The Gift PDF Download

Author: Marcel Mauss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136896848
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author: Maurice Godelier
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226300455
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
When we think of giving gifts, we think of exchanging objects that carry with them economic or symbolic value. But is every valuable thing a potentially exchangeable item, whose value can be transferred? In The Enigma of the Gift, the distinguished French anthropologist Maurice Godelier reassesses the significance of gifts in social life by focusing on sacred objects, which are never exchanged despite the value they possess. Beginning with an analysis of the seminal work of Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strass, and drawing on his own fieldwork in Melanesia, Godelier argues that traditional theories are flawed because they consider only exchangeable gifts. By explaining gift-giving in terms of sacred objects and the authoritative conferral of power associated with them, Godelier challenges both recent and traditional theories of gift-giving, provocatively refreshing a traditional debate. Elegantly translated by Nora Scott, The Enigma of the Gift is at once a major theoretical contribution and an essential guide to the history of the theory of the gift.

Author: Wilton S. Dillon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351517546
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
What can men in industrial nations learn from their "primitive" contemporaries, and the habits of earlier civilizations? This book by acclaimed cultural anthropologist Wilton S. Dillon suggests that modern political, religious, and scientific communities--and alliances--would be enhanced greatly if we understood how gift exchange and reciprocity helped to balance earlier institutions and societies.Using the example of the gift behavior of France and the United States during the Marshall Plan period, Gifts and Nations examines the troubles that arise between donors and recipients when a generous donor remains innocent of the recipient's desire to give back things or ideas to which both attach value. Such innocence may produce what the author calls "the Gaullist effect"--a quest for self-esteem, autonomy, and initiative by a person, or a nation, who feels burdened and controlled by undischarged obligations.Gifts and Nations is very much an historical footnote to the rise of PaxAmericana--the American empire having been launched in 1898, enlarged in the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War, and now the subject of global debate. This volume emphasizes that building coalitions and keeping alliances strong require multi-lateralism based on reciprocity.

Author: The Macat Team
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351353128
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Marcel Mauss’s 1925 essay The Gift is an enduring classic of sociological and anthropological analysis by a thinker who is one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology. The Gift exploits Mauss’s high-level analytical and interpretative skills to produce a brilliant investigation of the forms, meanings, and structures of gift-giving across a range of societies. Mauss, along with many others, had noted that in a wide range of societies – especially those without monetary exchange or legal structures – gift-giving and receiving was carried out according to strict customs and unwritten laws. What he sought to do in The Gift was to analyse the structures that governed how and when gifts were given, received, and reciprocated in order to grasp what implicit and unspoken reasons governed these structures. He also wanted to apply his interpretative skills to asking what such exchanges meant, in order to explore the implications his analysis might have for modern, western cultures. In Mauss’s investigations, it became clear that gift-giving is, in many cultures, a crucial structural force, binding people together in a web of reciprocal commitments generated by the laws of gifting. Indeed, he concluded, gifts can be seen as the ‘glue’ of society..

Author: Wendy James
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571817037
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Presents results of a September 1996 conference held at Oxford University, re-evaluating the importance of the writings and inspiration of Marcel Mauss, the nephew and younger colleague of Emile Durkheim. Explores not only the context of Mauss' work and his influence on other writers, but also the resonance of some of his key themes for the concerns of today's anthropology and sociology. Papers are arranged in sections on the scholar and his time, foundations of Maussian anthropology, critiques of exchange and power, and materiality, body, and history. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author: Grégoire Mallard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108489699
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Examines gift exchanges as a foundational notion both in anthropology and in debates about international economic governance. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Author: Arpad Szakolczai
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108423809
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
A rethinking of contemporary social theory that provides a vision about the modern world through key ideas developed by 'maverick' anthropologists.

Author: Rebecca Colesworthy
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198778589
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
What is a gift? What do gifts mean and do? Drawing on Marcel Mauss's 1925 essay, this volume studies novels, autobiographical texts, aesthetic treatises, and political writings by Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Gertrude Stein, and H.D. to explore the idea of the gift in Modernist literature.

Author: Marcel Mauss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134522231
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
First written by Marcel Mauss and Henri Humbert in 1902, A General Theory of Magic gained a wide new readership when republished by Mauss in 1950. As a study of magic in 'primitive' societies and its survival today in our thoughts and social actions, it represents what Claude Lévi-Strauss called, in an introduction to that edition, the astonishing modernity of the mind of one of the century's greatest thinkers. The book offers a fascinating snapshot of magic throughout various cultures as well as deep sociological and religious insights still very much relevant today. At a period when art, magic and science appear to be crossing paths once again, A General Theory of Magic presents itself as a classic for our times.

Author: Jacques T. Godbout
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773567321
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The anthropologist Marcel Mauss, in his famous exploration of the gift in "primitive" and archaic societies, showed that the essential aspect of the exchange of presents involved the establishment of a social tie that bound the parties together above and beyond any material value of the objects exchanged. He argued that these intangible mutual "debts" constituted the social fabric. Godbout and Caillé show that, contrary to the modern assumption that societies function on the basis of market exchange and the pursuit of self-interest, the gift still constitutes the foundation of our social fabric. The authors describe the gift not as an object but as a social connection, perhaps the most important social connection because it creates a sense of obligation to respond in kind. They examine the gift in a broad range of cases such as blood and organ donation; volunteer work; the bonds between friends, couples, and family; Santa Claus; the interaction between performers and their audience; and the relation of the artist to society. Written in an engaging manner, The World of the Gift will appeal to anyone who is interested in how the world really operates.