What do you think?
Rate this book
Luận về biếu tặng – Hình thức và lý do của sự trao đổi trong các xã hội cổ sơ
GIỚI THIỆU SÁCH
1. Tác giả:
Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) là nhà xã hội học người Pháp, người học trò, người cháu của Émile Durkheim. Ông thường được coi là “cha đẻ của ngành nhân học Pháp” với bài viết nổi tiếng đăng trên Année sociologique (Năm xã hội học): Luận về biếu tặng. Lĩnh vực hoạt động và nghiên cứu của ông đi giữa ranh giới của xã hội học và nhân học. Những phân tích của Marcel Mauss về ma thuật, sự hi sinh và biếu tặng có nhiều ảnh hưởng đối với nhiều nhà xã hội học, nhà nhân học sau này, đặc biệt là Claude Lévi-Strauss.
2. Tác phẩm:
Luận về biếu tặng (1925) là tác phẩm thuộc hàng kinh điển của Marcel Mauss. Trong cuốn sách nhỏ này, ông đã lập luận rằng những món quà không bao giờ “miễn phí”. Lịch sử của con người là lịch sử của những lần trao đổi quà tặng qua lại, và điều này vượt qua mọi ranh giới giữa vật chất và tinh thần. Món quà, ngoài giá trị của chính nó, còn bao hàm nhiều giá trị khác như về danh dự, địa vị, thậm chí còn giống như một sự thách thức đối với người nhận quà. Chính mối quan hệ giữa món quà và người tặng đã tạo ra nghĩa vụ “đáp trả” của người nhận.
3. Dịch giả:
Nguyễn Tùng, sinh năm 1944, được đào tạo về dân tộc học và triết học tại Đại học Sorbonne (Paris). Ông từng dạy về ngôn ngữ và văn minh Việt Nam tại Đại học Paris VII, và từng làm việc gần 40 năm tại Trung tâm nghiên cứu Khoa học Quốc gia. Ông là tác giả của nhiều bài nghiên cứu bằng tiếng Pháp và tiếng Việt về dân tộc học Việt Nam, là chủ biên của cuốn Mông Phụ, một làng ở đồng bằng sông Hồng, NXB Văn hóa thông tin, Hà Nội, 2002. Ông cũng là người tham gia dịch cuốn Nền đạo đức tin lành và tinh thần của chủ nghĩa tư bản, Max Weber, NXB Tri thức, 2008.
1. Tác giả:
Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) là nhà xã hội học người Pháp, người học trò, người cháu của Émile Durkheim. Ông thường được coi là “cha đẻ của ngành nhân học Pháp” với bài viết nổi tiếng đăng trên Année sociologique (Năm xã hội học): Luận về biếu tặng. Lĩnh vực hoạt động và nghiên cứu của ông đi giữa ranh giới của xã hội học và nhân học. Những phân tích của Marcel Mauss về ma thuật, sự hi sinh và biếu tặng có nhiều ảnh hưởng đối với nhiều nhà xã hội học, nhà nhân học sau này, đặc biệt là Claude Lévi-Strauss.
2. Tác phẩm:
Luận về biếu tặng (1925) là tác phẩm thuộc hàng kinh điển của Marcel Mauss. Trong cuốn sách nhỏ này, ông đã lập luận rằng những món quà không bao giờ “miễn phí”. Lịch sử của con người là lịch sử của những lần trao đổi quà tặng qua lại, và điều này vượt qua mọi ranh giới giữa vật chất và tinh thần. Món quà, ngoài giá trị của chính nó, còn bao hàm nhiều giá trị khác như về danh dự, địa vị, thậm chí còn giống như một sự thách thức đối với người nhận quà. Chính mối quan hệ giữa món quà và người tặng đã tạo ra nghĩa vụ “đáp trả” của người nhận.
3. Dịch giả:
Nguyễn Tùng, sinh năm 1944, được đào tạo về dân tộc học và triết học tại Đại học Sorbonne (Paris). Ông từng dạy về ngôn ngữ và văn minh Việt Nam tại Đại học Paris VII, và từng làm việc gần 40 năm tại Trung tâm nghiên cứu Khoa học Quốc gia. Ông là tác giả của nhiều bài nghiên cứu bằng tiếng Pháp và tiếng Việt về dân tộc học Việt Nam, là chủ biên của cuốn Mông Phụ, một làng ở đồng bằng sông Hồng, NXB Văn hóa thông tin, Hà Nội, 2002. Ông cũng là người tham gia dịch cuốn Nền đạo đức tin lành và tinh thần của chủ nghĩa tư bản, Max Weber, NXB Tri thức, 2008.
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1923
229 people are currently reading
7348 people want to read
About the author
Marcel Mauss
78 books140 followersMauss was born in Épinal, Vosges to a Jewish family, and studied philosophy at Bordeaux, where his uncle Émile Durkheim was teaching at the time and agregated in 1893. Instead of taking the usual route of teaching at a lycée, however, Mauss moved to Paris and took up the study of comparative religion and the Sanskrit language. His first publication in 1896 marked the beginning of a prolific career that would produce several landmarks in the sociological literature.
Like many members of Année Sociologique Mauss was attracted to socialism, particularly that espoused by Jean Jaurès. He was particularly active in the events of the Dreyfus affair and towards the end of the century he helped edit such left-wing papers as le Populaire, l'Humanité and le Mouvement Socialiste, the last in collaboration with Georges Sorel.
Mauss took up a chair in the 'history of religion and uncivilized peoples' at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1901. It was at this time that he began drawing more and more on ethnography, and his work began increasingly to look like what we would today call anthropology.
The years of World War I were absolutely devastating for Mauss. Many of his friends and colleagues died in the war, and Durkheim died shortly before its end. The postwar years were also difficult politically for Mauss. Durkheim had made changes to school curricula across France, and after his death a backlash against his students began. Like many other followers of Durkheim, Mauss took refuge in administration, securing Durkheim's legacy by founding institutions such as l'Institut Français de Sociologie (1924) and l'Institut d'Ethnologie in 1926. In 1931 he took up the chair of Sociology at the Collège de France. He actively fought against anti-semitism and racial politics both before and after World War II. He died in 1950.
Like many members of Année Sociologique Mauss was attracted to socialism, particularly that espoused by Jean Jaurès. He was particularly active in the events of the Dreyfus affair and towards the end of the century he helped edit such left-wing papers as le Populaire, l'Humanité and le Mouvement Socialiste, the last in collaboration with Georges Sorel.
Mauss took up a chair in the 'history of religion and uncivilized peoples' at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1901. It was at this time that he began drawing more and more on ethnography, and his work began increasingly to look like what we would today call anthropology.
The years of World War I were absolutely devastating for Mauss. Many of his friends and colleagues died in the war, and Durkheim died shortly before its end. The postwar years were also difficult politically for Mauss. Durkheim had made changes to school curricula across France, and after his death a backlash against his students began. Like many other followers of Durkheim, Mauss took refuge in administration, securing Durkheim's legacy by founding institutions such as l'Institut Français de Sociologie (1924) and l'Institut d'Ethnologie in 1926. In 1931 he took up the chair of Sociology at the Collège de France. He actively fought against anti-semitism and racial politics both before and after World War II. He died in 1950.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 206 reviews
August 21, 2010
I have found myself re-reading Marcel Mauss’s classic treatise on The Gift. It was first published in the 1920s as a series of articles in L’Année Sociologique the journal founded by Mauss’s uncle, Émile Durkheim. And indeed, its spirit is firmly Durkheimian, for it sees the prime role of the gift and the act of giving to be the cementing of the bonds of society.
Mauss argues that gifts are a type of exchange. As he nearly says, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The idea that gifts are voluntarily given without expectation of reward is a common fiction, but a fiction nevertheless. A gift, he explains, is always given in return for another gift. Only sometimes is a gift given voluntarily. Mostly, they are compulsory.
After introducing his subject, Mauss considers the phenomenon of “potlatch”, the practice of large-scale, competitive giving. This was found archetypically among North American peoples, but it can be found elsewhere. In the most extreme forms of potlatch, when the giver has given as much as the recipients could conceivably consume, the giver is reduced to destroying his goods just to demonstrate his ability to give.
This phenomenon is not as exotic as it might at first appear. My grandchildren’s school, for example, was forced actively to discourage the practice of the children giving Christmas gifts to their teachers. The teachers began to fear accusations of favouritism, even corruption. And the escalating competitiveness actually threatened to impoverish the poorer parents. Weddings – inherently a gift by parents to their children and to their friends and relations – have a similar, even notorious tendency to be more and more lavish in successive generations.
