Gift Giving (Economic Anthropology)

This article focuses on the process of creating group identity in two transport workers' guilds in mid fifteenth-century Riga, demonstrating the role of donations, discipline and commemoration in constituting both groups. The Beer Carters' and Porters' guilds experienced a 'new beginning' at this time: new resources had to be attracted, new traditions created and internal hierarchies established. Donations were an important element that helped these groups to establish their own spaces of pietyto create altars and chapelsand also to acquire resources for the celebration of communal meals. At both liturgical services and communal meals groups commemorated their deceased members, thus strengthening their identities. In the Hanseatic cities there was a bond between transport workers and merchants; in Riga as well, merchants became members of the two guilds, became involved in the processes of creating group identity, made endowments and helped the guilds gain status.

SUMMARY: Chapter 9, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers the various types of trade and exchange in past societies, and how one may assess it, including different types of interactions (e.g., gift exchange), various scientific techniques (e.g., microscopic examination of materials; trace-element analysis; isotopic analysis), studying material and/or artifact distributions, assessing production and consumption, and analyzing the various means of exchange and interaction.  In my view, this is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record. UPDATED/REVISED March, 2021, some editing and new formatting, minimal new materials.

Tematem artykułu jest przedstawienie jednego z możliwych cząstkowych spojrzeń na kwestie obdarowywania, a mianowicie spojrzenie ekonomii. Niektóre z ekonomicznych modeli obdarowywania jako podstaw
przyjmuj teorie socjologiczne, w artykule zostaną one przedstawione skrótowo. Pomini
ęte zostaną podejścia psychologiczne i filozoficzne, jak również cały nurt uj
ęcia kompleksowego. Najważniejszym celem dla autorki jest przedstawienie ekonomicznych aspektów obdarowywania.

What is a perfect gift? Sociologist Marcel Mauss suggests that gifts are part of a larger social economy which includes rituals of exchange that reflect religious, juridical, economic, familial, moral, and political structures. For Mauss, the relational aspect of gift-giving is preeminent. Jacques Derrida posits that the ideal gift is the gift in isolation, free from self-interest and attachment. As such, gift is impossible for we are never able to totally detach ourselves from the circulation of exchange. A student of Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, posits that gift should not be seen as part of an economic equation, but as givenness. In fatherhood, he finds an example of pure gift without the possibility of reciprocity. A theological approach to gift allows for both relational and ideal understandings of gift while adding the clarifying element of love as expressed in the societal, unconditioned Godhead. In the character and work of God, we find the gift of self (agape), the gift of worth (eros), and the gift of friendship (philia).

Find article here: https://link.growkudos.com/1e1pgyhshds

Zusammenfassung: Solidarische Ökonomien betten wirtschaftliches Handeln in so-ziale Beziehungen ein, die natürliche und soziale Qualitäten berücksichtigen und Konkurrenzdynamiken zurückdrängen können, sofern sie demokratisch gestaltet werden. Die Entwicklung Solidarischer Ökonomien ist ein demokratisches Mehrebenenprojekt, das Gabepraktiken anstelle von Markt und Tausch in den Mittelpunkt stellt. Solidarische Ökonomien sind unter Marktbedingungen überlebensfähig und können sich als demokratische Organisationen reproduzieren. Sie stärken soziale und demokratische Orientierungen, und spielen eine wichtige Rolle in der Ökologisierung der Produktion. Eine Transformation muss staatliche Verhältnisse mit einbeziehen und den kapitalistischen Sektor durch solidarökonomische Organisationen ersetzen.

Scholars and practitioners often consider the 'perfect gift' to understand the qualities of the most cherished gifts or to encourage givers to choose such gifts. Whilst useful, this represents a utopian view of gift-giving. This study explores the concept of 'best gift ever' through 35 in-depth interviews in order to understand the properties of significant gifts as defined by givers and receivers. Findings reveal that the 'best gifts ever' are often associated with unforgettable and life-changing experiences. These properties are compared with those of the 'perfect gift' to produce an integrative framework for truly special gifts. Specifically, this paper: 1) identifies the properties of 'best gifts ever' as distinct from 'perfect gifts'; 2) uncovers insights into the 'perfect gift' beyond the existing conceptualization; and, 3) integrates the 'best gift ever' and the 'perfect gift' into a unified framework capturing what makes a gift successful.

