6/2/2023 0 Comments Mauss the gift![]() ![]() The Gift is still relevant and influential today, because it explains how economics and social and cultural systems affect each other. Through gifts people grasp the importance of their own social obligations, even though, as Mauss points out, human beings do make choices about their participation in gift exchange. This leads him to conclude that understanding the importance of this ritual of giving and receiving leads to a fairer society. Mauss looks at the evidence of how different cultures operate in this arena in light of the philosophy of his day. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (French: Essai sur le don: forme et raison de léchange dans les sociétés archaïques) is a 1925 essay by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss that is the foundation of social theories of reciprocity and gift exchange. But there is always a binding relationship whenever gifts are given, received, or exchanged. Gifts can be tangible, like jewelry, or intangible, like the offering of skills. The Gift analyzes cultures across the world and across time, with the way gifts are given and received working as a guide to understanding the rules and traditions of many different societies. Mauss (1990) synthesized the research of his time, especially that of Bronislaw Malinoswski and Franz Boas, and laid the foundation for economic anthropology. In it, he elevates what might appear to be a simple gift from the status of innocent object to something that has the capacity to motivate people and define social relationships. ![]() ![]() Published in 1925, The Gift is one of French sociologist Marcel Mauss's few non-collaborative works. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |