The Gift is a short book by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss and is best known for being one of the earliest and most important studies of reciprocity and gift exchange.
Mauss's original piece was entitled Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques ("An essay on the gift: the form and reason of exchange in archaic societies") and was originally published in the Année Sociologique in 1923-1924. The essay was lat...
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The Gift is a short book by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss and is best known for being one of the earliest and most important studies of reciprocity and gift exchange.
Mauss's original piece was entitled Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques ("An essay on the gift: the form and reason of exchange in archaic societies") and was originally published in the Année Sociologique in 1923-1924. The essay was later republished in book form in English in two translations. The first, by Ian Cunnison, appeared in 1954. The second, by W.D. Halls, appeared in 1990.
Mauss's essay focuses on the way that the exchange of objects between groups builds relationships between them. He argued that giving an object creates an inherent obligation on the receiver to reciprocate the gift. The resulting series of exchanges between groups thus provided one of the earliest forms of social solidarity used by humans.
The essay drew on a wide range of ethnographic examples....
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