Mauss goes on to look at the now well-known practice of kula found in Malinowski’s description of the Trobriand Islands in the Pacific. Here, prestigious goods - necklaces and bangles made from shell - are taken great distances by boat and solemnly given to the occupants of neighbouring islands. These, in due course, pass them on to other islands, so they move in a never-ending full circle.
This book is, of course, a classic and I would not want to deny its author’s genius. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore its problems.. Most obviously, from his perspective in the 1920s, Mauss sees the gift as a “survival” from earlier periods. The modern world, he claims, is a world of commerce; while the gift, in contrast, belongs to the ancient world and to those primitive peoples who have maintained an ancient way of life. The potlatch and kula, he speculates, are intermediate stages along an evolutionary continuum from, on the one hand, the total sharing of goods and services between otherwise hostile peoples to, on the other hand, the modern world of commerce. It follows that, for him, when gifts are found in modern society, this too is a survival from our archaic past.
Not that Mauss is hostile to the gift, for he thinks we should try to recapture some of this ancient mode of living. (Mary Douglas in a typically erudite and lucid foreword shows that Mauss is motivated by an opposition to the individualism and utilitarianism he associates with Britain.) Nevertheless, the notion of “survivals”, while useful as a peripheral concept, is not the basis for a satisfactory methodology and it has in fact largely been dropped from modern anthropology.
Mauss’s Gift has become important as providing the cornerstone for the work of other important thinkers. Notably, another great Durkheimian, Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his monumental Les Structures Élementaires de la Parenté, explained the plethora of marriage patterns as a series of exchanges or gifts. He also developed an influential theory of myth which was infused by the notion of reciprocity and balance. A radically different thinker, the American Marshall Sahlins explored issues of economic anthropology in his important study, Stone Age Economics, which has a direct lineage to the ideas of Mauss. Both of these writers brought great sophistication to the comparatively simple ideas found in Mauss’s original work.
For myself, I see The Gift as the key to solving an old problem in sociology, the question of altruism. This is, however, possible only when one abandons one of the central features of the book, which arises from Mauss’s emphasis on the potlatch and on competitive giving. Mauss was certainly correct to recognize that competition in giving does exist, and also that giving is rarely disinterested. With occasional lapses – for example, at one point, he describes the excesses of potlatch as “monstrous” – he seems to see competition and self-interest at the heart of the phenomenon of giving. I believe he is here mistaken, for in fact, there are plenty of occasions when giving is not competitive, and where competitive giving is actively opposed.
Often, people strive in their giving not somehow to “win” the competition, but to come out of reciprocal transactions in a more or less equal state. I note, for example, that my own children do not compete when giving me birthday presents. In fact, much as I appreciate getting bottles of aftershave, despite my beard, I sometimes think that a little competition would do some good in this area.
Moreover, giving can be a complicated phenomenon with different processes going on simultaneously. Family life, for example, usually involves the giving of food, shelter, education and general nurture to children. It is therefore based on the giving of gifts. Parents may, sometimes, engage in potlatch-like activity when nurturing their children – spending lavishly on them in order to outdo fellow parents. However, in more everyday matters, parents do not, as a rule, compete with the children who are the recipients of their generosity. Mostly, parents give to children as their own parents once gave to them; and in due course, these same children will give to their own children and so on (like Swiftean fleas but temporally, not spatially)through the generations. Moreover, competition between parents and children is rarely an issue.
Reciprocity, it seems to me, infuses every aspect of our ordinary social lives. Mauss tends to stick to ceremonial and ceremonious forms of giving, but in fact the giving of gifts is ubiquitous and not at all confined to the big occasions. When, on a minor road, I stop to let the other cars pass along a main road, I do it in the knowledge that in due course, and when roles are reversed, others will similarly wait for me. When a stranger is lost and asks me the way to his destination then I give directions, knowing that in due course I too may need to tell a stranger I am lost and in need of directions. Or more seriously, if I wade into a pond to rescue a drowning child, I do so in the expectation that, in similar circumstances, others would do the same for me or for my own children and grandchildren.
Society (even commerce) rests on such communitarian and largely non-competitive gifts of time, courtesy, bravery, goods etc. It rests on the obligation to give, to accept and to reciprocate. All of these are at the heart of the phenomenon we know as the gift which Mauss brought into general anthropological discussion. .
Mauss argues that gifts are a type of exchange. As he nearly says, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The idea that gifts are voluntarily given without expectation of reward is a common fiction, but a fiction nevertheless. A gift, he explains, is always given in return for another gift. Only sometimes is a gift given voluntarily. Mostly, they are compulsory.
After introducing his subject, Mauss considers the phenomenon of “potlatch”, the practice of large-scale, competitive giving. This was found archetypically among North American peoples, but it can be found elsewhere. In the most extreme forms of potlatch, when the giver has given as much as the recipients could conceivably consume, the giver is reduced to destroying his goods just to demonstrate his ability to give.
This phenomenon is not as exotic as it might at first appear. My grandchildren’s school, for example, was forced actively to discourage the practice of the children giving Christmas gifts to their teachers. The teachers began to fear accusations of favouritism, even corruption. And the escalating competitiveness actually threatened to impoverish the poorer parents. Weddings – inherently a gift by parents to their children and to their friends and relations – have a similar, even notorious tendency to be more and more lavish in successive generations.
Mauss goes on to look at the now well-known practice of kula found in Malinowski’s description of the Trobriand Islands in the Pacific. Here, prestigious goods - necklaces and bangles made from shell - are taken great distances by boat and solemnly given to the occupants of neighbouring islands. These, in due course, pass them on to other islands, so they move in a never-ending full circle.
This book is, of course, a classic and I would not want to deny its author’s genius. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore its problems.. Most obviously, from his perspective in the 1920s, Mauss sees the gift as a “survival” from earlier periods. The modern world, he claims, is a world of commerce; while the gift, in contrast, belongs to the ancient world and to those primitive peoples who have maintained an ancient way of life. The potlatch and kula, he speculates, are intermediate stages along an evolutionary continuum from, on the one hand, the total sharing of goods and services between otherwise hostile peoples to, on the other hand, the modern world of commerce. It follows that, for him, when gifts are found in modern society, this too is a survival from our archaic past.
Not that Mauss is hostile to the gift, for he thinks we should try to recapture some of this ancient mode of living. (Mary Douglas in a typically erudite and lucid foreword shows that Mauss is motivated by an opposition to the individualism and utilitarianism he associates with Britain.) Nevertheless, the notion of “survivals”, while useful as a peripheral concept, is not the basis for a satisfactory methodology and it has in fact largely been dropped from modern anthropology.
Mauss’s Gift has become important as providing the cornerstone for the work of other important thinkers. Notably, another great Durkheimian, Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his monumental Les Structures Élementaires de la Parenté, explained the plethora of marriage patterns as a series of exchanges or gifts. He also developed an influential theory of myth which was infused by the notion of reciprocity and balance. A radically different thinker, the American Marshall Sahlins explored issues of economic anthropology in his important study, Stone Age Economics, which has a direct lineage to the ideas of Mauss. Both of these writers brought great sophistication to the comparatively simple ideas found in Mauss’s original work.
For myself, I see The Gift as the key to solving an old problem in sociology, the question of altruism. This is, however, possible only when one abandons one of the central features of the book, which arises from Mauss’s emphasis on the potlatch and on competitive giving. Mauss was certainly correct to recognize that competition in giving does exist, and also that giving is rarely disinterested. With occasional lapses – for example, at one point, he describes the excesses of potlatch as “monstrous” – he seems to see competition and self-interest at the heart of the phenomenon of giving. I believe he is here mistaken, for in fact, there are plenty of occasions when giving is not competitive, and where competitive giving is actively opposed.
Often, people strive in their giving not somehow to “win” the competition, but to come out of reciprocal transactions in a more or less equal state. I note, for example, that my own children do not compete when giving me birthday presents. In fact, much as I appreciate getting bottles of aftershave, despite my beard, I sometimes think that a little competition would do some good in this area.
Moreover, giving can be a complicated phenomenon with different processes going on simultaneously. Family life, for example, usually involves the giving of food, shelter, education and general nurture to children. It is therefore based on the giving of gifts. Parents may, sometimes, engage in potlatch-like activity when nurturing their children – spending lavishly on them in order to outdo fellow parents. However, in more everyday matters, parents do not, as a rule, compete with the children who are the recipients of their generosity. Mostly, parents give to children as their own parents once gave to them; and in due course, these same children will give to their own children and so on (like Swiftean fleas but temporally, not spatially)through the generations. Moreover, competition between parents and children is rarely an issue.
Reciprocity, it seems to me, infuses every aspect of our ordinary social lives. Mauss tends to stick to ceremonial and ceremonious forms of giving, but in fact the giving of gifts is ubiquitous and not at all confined to the big occasions. When, on a minor road, I stop to let the other cars pass along a main road, I do it in the knowledge that in due course, and when roles are reversed, others will similarly wait for me. When a stranger is lost and asks me the way to his destination then I give directions, knowing that in due course I too may need to tell a stranger I am lost and in need of directions. Or more seriously, if I wade into a pond to rescue a drowning child, I do so in the expectation that, in similar circumstances, others would do the same for me or for my own children and grandchildren.
Society (even commerce) rests on such communitarian and largely non-competitive gifts of time, courtesy, bravery, goods etc. It rests on the obligation to give, to accept and to reciprocate. All of these are at the heart of the phenomenon we know as the gift which Mauss brought into general anthropological discussion. .
July 14, 2020
مارسل موس، خواهرزاده دورکیم، جامعهشناس و انسانشناس برجستهای است که در ایران، آنقدر که باید و شاید شناختهشده نیست. رساله پیشکش، یکی از برجستهترین آثار او به شمار میرود.
هدف اصلی مارسل موس در رساله پیشکش، این است که از خلال یک بررسی مردمشناسانه در قبایل بدوی، ایده انسان اقتصادی را زیر سوال ببرد و نشان دهد که مناسبات انسانها در طول تاریخ چیزی فراتر از مناسبات اقتصادی محض با هدف کسب حداکثر سود مادی بوده است.
مارسل موس در این کتاب، به معرفی «امر اجتماعی تام» میپردازد. او به جای انتزاع و تفکیک کردن امر اقتصادی، زیباییشناسی، مذهبی، اجتماعی و ...، پدیدههای اجتماعی را در کلیت خود مورد بررسی قرار میدهد، به شکلی که همه ابعاد یاد شده را در یک کلیت به همپیوسته در برمیگیرد. او این باور را که سیر تکامل اقتصادی از مبادله کالا به کالا، به مبادله مستقیم و سپس مبادله اعتباری بوده زیر سوال میبرد و ادعا میکند که مبادله اعتباری حتی پیش از رواج مبادله کالا به کالا در میان بعضی قبایل رواج داشته است. نوعی مبادله اعتباری که با امور اخلاقی، مذهبی و زیباییشناسانه گره خورده و قابل تفکیک نیست.
هدف اصلی مارسل موس در رساله پیشکش، این است که از خلال یک بررسی مردمشناسانه در قبایل بدوی، ایده انسان اقتصادی را زیر سوال ببرد و نشان دهد که مناسبات انسانها در طول تاریخ چیزی فراتر از مناسبات اقتصادی محض با هدف کسب حداکثر سود مادی بوده است.
مارسل موس در این کتاب، به معرفی «امر اجتماعی تام» میپردازد. او به جای انتزاع و تفکیک کردن امر اقتصادی، زیباییشناسی، مذهبی، اجتماعی و ...، پدیدههای اجتماعی را در کلیت خود مورد بررسی قرار میدهد، به شکلی که همه ابعاد یاد شده را در یک کلیت به همپیوسته در برمیگیرد. او این باور را که سیر تکامل اقتصادی از مبادله کالا به کالا، به مبادله مستقیم و سپس مبادله اعتباری بوده زیر سوال میبرد و ادعا میکند که مبادله اعتباری حتی پیش از رواج مبادله کالا به کالا در میان بعضی قبایل رواج داشته است. نوعی مبادله اعتباری که با امور اخلاقی، مذهبی و زیباییشناسانه گره خورده و قابل تفکیک نیست.
November 30, 2019
First thing first. There's no such thing as free gift. Its literally an oxymoron. Every gift has to be returned in some specific ways, set up a perpetual cycle of exchanges within and between generations, at least in the simple societies.
This is my first time reading an explosive book at the foundation level of what economics really is and the role it plays in the lowest base functional unit in society. I've become too lazy these days to type it all out probably I'll save some of this for my paper works. Here some of the fragments of my understanding of the work.
This work is also one of the books that share a subtle philosophy of returning to the practices and culture of the so called, but mostly misunderstood, Primitive.
French Anthropologist Marcel Mauss did an extensive study on the gift economies of tribal communities spread over Polynesian, Melanesian, Andamanese, Australian, North Western American landscapes. The Gift economy is similar to the economy of capitalism in principle at the least where people as clans, tribes, work and toil followed by contributing giving way as gift, kula ring of redistribution, general reciprocity without negotiation or by means of ritual exchange. The common principle involved here is the idea of Adam Smith's self-interest but it also indicates some sort of disinterestedness in the communities that prevent them from accumulating more surplus for their own good. These exchanges were rather done as festivals, potlatches showcasing the simpler versions of conspicuous consumption and destruction (in case of sacrifices). The author sort of gives a general hypothesis backed by positivist approach the prehistorical times were marked by gift economy and its common influence were being observed in ancient Semitic norms, older and old roman laws, Vedas, Celtics, Gauls, Germanians et al.
In practical reality, the concept of gift economy is more than prevalent especially in Mainstream Cultures where it is an obligatory norm to socialise and give gift through means of money, material goods during family functions which would be reciprocated when the other's turn arrives.
In the way the work is approached in terms of critiquing the modern economy (despite the book being published in 1954), nothing felt more urgent than this following quote from the conclusions "We must not desire the citizen to be either too good or too individualistic nor too insensitive or too realist. Man must have a keen sense of awareness of himself, but also of others, and of the social reality and in moral matters, is there any other kind of reality?.. this moralitynis eternal; it is common to the most advanced societies to those of the immediate future and to the lowest imaginable forms of society."
Overview study also rejects the economic rationalism (way ahead of its time) also sets aside the theories of Marxism because of the very reason. "Homo Oeconomicus is not behind us but lies ahead, as does man of morality and duty, the man of science and reason."
Ko Maru kai atu; Ko Maru kai mai; ka ngohe ngohe meaning ‘Give as much as you take, all shall be very well' is a Māori proverb.
This is one of the enduring secrets of maintaining wisdom and solidarity in various societies, the author concludes.
This is my first time reading an explosive book at the foundation level of what economics really is and the role it plays in the lowest base functional unit in society. I've become too lazy these days to type it all out probably I'll save some of this for my paper works. Here some of the fragments of my understanding of the work.
This work is also one of the books that share a subtle philosophy of returning to the practices and culture of the so called, but mostly misunderstood, Primitive.
French Anthropologist Marcel Mauss did an extensive study on the gift economies of tribal communities spread over Polynesian, Melanesian, Andamanese, Australian, North Western American landscapes. The Gift economy is similar to the economy of capitalism in principle at the least where people as clans, tribes, work and toil followed by contributing giving way as gift, kula ring of redistribution, general reciprocity without negotiation or by means of ritual exchange. The common principle involved here is the idea of Adam Smith's self-interest but it also indicates some sort of disinterestedness in the communities that prevent them from accumulating more surplus for their own good. These exchanges were rather done as festivals, potlatches showcasing the simpler versions of conspicuous consumption and destruction (in case of sacrifices). The author sort of gives a general hypothesis backed by positivist approach the prehistorical times were marked by gift economy and its common influence were being observed in ancient Semitic norms, older and old roman laws, Vedas, Celtics, Gauls, Germanians et al.
In practical reality, the concept of gift economy is more than prevalent especially in Mainstream Cultures where it is an obligatory norm to socialise and give gift through means of money, material goods during family functions which would be reciprocated when the other's turn arrives.
In the way the work is approached in terms of critiquing the modern economy (despite the book being published in 1954), nothing felt more urgent than this following quote from the conclusions "We must not desire the citizen to be either too good or too individualistic nor too insensitive or too realist. Man must have a keen sense of awareness of himself, but also of others, and of the social reality and in moral matters, is there any other kind of reality?.. this moralitynis eternal; it is common to the most advanced societies to those of the immediate future and to the lowest imaginable forms of society."
Overview study also rejects the economic rationalism (way ahead of its time) also sets aside the theories of Marxism because of the very reason. "Homo Oeconomicus is not behind us but lies ahead, as does man of morality and duty, the man of science and reason."
Ko Maru kai atu; Ko Maru kai mai; ka ngohe ngohe meaning ‘Give as much as you take, all shall be very well' is a Māori proverb.
This is one of the enduring secrets of maintaining wisdom and solidarity in various societies, the author concludes.
March 20, 2016
Utterly impenetrable. I read the translation by Ian Cunnison with an introduction by Evans-Pritchard. The first red flag raced to the top of the flagpole in the Translator's Note before the main event: 'In the French edition the compendious notes were printed on the text pages. Here they are placed after the text and numbered separately by chapters.' Brilliant.
Endnotes are detestable things that demand an awkward and arthritic kung-fu hand grip in order to balance the blasted book between your fingers as though trying to master a one-handed card shuffle. A sore neck swiftly follows as you constantly move backwards and forwards between the text and the notes at the back -ping-pong-ping-pong-ping-pong. In this case, a sore neck inflames into chronic whiplash as Mauss scatters text notes like confetti. Finally, the endnotes here are themselves of an Infinite Jest proportion.
And then there's the text itself which trips over itself, degenerating into a word salad halfway through the first chapter. Another endnote from that section declares, 'European vocabularies have not the ability to describe the complexity of these ideas.' He said it, not me.
I dig Durkheim, froth at Foucault and lavish lit-love upon Leakey and Levi-Strauss but this left me cold even though I'm intrigued by the subject. The Gift belongs to the desiccated supercalifragilisticexpialidocious school of writing or maybe it was just the translator...
Endnotes are detestable things that demand an awkward and arthritic kung-fu hand grip in order to balance the blasted book between your fingers as though trying to master a one-handed card shuffle. A sore neck swiftly follows as you constantly move backwards and forwards between the text and the notes at the back -ping-pong-ping-pong-ping-pong. In this case, a sore neck inflames into chronic whiplash as Mauss scatters text notes like confetti. Finally, the endnotes here are themselves of an Infinite Jest proportion.
And then there's the text itself which trips over itself, degenerating into a word salad halfway through the first chapter. Another endnote from that section declares, 'European vocabularies have not the ability to describe the complexity of these ideas.' He said it, not me.
I dig Durkheim, froth at Foucault and lavish lit-love upon Leakey and Levi-Strauss but this left me cold even though I'm intrigued by the subject. The Gift belongs to the desiccated supercalifragilisticexpialidocious school of writing or maybe it was just the translator...
January 28, 2021
في الكتاب ده بيقدم "مارسيل موس" لعلم الاجتماع مفهوم جديد وهو مفهوم "الظاهرة الاجتماعية الكلية"، واللي أثر في نظريات البنية اللي ظهرت بعده ومثلها في الأ��ثروبولوجيا "كلود ليفي شتراوس" كمثال.
كان شتراوس كتب مقدمة مهمة لكتاب "سوسيولوجيا وأنثروبولوجيا" اللي فيه تجميع لأعمال موس، وقال عن كتابه "بحث في الهبة بإنه "فتح عهدا جديدا للعلوم الاجتماعية".
في الكتاب ده بيركز موس على مفهوم الهبة في المجتمعات القديمة ودورها الديني والاقتصادي والقانوني الهام اللي بتلعبه وتعليل لشكلها اللي ما زال مستمر لليوم ولكن بشكل رمزي في فكرة الهدية وقبولها وردها، في حين إن تقديم الهبة في المجتمعات القديمة كان واجب، وقبولها وردها بأحسن منها إلزاميين ومشكلين للمكانة الاجتماعية والاقتصادية والسياسية، ثم بيتتبع موس كونها حالة من التبادل لكن بشكل مختلف لا تحكمه الجوانب النفعية البحتة المتعارف عليها في العصر الرأسمالي الحديث، بل بتحكمه جوانب أكبر وأهم من ذلك.
يعتبر موس من أوائل علماء السوسيولوجيا والأنثروبولوجيا اللي خرجوا من الإطار التطوري السائد في عصره ونظر بشكل مختلف للمجتمعات القديمة كمجتمعات غير متخلفة، ولكنها مختلفة عن العصر الحالي، وده اللي طوره من بعده شتراوس.
كتاب مهم فعلا، وللأسف شغل موس الآخر في القربان والسحر والصلاة وإسهاماته الهامة في سوسيولوجيا الدين غير مترجمة، وأتمنى فعلا إني أقدر أساهم قدام بترجمة شغل ليه بعد ما أتمكن من اللغة والترجمة بشكل كبير.
كان شتراوس كتب مقدمة مهمة لكتاب "سوسيولوجيا وأنثروبولوجيا" اللي فيه تجميع لأعمال موس، وقال عن كتابه "بحث في الهبة بإنه "فتح عهدا جديدا للعلوم الاجتماعية".
في الكتاب ده بيركز موس على مفهوم الهبة في المجتمعات القديمة ودورها الديني والاقتصادي والقانوني الهام اللي بتلعبه وتعليل لشكلها اللي ما زال مستمر لليوم ولكن بشكل رمزي في فكرة الهدية وقبولها وردها، في حين إن تقديم الهبة في المجتمعات القديمة كان واجب، وقبولها وردها بأحسن منها إلزاميين ومشكلين للمكانة الاجتماعية والاقتصادية والسياسية، ثم بيتتبع موس كونها حالة من التبادل لكن بشكل مختلف لا تحكمه الجوانب النفعية البحتة المتعارف عليها في العصر الرأسمالي الحديث، بل بتحكمه جوانب أكبر وأهم من ذلك.
يعتبر موس من أوائل علماء السوسيولوجيا والأنثروبولوجيا اللي خرجوا من الإطار التطوري السائد في عصره ونظر بشكل مختلف للمجتمعات القديمة كمجتمعات غير متخلفة، ولكنها مختلفة عن العصر الحالي، وده اللي طوره من بعده شتراوس.
كتاب مهم فعلا، وللأسف شغل موس الآخر في القربان والسحر والصلاة وإسهاماته الهامة في سوسيولوجيا الدين غير مترجمة، وأتمنى فعلا إني أقدر أساهم قدام بترجمة شغل ليه بعد ما أتمكن من اللغة والترجمة بشكل كبير.
Read
December 17, 2022Originally published as Essai sur le Don, M. Mauss’ excellent work is brief, at eighty-three pages of text, because it is just that – an essay. Here he surveys and reflects on the acts of giving and receiving through history, dwelling at length upon the North American Indian potlatch. M. Mauss also referenced Argonauts of the Western Pacific extensively, which as you know I have read and reviewed, inflating my ego wonderfully since I actually somewhat understood the references to the Trobriand Islands. He expressed the cultural importance of gifting through the ages and the changes we have experienced more recently as individuals have generally become more selfish and materialist. In particular, I thought his words in support of social services worth noting in light of recent reading:
I wondered in this book whether we’ve had it all wrong, all upside down. It’s not modern societies that have become civilized, it was the ancients who had it all along; rather, modernity has brought a decline in civilization. The ancients understood a harmony embedded in acts of generosity, though often born of necessity, a harmony that is beyond understanding today. I, for one, really need to be better at gifting – it’s part of who we are at our core.
All our social insurance legislation, a piece of state socialism that has already been realized, is inspired by the following principle: the worker has given his life and his labor, on the one hand to the collectivity, and on the other hand, to his employers. Although the worker has to contribute to his insurance, those who have benefitted from his services have not discharged their debt to him through the payment of wages. The state itself, representing the community, owes him, as do his employers, together with some assistance from himself, a certain security in life, against unemployment, sickness, old age, and death.
I wondered in this book whether we’ve had it all wrong, all upside down. It’s not modern societies that have become civilized, it was the ancients who had it all along; rather, modernity has brought a decline in civilization. The ancients understood a harmony embedded in acts of generosity, though often born of necessity, a harmony that is beyond understanding today. I, for one, really need to be better at gifting – it’s part of who we are at our core.
Read
February 9, 2025I think I had a stroke while reading this cause wtf was that?!
July 18, 2016
It’s been a long time since I’ve been this deeply torn about a book. On the one hand, Marcel Mauss’s The Gift is an extraordinarily researched, wide ranging and - as I write these words more than a hundred years after it’s publication - rightly recognized work of anthropological invention. On the other hand… actually reading The Gift probably counts as one of the most miserable reading experiences I’ve ever had. It’s not that Mauss’s writing is bad - it’s a little dry, perhaps - so much as the fact that every leaf of The Gift’s eighty pages is festooned with footnotes designed, as far as I can tell, to drive a reader up the wall. With about ten or so references sprinkled throughout almost every page - some of which refer to multi-paragraph remarks at the back of the book, or others which simply and infuriatingly say ’see elsewhere’ - The Gift’s fractured narrative flow makes for one of the most exhaustingly unpleasant reading ordeals I know.
It’s bad form, I know, to focus on a book’s organization rather than ideas, especially a book of this caliber and standing, but The Gift’s is a special kind of awful that needs to be flagged. Anyway, with that out of the way, we can get to the meat of it. The book’s basic thesis is well known. It’s that the institution of gift giving has almost never been one of pure generosity, and that in fact, gifts have always existed in economies of exchange in which obligation and reciprocity rule over their continued circulation through and across society. Compiling a dizzying array of ethnographic data from Melanesia, Polynesia, and the American Northwest, together with studies of old Teutonic and Brahmic law, The Gift is more or less a compendium of evidence tailored to establishing the dynamic and restless life of gifts.
While there have been numerous takeaways from this simple idea - one only has to mention the names of Claude Levi-Strauss, Karl Polanyi, Georges Bataille and of course, Mary Douglas, whose brilliant forward opens this edition - two in particular stand out to me. The first is Mauss's attempt to distinguish the gift from run of the mill 'commodities' which they might otherwise be confused with. For Mauss, gifts - at least in the societies he studies - are always imbued with a measure of spirituality, possessing personalities, histories, names and mythical backgrounds, making them far more than the impersonal goods of (modern?) market economies. As agents in their own right, gifts prompt and instigate the very circulation into which they are put, their very being imposing the demands and obligations upon those who would trade in them.
Of interest here is the way this conception of the gift casts light upon the specificity of our own market economies, historicizing the forms of exchange we might otherwise take for granted. Hence our second highlight: rather than the utilitarian calculus of equivalent exchange which 'we', today, are used to, Mauss emphases the element of gratuitousness and excess that such gift giving practices involve, with villages and clansmen aiming to 'out-gift' their peers for the sake cultivating honor, or more specifically, 'mana'. Mauss even draws attention to the combative element of gift-giving, to the extent that one might even paraphrase Clausewitz - in a way Mauss does not - by saying that (some forms of) gifting are the continuation of warfare by means other than war. It's simply fascinating stuff - if you can get past the footnote insanity.
It’s bad form, I know, to focus on a book’s organization rather than ideas, especially a book of this caliber and standing, but The Gift’s is a special kind of awful that needs to be flagged. Anyway, with that out of the way, we can get to the meat of it. The book’s basic thesis is well known. It’s that the institution of gift giving has almost never been one of pure generosity, and that in fact, gifts have always existed in economies of exchange in which obligation and reciprocity rule over their continued circulation through and across society. Compiling a dizzying array of ethnographic data from Melanesia, Polynesia, and the American Northwest, together with studies of old Teutonic and Brahmic law, The Gift is more or less a compendium of evidence tailored to establishing the dynamic and restless life of gifts.
While there have been numerous takeaways from this simple idea - one only has to mention the names of Claude Levi-Strauss, Karl Polanyi, Georges Bataille and of course, Mary Douglas, whose brilliant forward opens this edition - two in particular stand out to me. The first is Mauss's attempt to distinguish the gift from run of the mill 'commodities' which they might otherwise be confused with. For Mauss, gifts - at least in the societies he studies - are always imbued with a measure of spirituality, possessing personalities, histories, names and mythical backgrounds, making them far more than the impersonal goods of (modern?) market economies. As agents in their own right, gifts prompt and instigate the very circulation into which they are put, their very being imposing the demands and obligations upon those who would trade in them.
Of interest here is the way this conception of the gift casts light upon the specificity of our own market economies, historicizing the forms of exchange we might otherwise take for granted. Hence our second highlight: rather than the utilitarian calculus of equivalent exchange which 'we', today, are used to, Mauss emphases the element of gratuitousness and excess that such gift giving practices involve, with villages and clansmen aiming to 'out-gift' their peers for the sake cultivating honor, or more specifically, 'mana'. Mauss even draws attention to the combative element of gift-giving, to the extent that one might even paraphrase Clausewitz - in a way Mauss does not - by saying that (some forms of) gifting are the continuation of warfare by means other than war. It's simply fascinating stuff - if you can get past the footnote insanity.
January 11, 2020
It is a good study of how exchanging gifts among individuals of s society succeeds in making their place in this very society , how this fact of exchanges responds in creating certain links that create landcape in the horizon of the given society. Because gift exchange becomes a norm and throws light on relations with these individuals and their acceptance and life among this group and yjeir future prosperity. Interesting. Highly recommended for ancient literature and more modern one that puts to scrutiny individual attitude to habits of receiving or thanking for being welcomed. Very good and thought-provoking book that gives insight into how relations are made because thez are based on superioritz inferioritz and egality among members of a group. To the full prosperity certain norms have to be sharedd among them and obeyed
March 7, 2023
Selon Mauss le don est un fait social total ( exactement comme le disait son oncle Émile Durkheim). Il est parti intégrante de toute les structures de la société humaine : politique, morale, économique, spirituel, culturel, artistique. Il fait loi , il est intrinsèque. Le schéma : don- acceptation - contre don a été et est encore la forme naturelle d’organisation de l’être humain à travers les âges. Elle a été pervertis par l’économie de marché, l’individualisme, l’aliénation du mode de production capitaliste mais est toujours présent dans divers sphère de nos relations sociales quotidiennes. Super œuvre , me fait penser à l’entraide de kropotkine. Demeure une œuvre qui prône l’universel et me semble quelque peu essentialisante. Quand même difficile à lire dans la formulation des phrase et du propos en général. Je le recommande.
March 17, 2024
Read it again for no reason whatsoever
November 9, 2024
Thanks Alan
Read
April 13, 2024Read this for an essay on gift exchange and its status is the west!
Read
March 5, 2022Very sweet and meta “gift” from a special person. Great essay about the importance of reciprocal gift giving in the functioning of society
February 8, 2023
O carte despre dar, despre rolul darului în societățile primitive și despre actualitatea lui în zilele noastre. Încă din cele mai vechi timpuri, oamenii au învațat să facă schimburi, să accepte și să ofere la rândul lor.
July 18, 2025
للهبة أبعادٌ أخرى في المجتمع الإنساني، ويبدو أن العلاقات الاقتصادية المعاصرة ليست سوى محاكاة لهذه العملية التي تُسهم، بدرجةٍ ما، في إرساء شكل من أشكال السلم الاجتماعي.
كتاب يستحق القراءة بكل تأكيد.
كتاب يستحق القراءة بكل تأكيد.
September 17, 2021
For me it was a very interesting book and I definitely see the idea of gift differently. There are just so many situations where the gifts play a very important role. However it is quite dry and sometimes really boring.
July 29, 2021
This was an insightful analysis of gift-giving that I didn't know I needed to read until I read it.
Read
June 14, 2023its giving
March 4, 2013
Marcel Mauss’ “The Gift” (1925) is one of the most influential pieces of anthropology written in the twentieth century. It explores the economies of pre-capitalist cultures and peoples from several different parts of the world, including Melanesia, Polynesia, and the Pacific Northwest. This specific edition, with an introduction by Mary Douglas (a magnificent anthropologist in her own right), is especially recommended, and sheds a tremendous amount of light on Mauss’ sometimes unclear conclusions. In fact, if you can’t read the book, Douglas’ introduction stands by itself as a wonderful summary of Mauss’ ideas.
For those interested in the history of anthropology and its development over time, Mauss was one of Durkheim’s greatest students (Durkheim was also Mauss’ uncle) and his influence can be seen quite a bit in this work. While Durkheim believed in the individual and the potential for individual action, he was a vocal critic of individualism per se. For example, he recognized that it couldn’t explain rule-governed action, a phenomenon rife in every culture. Durkheim’s positivism is also on display; Mauss never feels his point is made unless he has shown it several times over with people from different parts of the world.
The main idea here is the centrality of what Mauss calls the “gift.” What is a gift? It is an item given within a complex set of social relations and institutions which at the same time comprises those relations and institutions. Mauss also emphasizes that most all cultures see gifts as obligatory and mutual. “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” (viii). Just as important is the way in which gifts function within an economic system. He even hints at how these “gift economies” softly echo the dynamics of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. “Gift complements market in so far as it operates where the latter is absent” (xiv).
The following quote, again from Douglas’ introduction, is central and important: “Like the market it [the gift] supplies each individual with personal incentives for collaborating in the patter of exchanges. Gifts are given in a context of public drama, with nothing secret about them. In being more directly cued to public esteem, the distribution of honor, and the sanctions of religion, the gift economy is more visible than the market. Just by being visible, the resultant distribution of goods and services is more readily subject to public scrutiny and judgments of fairness than are the results of market exchange. In operating a gift system a people are more aware of what they are doing, as shown by the sacralization for their institutions of giving” (xiv).