Anthropological analyses of charity are often based on Maussian theories of gift exchange and inequalities between donor and recipient, sometimes compounded by spectacular displays of giving or by aid, both humanitarian and faith-based, from the global north to the south. Other accounts complicate this understanding, variously showing the charitable gift as the recipient's right or considering charitable work as a technology of self care. The context and nature of the donation also affect both donor and recipient; money and blood have very different connotations and effects as charitable gifts. Ethnographies of charitable action suggest it is a total social fact, entangling economic, politics, religion and notions of relatedness. 108 words

L’article prolonge les travaux d’Alain Testart et de François Athané, reprenant l’idée qu’une société sans État n’est pas pour autant une société sans droit et que le critère de l’exigibilité s’avère universellement valide afin de caractériser les différents transferts de biens. Revenant sur la définition de l’échange obligatoire et sur la classification des transferts illégitimes, il explore ensuite les situations intermédiaires entre les formes pures de transferts, qui avaient motivé la réflexion initiale de Marcel Mauss. Il distingue les cas d’indétermination (privilégiés par l’Essai sur le don), des cas de combinaison. Plusieurs exemples historiques et ethnologiques sont examinés, en particulier celui du tee de Nouvelle-Guinée, qui se révèle constituer une articulation originale d’échange et de don.

Partendo da un’indagine condotta a Torino dall’AVIS su un gruppo di volontari italiani e marocchini, l’autrice mette in rilievo il carattere culturale e sociale della donazione del sangue. La sua ricerca analizza in primo luogo il rapporto tra donazione del sangue e la categoria antropologica e etnografica del dono. Quindi, prende in considerazione le figure del medico e del donatore, ridefinendone ruoli e implicazioni. Infine, confronta le due tipologie di donazione, da parte di italiani e immigrati, per comprendere meglio le dinamiche di questo tipo di dono, nel tentativo di individuare quale posto rivesta nella società contemporanea.

In 1663 Mary Beale recorded her thoughts on how to paint apricots. Beale’s statement, ‘Observations by MB in her painting of Apricots in August 1663’, is the first known text in English about the act of painting written by a female artist. It is all the more remarkable for having been written at a time when convention expected married gentlewomen to be deferential, modest and virtually silent. This monogrammed manifesto is anything but modest: it is an authoritative exemplar for others to follow, and it represents Mary’s implicit acceptance of her place in a shared artistic inheritance and a stake in her own legacy for the future. Observations - here taken together with Beale’s other texts and with self-portraits spanning the years 1659 to 1681 - forms part of an oblique autobiography and is read as an statement of intent encoded in what appears to be innocuous technical information.

Se propone una lectura antropológica de la génesis e itinerario de la ciencia económica moderna en orden a comprender su situación contemporánea de crisis. La pretensión de garantías y resultados ante la incertidumbre de la actividad económica por ser una ciencia humana condujo al hombre moderno a reestructurar las claves de su actuar. Se trata en definitiva de un reduccionismo antropológico que abandona el crecimiento humano como eje central en orden a la adquisición de resultados que abre paso al utilitarismo materialista. En este trabajo se abordan seis claves del principio rector de la ciencia moderna y su vertiente económica.

Abstract: This article offers an anthropological reading of the origin and subsequent path of modern economics in order to understand its contemporary crisis. In negation of economic activity as a human and uncertain science, the pretension that it can offer guarantees and results in the face of uncertainty led modern man to restructure his way of acting. This change ultimately corresponds to an anthropological reductionism that abandons human growth as its central axis in favor of obtaining results, opening the way to materialistic utilitarianism. This article addresses six keys to the guiding principle of modern science and its economic instantiation.

Book chapter in WORK, SOCIETY, AND THE ETHICAL SELF
Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era, available from Berghahn Books https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HannWork

Rather than accept formal commodity-like contractual definitions of ‘free’ labor, this chapter reflects on the ambivalence in Mauss’s concept of “prestations totales” (‘total services’) to reconsider the ‘voluntary character’ of work. It discusses Vanuatu’s colonial and unfree labor history, as well as the impact of overseas labor migration on attitudes to work in contemporary Vanuatu. It shows how the meaning and value of ‘free work’, both in terms of working without payment, or working autonomously, depends on the worker’s standpoint within their social and political relations, and how they confront their social obligations.

