating an ambitious hypothesis, and I hope that the more fleshed-out empirical demonstration will be able to continue over the next few years”
Bernard Lahire (CNRS, ENS)

“I would like to congratulate the author on his empathetic and deeply analytical view of Malagasy peasant society. The interpretation proposed here does not follow the catastrophist and sometimes miserabilist line we are used to reading about Madagascar. Economists and political scientists are certainly right to warn of the tragic difficulties faced by the Malagasy people since the 1980s. Nor does the author deny them. But he shows that the world of some of them continues to unfold according to logics that he tries to anchor in history, starting with the entry of kinship, but not only. The language he uses is elegant, and in many passages alternates between a sense of detail in the descriptions and points of erudition in the demonstrations.”
Didier Nativel (Université Paris Cité)


Consulter la présentation

Within EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris) and under the supervision of Claudine Cohen, I have produced a 300-page research thesis on the rural territory of Isandra, Madagascar, and its relationship to globalization: 

"This study is devoted to Antsangy, a peasant hamlet in the Isandra Valley in Madagascar. We will attempt to understand how the population of this rural territory, although connected to the global flows of globalization, seems to manage to preserve - or even develop - an indigenous centre of gravity. To this end, we will analyze social and spatial organization in order to uncover the mechanisms that enable this economic, political and cultural resilience".

"While staying as close as possible to the field, Boris Lelong systematically relates his observations to the major economic and political forces that influence the inhabitants of the Isandra Valley. Indeed, this work is based on a remarkable long-term field survey: the attention to detail, singularities and personal trajectories, typical of a good classical monography, does not prevent the candidate from developing very solid general analyses on this region and its adaptation to economic changes".
Eric Wittersheim (EHESS)

"The thesis is strong because it is not about showing how the village community studied is being tested by globalization but how globalization is coming up against its capacity for resilience. This informative and invigorating thesis is a first academic work of very high quality and quite promising."
Jean-Michel Wachsberger (University Lille 3)



Read the presentation
(in french)

I have also produced, still within the EHESS and under the supervision of Alain Mahé, another research dissertation which this time poses the specific question of the relationship to the State:

"The aim of this study is to examine the relationship to the State of the rural inhabitants of the Isandra district in Madagascar. Are they autonomous, both politically and economically? Do they seek to stand up to the State or to distance themselves from it? Are they able to implement the utopia of the free village that Eric Wolf said was the goal of peasant societies? We will see that while the villagers of Isandra manage to implement a state of local independence, they do not reject the state for all that, and instead see it as a protection of that autonomy."

"The tutor and the reporter agreed to underline the extent of the work accomplished, both because of the quality of the ethnography carried out and the mastery of the anthropological theories discussed. The clarity of the analyses and positions defended by the author, as well as their height of vision, were underlined. The long exchanges that took place during the defense also confirmed the intellectual maturity of the author and the very important part of his immersed knowledge."
Alain Mahé & Riccardo Ciavolella (EHESS)


Read the presentation
(in french)

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDS

MADAGASCAR / 2007-2017
Research on peasant society in the Betsileo region: political autonomy and relations with the state, kinship networks and collective rituals, cultural globalization and vernacular dynamics.

TIBET / 1998-2008
Ethnomusicological research within the Tibetan refugee community in Ladakh. Evolution of musical practices, from rural sociality to the reconstruction of identity in exile.

PHILIPPINES / 1999-2008
Ethnomusicological research among the indigenous Tboli community: music as a means of mediation with the natural environment and as a vehicle for information between humans.

FRANCE / 2005-2007
Ethnomusicological research among retirees in Saint Denis: the evolution of the place of music in society before and after the war, in private and public spaces.

ZAMBIA / 1992-1996
Ethnomusicological research in the Kingdom of Lozi: cultural and historical landscape.

Other ethnomusicological investigations in Lesotho (2003-2006) and Mauritania (1999-2006).

PUBLICATIONS

Le troisième regard. Matière, énergie, humanité.
[Sociétés Plurielles, Autumn 2025]

Système de parenté et construction de l'État : l’Égypte vue de Madagascar
[Nehet, Sorbonne-ULB, October 2025]

Femmes, rituels, réseaux. Ethnographie malgache et archéologie génétique.
[Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française, June 2025]

Insecurity in the Highlands. Local and state protection in Madagascar.
[Under review]

Parenté, sécurité, politique. Une approche wébérienne.
[Under review]

État-fantôme, État-ancêtre. David Graeber et la souveraineté malgache.
[Under review]

Faire famille, faire nation. De la parenté bilatérale en pays Betsileo.
[PhD dissertation. Université Paris Cité, 2024]

L’utopie du village libre. Paradoxes de l’autonomie paysanne à Madagascar
Thesis. EHESS, 2020

La mondialisation à l’épreuve du terroir. Résilience vernaculaire dans la vallée de l’Isandra
These. EHESS, 2019

The treasure of our ancestors [Madagascar]
CD. Altamira-Buda, 2016

Songs from exile [Tibet]
CD. Altamira-Buda, 2013

Women artists of Sebu [Philippines]
CD. Altamira-Buda, 2008 - Awarded by the Académie Charles Cros

La mémoire en chantant [France]
CD. Altamira, 2007

CONFÉRENCES ACADÉMIQUES

Système de parenté et construction de l'Etat : le cas de Madagascar
Collège de France / Sorbonne Université, 2023. Colloque "Pouvoir(s) dans les sociétés sans écriture. Continuités et ruptures".

Famille et territoire à Madagascar.
CET, 2023. Journée d’études.

Un rituel entre les mondes. La procession panamérindienne de Cabeza de Vaca.
EHESS, 2022. Journée d’études des Mondes Américains.

David Graeber et l’énigme de la souveraineté. Étude de cas à Madagascar
EHESS - CNRS, 2021. Journée d’études de l'IIAC.

L’ethnomusicologie : une approche spécifique du matériau ethnographique
EHESS, 2020. Journée d’études du CEMS.

Philippines : Femmes artistes du lac Sebu
Musée du Quai Branly, 2013

Philippines : Femmes, musique et forêt à Mindanao
Musée National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet, 2008

Music, nature and society among the Tboli
University of the Philippines, 2008

Tibet : Les chants de l’exil
Musée National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet, 2003