As mentioned above, Mauss’ work is exhaustively ethnographic. He talks about the Maori’s concept of the “hau,” or the spirit that inheres in things and that must be passed on. “What imposes obligation in the present received and exchanged is the fact that the thing received is not inactive. Even when it has been abandoned by the giver, it still possesses something of him. Through it the giver has a hold over the beneficiary just as, being its owner, through it he has a hold over the thief” (p. 11-12). Mauss again emphasizes the importance of reciprocity: “In this system of ideas one clearly and logically realized that one must give back to another person what is really part and parcel of his nature and substance, because to accept something from somebody is to accept some part of his spiritual essence, of his soul. To retain that thing would be dangerous and mortal, not only because it would be against law and morality, but also because that thing coming from the person not only morally, but physically and spiritually, that essence, that food, those goods, whether movable or immovable, those women or those descendants, those rituals or those acts of communion – all exert a magical or religious hold over you” (p. 12).
In the second chapter, Mauss discusses the Trobriand people (who are perhaps best known from Malinowski’s ethnographic work “Argonauts of the Western Pacific”). Things look remarkably the same. “At the bottom of this system of internal kula [the Trobriand gift economy], the system of gift-through-exchange permeates all the economic, tribal, and moral life of the Trobriand people. It is ‘impregnated’ with it, as Malinowski very neatly expressed it. It is a constant ‘give and take.’ The process is marked by a continuous flow in all directions of presents given, accepted, and reciprocated, obligatorily and out of self-interest, by reason of greatness and for services rendered, through challenges and pledges” (p. 29).
Many western civilizations seem to have some economies in which item exchange obligatory, and others where it isn’t. Mauss recognizes this, and addresses it. He asks rhetorically, “Yet are not such distinctions fairly recent in the legal systems of our great civilizations? Have these not gone through a previous phase in which they did not display such a cold, calculating mentality? Have they not in fact practiced these customs of the gift that is exchanged, in which persons and things merge?” (p. 47-48). He claims that a more detailed analysis of Indo-European legal theory will indeed show that this transition can be located historically. Whether Mauss ever finds this transition point, at least in this essay, is questionable.
In the last chapter, Mauss attempts to tie the gift economy to trends in social democracy, and here he completely fails, as Douglas again points out in the introduction. He says that the concept of a social safety net provided by the mutual sharing of tax dollars is analogous to the gift economy. However, he completely ignores the coercive power of the modern state in making this comparison. Part of the reason why potlatch confers such honor with many of these people is because the person or family of their own accord decide how much to sacrifice in the act of gift-giving. The state, on the other hand, makes laws, which makes this giving non-obligatory. If you don’t “give,” you must pay the punishment. Mauss’ politics shine through here, but unfortunately they have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Mauss’ style is dry and demonstrative. Much of the book is taken up with etymologies of Indo-European words, sometimes in a convoluted attempt to support his ideas. Even when the ideas are clearly presented, the translator sometimes leaves many words untranslated, which has you paging back and forth to remind you of their meaning. Thankfully, the book is only around eighty pages. It was a huge influence on Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property,” which turns thirty this year, and which looks to be much more interesting.
For those interested in the history of anthropology and its development over time, Mauss was one of Durkheim’s greatest students (Durkheim was also Mauss’ uncle) and his influence can be seen quite a bit in this work. While Durkheim believed in the individual and the potential for individual action, he was a vocal critic of individualism per se. For example, he recognized that it couldn’t explain rule-governed action, a phenomenon rife in every culture. Durkheim’s positivism is also on display; Mauss never feels his point is made unless he has shown it several times over with people from different parts of the world.
The main idea here is the centrality of what Mauss calls the “gift.” What is a gift? It is an item given within a complex set of social relations and institutions which at the same time comprises those relations and institutions. Mauss also emphasizes that most all cultures see gifts as obligatory and mutual. “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” (viii). Just as important is the way in which gifts function within an economic system. He even hints at how these “gift economies” softly echo the dynamics of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. “Gift complements market in so far as it operates where the latter is absent” (xiv).
The following quote, again from Douglas’ introduction, is central and important: “Like the market it [the gift] supplies each individual with personal incentives for collaborating in the patter of exchanges. Gifts are given in a context of public drama, with nothing secret about them. In being more directly cued to public esteem, the distribution of honor, and the sanctions of religion, the gift economy is more visible than the market. Just by being visible, the resultant distribution of goods and services is more readily subject to public scrutiny and judgments of fairness than are the results of market exchange. In operating a gift system a people are more aware of what they are doing, as shown by the sacralization for their institutions of giving” (xiv).
As mentioned above, Mauss’ work is exhaustively ethnographic. He talks about the Maori’s concept of the “hau,” or the spirit that inheres in things and that must be passed on. “What imposes obligation in the present received and exchanged is the fact that the thing received is not inactive. Even when it has been abandoned by the giver, it still possesses something of him. Through it the giver has a hold over the beneficiary just as, being its owner, through it he has a hold over the thief” (p. 11-12). Mauss again emphasizes the importance of reciprocity: “In this system of ideas one clearly and logically realized that one must give back to another person what is really part and parcel of his nature and substance, because to accept something from somebody is to accept some part of his spiritual essence, of his soul. To retain that thing would be dangerous and mortal, not only because it would be against law and morality, but also because that thing coming from the person not only morally, but physically and spiritually, that essence, that food, those goods, whether movable or immovable, those women or those descendants, those rituals or those acts of communion – all exert a magical or religious hold over you” (p. 12).
In the second chapter, Mauss discusses the Trobriand people (who are perhaps best known from Malinowski’s ethnographic work “Argonauts of the Western Pacific”). Things look remarkably the same. “At the bottom of this system of internal kula [the Trobriand gift economy], the system of gift-through-exchange permeates all the economic, tribal, and moral life of the Trobriand people. It is ‘impregnated’ with it, as Malinowski very neatly expressed it. It is a constant ‘give and take.’ The process is marked by a continuous flow in all directions of presents given, accepted, and reciprocated, obligatorily and out of self-interest, by reason of greatness and for services rendered, through challenges and pledges” (p. 29).
Many western civilizations seem to have some economies in which item exchange obligatory, and others where it isn’t. Mauss recognizes this, and addresses it. He asks rhetorically, “Yet are not such distinctions fairly recent in the legal systems of our great civilizations? Have these not gone through a previous phase in which they did not display such a cold, calculating mentality? Have they not in fact practiced these customs of the gift that is exchanged, in which persons and things merge?” (p. 47-48). He claims that a more detailed analysis of Indo-European legal theory will indeed show that this transition can be located historically. Whether Mauss ever finds this transition point, at least in this essay, is questionable.
In the last chapter, Mauss attempts to tie the gift economy to trends in social democracy, and here he completely fails, as Douglas again points out in the introduction. He says that the concept of a social safety net provided by the mutual sharing of tax dollars is analogous to the gift economy. However, he completely ignores the coercive power of the modern state in making this comparison. Part of the reason why potlatch confers such honor with many of these people is because the person or family of their own accord decide how much to sacrifice in the act of gift-giving. The state, on the other hand, makes laws, which makes this giving non-obligatory. If you don’t “give,” you must pay the punishment. Mauss’ politics shine through here, but unfortunately they have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Mauss’ style is dry and demonstrative. Much of the book is taken up with etymologies of Indo-European words, sometimes in a convoluted attempt to support his ideas. Even when the ideas are clearly presented, the translator sometimes leaves many words untranslated, which has you paging back and forth to remind you of their meaning. Thankfully, the book is only around eighty pages. It was a huge influence on Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property,” which turns thirty this year, and which looks to be much more interesting.
February 7, 2021
Marcel Mauss seeks to develop in this long essay with copious footnotes an account of the social practice of Gift-giving in ancient and modern societies and its implications.
Evidently influenced by his association with Durkheim, gift giving is never free or selfless. It is a social way of maintaining solidarity and cohesion within between societies and therefore gifts must always be reciprocated.
Mauss draws examples from a wide variety of cultures: Polynesia, Melanesia, New Zealand, The US northwest, Ancient Rome, Ancient India, Northern Europe etc. to explain his point.