Based on life history interviews with successfully retired drug dealers, this article examines opportunities and challenges in the suburban underground economy. "Friendship" is key. Suburban drug dealing occurs exclusively through networks of friends, kin, and the acquaintances thereof. Friends are functionally necessary for the suburban illegal drug business but also economically inconvenient in that they require sharing drugs, spending time, "hanging out," and "partying." Friends represent "transaction costs" in conventional economic terms. The ambivalence produced by this, in profiting from friends and mixing sociality and commerce, is best understood via insights from economic anthropology, preeminently Marcel Mauss. For Mauss, gifts and self-interest, generosity and profit, are, and ought to be, conceptually inseparable. Dealers vividly demonstrate this entanglement.

I propose an objective definition of money through a biological definition of cooperation, as opposed to altruism. I argue that these types of sociality are confused because they are not evaluated from a situated perspective of animal interactions. The theory of reciprocal altruism does not correctly model the human exchange of goods and services. These constructive economic interactions require the ability to choose partners based on individual preferences. On the other hand, altruism presupposes partnership under a common standard of value. Therefore, the nature and evolution of money cannot be explained by conceptualising it as a token of altruism or as a form of credit. Rather, money is a transferable signal that enables cooperative interactions between distant or unrelated individuals. This behavioural definition similarly proposes an understanding of morality and human society as strategies of indirect reciprocity in the context of game theory.

In 1986 Jonathan Parry’s ‘The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift'’ claimed to overturn conventional understandings of Marcel Mauss, by arguing that market societies most idealise the distinction between gifts and commodities, and gift giving need not entail reciprocity. Based on an analysis of Hindu religious gifts, Parry proposed a broad framework for understanding how ideologies of exchange function in different economic and cosmological contexts. 30 years later, this symposium considers the intellectual milieu in which The Indian Gift was written, and interrogates whether or not the work remains relevant to contemporary research and analysis.  The symposium opens with a short introduction that provides some background to Parry’s essay and incorporates material from a recent interview with him. This is followed by critical comments on it by five influential thinkers on gift exchange:  James Carrier, Chris Gregory, James Laidlaw, Marilyn Strathern and Yunxiang Yan. It ends with a short ‘revisionist’ note by Parry in which he tries to identify some of the limits of the Maussian approach for contemporary anthropology.

This special issue of Body & Society explores critical issues arising from enactments of blood donation and transfusion in different parts of the world. With articles focusing on Brazil, China, India, the Navajo Nation, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, the United States and elsewhere, description and analysis is presented of a modal and mobile constellation of practices and knowledges, transnational in distribution, but also situationally enacted in particular instances. What comes across is the scope of blood donation: its extraordinary emotive force, the complex methodologies it requires for the mobilization of populations, its ability to stimulate imaginative thought among diverse constituencies, its variations of transactional form, the ways in which it reproduces controversies globally. The scope of blood donation – the remarkable heterogeneity of its enactments and of the associations condensed therein – can perhaps only begin to be captured with the bringing together of such a wide-ranging set of ethnographic accounts as is presented in this special issue.

L’attività materna di dare vita e di mantenerla è l’attività produttiva umana più evidente ma nella nostra società, fondata sul lavoro (salariato), non viene considerata e non le viene dato valore. Eppure, nessuno Stato ha ancora trovato modo per produrre lavoratori al di fuori dal grembo materno. L’economia femminista si è occupata di questo tema dagli anni ’70, calcolando che il lavoro riproduttivo e domestico (svolto in prevalenza dalle donne), occuperebbe il 40% del PIL (M. Waring). Le cure materne (che sono esercitate anche dai padri) vanno al di là di un semplice concetto di reddito, esse partecipano al benessere continuo sia degli individui che della società, esercitando di fatto un’economia del dono sulla quale poggiano tutte le altre attività. Il dono materno è invisibile, il suo stesso principio viene escluso dai “discorsi” ufficiali. È più facile considerare il linguaggio come eredità genetica che rendersi conto che la “lingua madre” è un dono trasmesso dalla madre nei primi anni di vita e attivamente ricevuto ed esercitato dal bambino, creando così un modello di comunicazione e di socializzazione (G. Vaughan). Questa assenza ha dirette conseguenze sulla società, sia dal punto di vista economico sia del benessere, influenzando il nostro rapporto con la terra e con l’ecosistema.

