The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies

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The North American Indian term ‘potlatch’ has been retained in the translation. Various definitions of it are given in the text: ‘system for the exchange of gifts’, (as a verb) ‘to feed, to consume’, ‘place of being satiated’ [Boas]. As elaborated by Mauss, it consists of a festival where goods and services of all kinds are exchanged. (View Highlight)
Refusing requital puts the act of giving outside any mutual ties. Once given, the free gift entails no further claims from the recipient. The public is not deceived by free gift vouchers. For all the ongoing commitment the free- (View Highlight)
gift gesture has created, it might just as well never have happened. According to Marcel Mauss that is what is wrong with the free gift. A gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction. (View Highlight)
Even the idea of a pure gift is a contradiction. By ignoring the universal custom of compulsory gifts we make our own record incomprehensible to ourselves: right across the globe and as far back as we can go in the history of human civilization, the major transfer of goods has been by cycles of obligatory returns of gifts. (View Highlight)
The theory of the gift is a theory of human solidarity. (View Highlight)

rw-book-cover

The North American Indian term ‘potlatch’ has been retained in the translation. Various definitions of it are given in the text: ‘system for the exchange of gifts’, (as a verb) ‘to feed, to consume’, ‘place of being satiated’ [Boas]. As elaborated by Mauss, it consists of a festival where goods and services of all kinds are exchanged. (View Highlight)
Refusing requital puts the act of giving outside any mutual ties. Once given, the free gift entails no further claims from the recipient. The public is not deceived by free gift vouchers. For all the ongoing commitment the free- (View Highlight)
gift gesture has created, it might just as well never have happened. According to Marcel Mauss that is what is wrong with the free gift. A gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction. (View Highlight)
Even the idea of a pure gift is a contradiction. By ignoring the universal custom of compulsory gifts we make our own record incomprehensible to ourselves: right across the globe and as far back as we can go in the history of human civilization, the major transfer of goods has been by cycles of obligatory returns of gifts. (View Highlight)
The theory of the gift is a theory of human solidarity. (View Highlight)