Gift-giving is an example of a 'total social phenomena' in these societies where many dimensions of social life are involved: religious, juridical, moral, economic, aesthetic etc. The 'market' existed in these 'primitive societies' even before the use of money, traders as a separate class or even barter existed. Their societies do not exist in a simplistic state of nature, but in a complicated system based on honour. E.g. in the Trobrian Islands, trade/gifting is carried on seemingly nobly and disinterestedly, not just the mere exchange of economic goods. The recipients are obliged (socially) to reciprocate soon despite the noble nature of the trade. This gift system thus is their stock exchange, their market. Buying and selling with money has been replaced with this and they have just one single term to denote buying and selling.
Perhaps the most apt metaphor for the Gift itself is drawn from the New Zealand Maori: when someone gifts someone something, the object is said to contain a special magic power, HAU or spirit. This hau will curse me unless I return a gift of equivalent value to you. Thus, no gift is free and must always be revanchiert. Lest this seem quaint, remember what value objects once possessed by celebrities, close personal friends or religious leaders, impart to us when we possess them; as they seem infused with a sort of life-force.
Originally—so much is sure—things themselves had a personality and an inherent power. Things are not the inert objects that the law of Justinian and our own legal systems conceive them to be. First, they form part of the family: the Roman familia includes the res, and not only people.
Not only is there an obligation to gift freely (indeed ruinously) and to reciprocate, but an obligation to accept the reciprocated gift. The Northwest US Potlatch is regulated by HONOUR of the chiefs, not just the power of the gift itself. It is obligatory to invite everyone, leaving anyone out can lead to much strife. (Cf. Eris in the Iliad). The hosts aside from conspicuously consuming to prove their wealth; also conspicuously destroy. There is no free gift- even the gifts one given in these societies to one's wife is in exchange for sexual services.
This is also reflected in the scriptures of Rome and India in relation to the Gods, do ut des ( I give so that you may give. ) and in relation to the dead. This also serves to maintain cohesion between us and God. Various potlach-like events abound in folklore:
The Mahabharata is the story of a gigantic potlatch: the game of dice of the Kauravas against the Pandavas; jousting tournaments and the choice of bridegrooms by Draupadi, the sister and polyandrous wife of the Pandavas. Other repetitions of the same legendary cycle are to be met with in the finest episodes of the epic—for example, the romance of Nala and Damayanti, as does the whole Mahabharata, tells of the construction and assembling of a house, a game of dice, etc. But everything is distorted by the literary and theological flavour of the story.
Even in Germania, this persisted. Gift givers often try to outdo one another.
The guarantee of repayment, so as to say, was not in a mortgage but in the object gifted itself. Those who accepts gifts without repaying are held to be inferior. This explains why e.g. in modern German; das Gift also means poison as both parties were wary of the dangers of being unable to repay.
This explains the double meaning of the word Gift in all these languages—on the one hand, a gift, on the other, poison. This theme of the fatal gift, the present or item of property that is changed into poison is fundamental in Germanic folklore. The Rhine gold is fatal to the one who conquers it, Hagen’s cup is mortal to the hero who drinks from it. A thousand stories and romances of this kind, both Germanic and Celtic, still haunt our sensibilities.
The last chapter deals with how these beliefs are still applicable and exercise strong influence in today's world. Gift-giving and reciprocating is still a moral demand. Charity still wounds those who accept it. We always try to one-up other's gifts: The round of drinks is ever dearer and larger in size. Utmost extravagance from hosts is still expected, and effort to: As in ancient Gaul or Germany, or at our own banquets for students, soldiers, and peasants, one is committed to gulping down large quantities of food, in order to ‘do honour’, in a somewhat grotesque way, to one’s host.
In contrast to the abstractions of our legal code, common morality remains in accordance to these old principles. As Mary Douglass notes in the insightful introduction, Mauss seeks to establish how the modern welfare state is a continuation of these principles. The over-generosity of communism as well as the impoverished egoism of traditional liberalism would be harmful to the person. He advocates this notion is neither that of the free, purely gratuitous rendering of total services, nor that of production and exchange purely interested in what is useful. It is a sort of hybrid that flourished.
In line with Veblen's conceptions of conspicuous consumption, he advocates against the Homo Oeconomicus and a return to the previous altruistic morality.
It is our western societies who have recently made man an ‘economic animal’. But we are not yet all creatures of this genus.
Among the masses and the elites in our society purely irrational expenditure is commonly practised. It is still characteristic of a few of the fossilized remnants of our aristocracy. Homo oeconomicus is not behind us, but lies ahead, as does the man of morality and duty, the man of science and reason. For a very long time man was something different, and he has not been a machine for very long, made complicated by a calculating machine.
He advocates a Gift Economy
whereby goods and services could be exchanged without immediate hope of monetary gain and profit. (It is ironic that I link to Wikipedia as it itself is a prime example of what fruits such a gift non-profit economy could yield).
There is some very interesting empirical support for anarcho-communist arguments in this essay. Remarkable how egoism and altruism can be mixed together without money and profit-incentive. Also curious to note how much of our common morality is actually rather ancient.
Evidently influenced by his association with Durkheim, gift giving is never free or selfless. It is a social way of maintaining solidarity and cohesion within between societies and therefore gifts must always be reciprocated.
Mauss draws examples from a wide variety of cultures: Polynesia, Melanesia, New Zealand, The US northwest, Ancient Rome, Ancient India, Northern Europe etc. to explain his point.
Gift-giving is an example of a 'total social phenomena' in these societies where many dimensions of social life are involved: religious, juridical, moral, economic, aesthetic etc. The 'market' existed in these 'primitive societies' even before the use of money, traders as a separate class or even barter existed. Their societies do not exist in a simplistic state of nature, but in a complicated system based on honour. E.g. in the Trobrian Islands, trade/gifting is carried on seemingly nobly and disinterestedly, not just the mere exchange of economic goods. The recipients are obliged (socially) to reciprocate soon despite the noble nature of the trade. This gift system thus is their stock exchange, their market. Buying and selling with money has been replaced with this and they have just one single term to denote buying and selling.
Perhaps the most apt metaphor for the Gift itself is drawn from the New Zealand Maori: when someone gifts someone something, the object is said to contain a special magic power, HAU or spirit. This hau will curse me unless I return a gift of equivalent value to you. Thus, no gift is free and must always be revanchiert. Lest this seem quaint, remember what value objects once possessed by celebrities, close personal friends or religious leaders, impart to us when we possess them; as they seem infused with a sort of life-force.
Originally—so much is sure—things themselves had a personality and an inherent power. Things are not the inert objects that the law of Justinian and our own legal systems conceive them to be. First, they form part of the family: the Roman familia includes the res, and not only people.
Not only is there an obligation to gift freely (indeed ruinously) and to reciprocate, but an obligation to accept the reciprocated gift. The Northwest US Potlatch is regulated by HONOUR of the chiefs, not just the power of the gift itself. It is obligatory to invite everyone, leaving anyone out can lead to much strife. (Cf. Eris in the Iliad). The hosts aside from conspicuously consuming to prove their wealth; also conspicuously destroy. There is no free gift- even the gifts one given in these societies to one's wife is in exchange for sexual services.
This is also reflected in the scriptures of Rome and India in relation to the Gods, do ut des ( I give so that you may give. ) and in relation to the dead. This also serves to maintain cohesion between us and God. Various potlach-like events abound in folklore:
The Mahabharata is the story of a gigantic potlatch: the game of dice of the Kauravas against the Pandavas; jousting tournaments and the choice of bridegrooms by Draupadi, the sister and polyandrous wife of the Pandavas. Other repetitions of the same legendary cycle are to be met with in the finest episodes of the epic—for example, the romance of Nala and Damayanti, as does the whole Mahabharata, tells of the construction and assembling of a house, a game of dice, etc. But everything is distorted by the literary and theological flavour of the story.
Even in Germania, this persisted. Gift givers often try to outdo one another.
The guarantee of repayment, so as to say, was not in a mortgage but in the object gifted itself. Those who accepts gifts without repaying are held to be inferior. This explains why e.g. in modern German; das Gift also means poison as both parties were wary of the dangers of being unable to repay.
This explains the double meaning of the word Gift in all these languages—on the one hand, a gift, on the other, poison. This theme of the fatal gift, the present or item of property that is changed into poison is fundamental in Germanic folklore. The Rhine gold is fatal to the one who conquers it, Hagen’s cup is mortal to the hero who drinks from it. A thousand stories and romances of this kind, both Germanic and Celtic, still haunt our sensibilities.