Elena Skoko, L'economia del dono nella maternità e nella nascita, in Le radici materne dell'economia del dono, a cura di Genevieve Vaughan, Vanda ePublishing, Milano, 2017, pp. 221-230.

The account-books left by medieval merchants have mostly been studied to analyze their degree of technical development and the activity and volume of the companies that produced them. In order to identify the limit between commercial exchanges and non-commercial exchanges, we have first to understand how the transactions were filtered, decomposed and recomposed as inputs to fit into a system of written recording aimed at tracking flows of wares and capital as well as the shift of debts and credits with numerous partners. In the case of the Datini agency in Avignon around 1386, mostly specialized in armory and ironmongery, the bookkeeping in simple entry is distributed on about ten books. Among these, the memoriale contains most information about customers but partly conceals the transactions by recomposing them in personal accounts which usually sum up debits and credits resulting from several exchanges. This book also gathers about 300 customers, among whom craftsmen and men-at-arms predominate, without excluding a few traders living in town or abroad. All these individuals were not identified unambiguously by the staff of the shop. The tendency to present each person in a homogeneous and abstract form is thwarted by a reading of social links in terms of households and patronage. The memoriali of the agency do not completely exclude exchanges identifiable as gifts, but relegate them to the margins, as an explanation of some of the cash advances required from the company by its staff. Agency accounting can thus be seen as part of a device establishing a boundary between the professional and private spheres. The material layout of the agency distinguishes the shop from the living quarters and signals it to customers as a professional and masculine space. At the same time, account-books invite the staff to distinguish between their personal assets and those of the company by having them open personal accounts similar to those of the customers for their own expenses and earnings, dissociating thus the flows of cash they manage on one side for the company, whether in the shop or during missions, on the other side for their practices of consumption.

The author in her article investigates the rules, norms and practices of gift-giving at weddings in Ghimeș (Romania). She presents local people’s experiences about gift exchange at weddings and the way they interpret the process of gift giving and reciprocation, what calculations precede the compilation of guest lists, what factors are taken into consideration when people accept or reject wedding invitation and in what way they calculate the proper sum of money to be given as gift to the young couple. The return of gifts does not take place automatically in each case, the indebted party is not always asked to reciprocate, and not every indebted guest accepts invitation and returns the gift. The author has reconsidered the local norms of gift-giving at weddings relying upon Marcel Mauss’ model of gift exchange (1925). She wondered to what extent this model elaborated on premodern societies can be applied to societies in the 21st century. She observed gift giving at weddings on her
fi eld site in Ghimeș between 2007 and 2016, and points out that beyond the trinity of giving, accepting and reciprocating fixed by Mauss, some other factors also have to be taken into consideration as not all practices and norms of local gift exchange at weddings can be described with these three acts, which might call for a supplementation and further elaboration of the model.

Murra considers that the inca economy was constituted only by the peasant small agriculture. Others sectors suchs as manufacture, mining and others were brougth by spanish conquerors.  This approach is not scientific, considering that mmanufactures and mining wre important economic activities of the inca State and empire.

Absracts of the presentation "Gift giving and feasting as an example of informal practices during the procedure for a dissertation defence in Ukraine" on the 10th IInternational Conference of Young Folklorists "Lore Makers, Law Breakers", May 19-21, 2021 in Tartu, Estonia.

The common saying, " it is better to give than to receive " , is so widespread that its truth is often merely assumed. But can this ethical maxim withstand a careful philosophical analysis? The relevant concepts (" giving " , " receiving " , and " better ") can be interpreted in too many ways to discuss thoroughly in a single essay. Instead, this essay classifies the various ways of interpreting the distinction between giving and receiving, then explores in depth one of the options, based on a pivotal distinction between active and passive types of both giving and receiving. I defend the controversial claim that there is at least one important sense (arguably the most important, for ethical purposes) in which it is not better to give than receive, but that in this sense precisely the opposite holds true. Indeed, the survival of the human race may depend on our willingness to receive.