The last chapter deals with how these beliefs are still applicable and exercise strong influence in today's world. Gift-giving and reciprocating is still a moral demand. Charity still wounds those who accept it. We always try to one-up other's gifts: The round of drinks is ever dearer and larger in size. Utmost extravagance from hosts is still expected, and effort to: As in ancient Gaul or Germany, or at our own banquets for students, soldiers, and peasants, one is committed to gulping down large quantities of food, in order to ‘do honour’, in a somewhat grotesque way, to one’s host.
In contrast to the abstractions of our legal code, common morality remains in accordance to these old principles. As Mary Douglass notes in the insightful introduction, Mauss seeks to establish how the modern welfare state is a continuation of these principles. The over-generosity of communism as well as the impoverished egoism of traditional liberalism would be harmful to the person. He advocates this notion is neither that of the free, purely gratuitous rendering of total services, nor that of production and exchange purely interested in what is useful. It is a sort of hybrid that flourished.
In line with Veblen's conceptions of conspicuous consumption, he advocates against the Homo Oeconomicus and a return to the previous altruistic morality.
It is our western societies who have recently made man an ‘economic animal’. But we are not yet all creatures of this genus.
Among the masses and the elites in our society purely irrational expenditure is commonly practised. It is still characteristic of a few of the fossilized remnants of our aristocracy. Homo oeconomicus is not behind us, but lies ahead, as does the man of morality and duty, the man of science and reason. For a very long time man was something different, and he has not been a machine for very long, made complicated by a calculating machine.
He advocates a Gift Economy
whereby goods and services could be exchanged without immediate hope of monetary gain and profit. (It is ironic that I link to Wikipedia as it itself is a prime example of what fruits such a gift non-profit economy could yield).
There is some very interesting empirical support for anarcho-communist arguments in this essay. Remarkable how egoism and altruism can be mixed together without money and profit-incentive. Also curious to note how much of our common morality is actually rather ancient.
January 10, 2023
“We live in societies that draw a strict distinction (the contrast is now criticized by jurists themselves) between real rights and personal rights, things and persons. Such a separation is basic: it constitutes the essential condition for a part of our system of property, transfer and exchange. Now, this is foreign to the system of law we have been studying. Likewise our civilizations, ever since the Semitic, Greek, and Roman civilizations, draw a strong distinction between obligations and services that are not given free, on the one hand, and gifts, on the other. Yet are not such distinctions fairly recent in the legal systems of our great civilizations? Have these not gone through a previous phase in which they did not display such a cold, calculating mentality? Have they not in fact practiced these customs of the gift that is exchanged, in which persons and things merge? The analysis of a few features of Indo-European legal systems will allow us to demonstrate that they have, indeed, undergone this metamorphosis. In Rome we shall find traces of this. In India and ancient Germany it will be the laws themselves, still very much alive, that we shall still see functioning in a comparatively recent era.” (p. 47-8)
Simply incredible. This is the what makes the book really useful and eye-opening for me. Having recently listened to Russell Brand’s podcast interview with M.I.A., particularly at the point when M.I.A. states that she thinks we humans are obsessed with data as never before...and after my having watched the Graham Hancock documentary, Ancient Apocalypse, I think, and feel, that it is more urgent than ever before to learn the secrets of our past. Both Hancock and M.I.A. correctly point out that one of our greatest problems is challenging our amnesia of history, individually and collectively. Our species is very much threatened with extinction if we don’t overcome this challenge.
Simply incredible. This is the what makes the book really useful and eye-opening for me. Having recently listened to Russell Brand’s podcast interview with M.I.A., particularly at the point when M.I.A. states that she thinks we humans are obsessed with data as never before...and after my having watched the Graham Hancock documentary, Ancient Apocalypse, I think, and feel, that it is more urgent than ever before to learn the secrets of our past. Both Hancock and M.I.A. correctly point out that one of our greatest problems is challenging our amnesia of history, individually and collectively. Our species is very much threatened with extinction if we don’t overcome this challenge.
August 11, 2024
This isn’t an easy read. I thought it would provide a framework and general description about how various prehistoric and ‘archaic’ society utilize gift exchange as an integral part of their economies. Instead it chronicles how gift exchange operated looking at relationships and the contexts of gifting. I often found the details hard to follow.
However, wading through that difficulty was worth it because of this key insight that registered strongly with me. ‘Things sold still have a soul. They are still followed around by their former owner and they follow him also.’ This insight is endemic with the gift economy because the importance of the gift isn’t its theoretical monetary value but its context and purpose of the giving. This is a rich context that in our society’s has been striped away. The results is that monetary exchange is all that matters. Worth is only what money generates from sales. This has reduced so many complex human relationships into simple ones such as customer and seller or consumer and producer, worker and business owner, to merely the monetary price of these relationships. So powerful is money that it crowds out of our heads the many important considerations that exist with such relationships.
This book also made me think about consumer things that sit unsold on store shelves or things sold but discarded because we don’t want them anymore. I see them on the side of the road or in garbage bins. They may still work but are ‘outdated.’ They will be ground up and transformed into landfill. What does it say about human society where such things never find a home, an owner, a relationship? How far are we as individuals from a similar fate? Without complex social relationships what have humans become?
However, wading through that difficulty was worth it because of this key insight that registered strongly with me. ‘Things sold still have a soul. They are still followed around by their former owner and they follow him also.’ This insight is endemic with the gift economy because the importance of the gift isn’t its theoretical monetary value but its context and purpose of the giving. This is a rich context that in our society’s has been striped away. The results is that monetary exchange is all that matters. Worth is only what money generates from sales. This has reduced so many complex human relationships into simple ones such as customer and seller or consumer and producer, worker and business owner, to merely the monetary price of these relationships. So powerful is money that it crowds out of our heads the many important considerations that exist with such relationships.
This book also made me think about consumer things that sit unsold on store shelves or things sold but discarded because we don’t want them anymore. I see them on the side of the road or in garbage bins. They may still work but are ‘outdated.’ They will be ground up and transformed into landfill. What does it say about human society where such things never find a home, an owner, a relationship? How far are we as individuals from a similar fate? Without complex social relationships what have humans become?
January 3, 2020
An excellent text. Interesting ideas and among the most accessible anthropological writings I know (and a classic, too). The text is a about the reasons, patterns and practices of exchanging gifts in “archaic societies”. The part about this is very interesting, but it gets even more fascinating when the connection to western culture is made: How the classic roman law had elements of modern contracts as well as gift-giving and how the gift-giving culture is still much alive today (I would say most still applies, even though the book is from 1950).
I came to this book by dealing with Open Source culture, and while its gift-giving aspects are often celebrated I also enjoyed Mauss perspective and the potential dangers, subversion and violence in gift-giving.
I came to this book by dealing with Open Source culture, and while its gift-giving aspects are often celebrated I also enjoyed Mauss perspective and the potential dangers, subversion and violence in gift-giving.
December 26, 2021
The writing is complicated and dull, but the idea is simple enough: a gift is never free. You are obliged to receive gifts, to offer gifts, and to reciprocate. I still remember this from a political anthropology class from when I was too green to give a fuck, but now I get its relevance to political studies or to any social field. I don’t necessarily agree with it though. It may very well apply to most social interactions – gift as another form of currency –, but I don’t think these three obligations, which Mauss traces back to archaic societies, fully apply to our times. I would like to believe we evolved from this primitive form of favour trading, and that there are free gifts.
June 11, 2024
"it is only our Western societies that quite recently turned man into an economic animal. But we are not yet all animals of the same species. In both lower and upper classes pure irrational expenditure is in current practice [...]. Homo economicus is not behind us, but before, like the moral man, the man of duty, the scientific man and the reasonable man. For a long time man was something quite different; and it is not so long now since he became a machine - a calculating machine."
March 11, 2025
Classic, insightful, especially for those who move in non-western spheres. It explains why, in Papua New Guinea, you better think twice when a stranger offers you a 'gift' instead of saying thank you.
It also explains a fascinating custom in my own Aramba language group, where people 'give' a huge amount of yams to an enemy challenging him to return at least an equal amount of yams the next year if not more. This now makes so much more sense after reading The Gift.
It also explains a fascinating custom in my own Aramba language group, where people 'give' a huge amount of yams to an enemy challenging him to return at least an equal amount of yams the next year if not more. This now makes so much more sense after reading The Gift.
March 19, 2021
« on mêle les âmes dans les choses ; on mêle les choses dans les âmes. »
February 11, 2024
Sociocultural anthropology whattt
February 11, 2025
This one just reads kind of slow to be honest. I don’t like the othering that was going on either. The conclusion really brought all of it together but everything else dragged on.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 206 reviews