This article aims to analyse how the Burgundian dukes managed to control the political process in Holland and Zeeland and get a grip on the noble elites of the counties in the period 1425-1477. During the fourteenth and fifteenth century, noble networks in Holland competed continuously for princely favours and official positions. In the Burgundian period, from 1425 onwards, some fundamental changes in this competition took place. In the Bavarian period princes normally favoured especially one of the competing networks. Moreover, the ruler was nearby and could be approached relatively easily. The Burgundian duke, however, hardly ever visited his northernmost territories. The rivalling noble networks were not integrated into the central institutions but were given material compensations and influence at a regional level in exchange for allegiance. Subsequently, in Holland and Zeeland the Burgundian court did not have a stabilising and integrating function.

The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the cultural and economic dispossession caused by the collapse of socialism continue to force Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina to reconfigure their religious lives and societal values. David Henig draws on a decade of fieldwork to examine the historical, social, and emotional labor undertaken by people to live in an unfinished past--and how doing so shapes the present. In particular, Henig questions how contemporary religious imagination, experience, and practice infuse and interact with social forms like family and neighborhood and with the legacies of past ruptures and critical events. His observations and analysis go to the heart of how societal and historical entanglements shape, fracture, and reconfigure religious convictions and conduct.

Provocative and laden with eyewitness detail, Remaking Muslim Lives offers a rare sustained look at what it means to be Muslim and live a Muslim life in contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This article proposes a conceptual framework for studying remittances as social transactions that can take a number of different forms. For the past three decades, the dominant framework for understanding remittance relationships has been the continuum of senders' motives from altruism to self-interest. This approach has its roots in economics and has shaped much of the quantitative research on remittances. In parallel, a growing body of ethnographic research has examined transnational money transfers with perspectives and data that differ from those of economists. The insights from these ethnographic studies are valuable, but remain fragmented and marginal in research on remittances. Two key points emerge from the ethnographic literature: Remittances are at the core of composite transactions with material, emotional, and relational elements, and there is great variation in the nature and logic of these transactions. The framework proposed here is designed to engage with both complexity and variation. It systematically draws upon a large body of ethnographic literature and introduces remittance scripts as an analytical tool.

Questo libro è un'analisi antropologica della pratica della donazione del sangue in due comunità di immigrati marocchini a Torino. Nella prima parte del testo la riflessione socio-antropologica si sofferma sui concetti di donazione e di dono del sangue, quest'ultimo indagato come pratica culturale e sociale, oltre che medica. Nella seconda parte del volume invece l'attenzione è rivolta, attraverso il resoconto etnografico, al fenomeno migratorio in Italia e alle implicazioni positive del migrante, considerato anche come ricchezza e non solo come problema. Dalla ricerca etnografica, svolta a Torino e in diverse città del Marocco, emerge, in primo luogo, una concezione della donazione del sangue come insieme di valori e di pratiche condivise non obbligate ma volontarie e senza alcuna costrizione. Il dono del sangue da parte degli immigrati marocchini esprime un gesto di altruismo incondizionato e il desiderio di integrazione nella società d'accoglienza, a dimostrazione della fallacia di tutti gli stereotipi che designano "l'altro" in termini negativi. In secondo luogo, affiora il contrasto fra corpi immaginati-gli stereotipi del marocchino-musulmano-e corpi parlanti-degli immigrati donatori di sangue-, in una dialettica nella quale sono in gioco culture, idiomi, religioni e simbolismi diversi.

Affection is one of the areas where the crisis of today’s society is observed, as shown, for example, in the confusion between sexual desire, friendship and love. The article’s thesis is that this affective disorder hides something more profound: the fear of others, particularly towards the establishment of a last longing bond with them. To prove it, the author first examines how the separation between affection and love depends on judging bonds as contrary to reason, rendering one incapable of opening up to otherness and learning how to be open. Secondly, the author indicates the need to overcome the dialectic idea of love in order to think of it as a choice of affection for others and as a union of two identities that transcend each other through the asymmetric relationship of the gift of self. From here, he goes on to the final conclusion: the fear of bonds can be overcome when fidelity is lived as a complete synthesis of a, humanly sustainable, affection-love relationship.

Introductory essay [+ "Preface" ], by PM Taylor. In: "The Gift as Material Culture" [Edited by Patricia Thatcher and Paul Michael Taylor with Cynthia Adams Hoover. Yale-Smithsonian Report on Material Culture, 1991.]

    The 1991 Yale-Smithsonian Seminar on Material Culture, held in Washington, D.C., April 28-30, examined gifts as objects of material culture.  The meeting was held in conjunction with the Smithsonian exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History, "Beyond the Java Sea: Art of Indonesia's Outer Islands," an exhibition whose objects stimulated much discussion and new thinking about material culture.

    The seminar participants represented a broad range of disciplines and included historians, materials scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists, literary scholars, and art historians. As discussed in the introductory paper, many of Indonesia's finest artworks were created originally as gifts, as a kind of currency in systems of gift exchange.      Consequently, the exhibition and its accompanying catalog (Taylor and Aragon 1991) examined indigenous concepts of reciprocity, as materially represented in gifts, for maintaining (or indeed manipulating) the social order in outer-island Indonesia.

«God always forgives, man sometimes, nature never». This well-known proverb contains what we can call a metaphysics of forgiveness, in which we can distinguish three kinds of being: the infinite being of God who is the source of all forgiveness, the finite being of man, which is capable of forgiving because he is endowed with freedom, and the equally finite being of nature, incapable of forgiving because he only obeys physical or psychical laws. In human forgiveness there is the coexistence of all three: nature as the cause of the psychic processes that must be overcome (revenge or remorse), man as a subject that offends or is offended and, above all, God as the origin and ultimate goal of forgiveness.

The anxiety attached to gift giving is worth considering. The Christian commemoration of Christmas is about celebrating God’s ultimate gift, his only son. Such an exceptional gift reaches its destiny in the crucifixion of Jesus: a sacrifice that can never be acquitted. The extraordinary nature of this gift, which ends in death, is resonant of a debt economy. Capitalism is sustained through a debt economy of profits and arrears that spin endlessly in keeping the many beholden and the few prosperous.

“Amicitia Palatina: The Jesuits and the Politics of Gift-Giving at the Qing Court.” In Magda Abbiati and Federico Greselin eds., Il liuto e i libri: Studi in onore di Mario Sabattini, Series ‘Sinica Venetiana’ 1, Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2014, pp. 547-561.

In Thyestes, Seneca rewrites the practice of the gift (536, 984) as a tool of tyrant’s revenge, which takes advantage of its captivating power. By combining the category of fides with the mechanism of fraus, Atreus intends to perform a deceit that can meet the ‘unfair expectation’ (spes improba, 295) of Thyestes, who hopes to obtain the kingdom (regna nunc sperat mea, 289), and provide him with a tangible guarantee of peace (fides pacis, 294). Such a dynamic takes the form of a “simulated gift”, a practice of reciprocity in which Atreus plays the role of the giver (dans) and Thyestes is led to assume the role of the receiver (accipiens). The tyrant represents it as a way to close the gap between him and his brother and reciprocate his iniuriae. The paper aims to explore how Seneca shapes the tyrant’s gift as a tragic pattern of revenge- system and a reversal of the theories on gift and benefit provided in De beneficiis.

Corrupt exchanges are often brokered by a third party, but this phenomenon has not been satisfactorily explored by researchers of corruption. Literature on brokerage in general provides interesting models but they have not previously been applied to corrupt exchanges. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with respondents who participated in actual corrupt transactions, this paper identifies several distinct brokerage types in low-level corruption in contemporary Hungary. The paper also provides explanation of variation in corruption brokerage in terms of actors' group affiliations, forms of the corrupt exchanges, brokerage mechanisms, as well as neutrality, benefit and motivation, risk distribution, and stability of the brokerage structure. Finally, we discuss some policy implications of corruption brokerage.