Some links on Marcel Mauss:
- Wikipedia:Marcel_Mauss
- GiveItAway – a paper by David Graeber on Marcel Mauss, with some local comments
- FragmentsOfAnAnarchistAnthropology – this is just a powerful paper in itself; but see the end of page 16, continuing through to page 20, for the part on Mauss. see also: Wikipedia:Fragments_of_an_Anarchist_Anthropology
- Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory – seen through Google books. ”…it is that the whole idea of a free gift is based on a misunderstanding. There should not be any free gifts. What is wrong with the so-called free gift is the donor’s intention to be exempt from return gifts coming from the recipient. … …A gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction.”
- The Pioneer Sociologist Marcel Mauss on Gifts and Exchange – a selection from the Essay on The Gift – “Moreover, what they exchange is not only goods and wealth, movable and immovable property, or economically useful things. Above all, they exchange ceremonies, feasts, rites, military services, women, children, dances, celebrations, fairs; the bargain is only one moment in these exchanges, and the circulation of wealth is only one term in a contract that goes much farther and lasts well beyond the exchange.”
Discussion
It seems to me that our concept of “gifts” have changed a lot, over time, from the concept of “gift” that Marcel Mauss’s anthropologists observe.
I’m circling several orbits here:
- holism
- gifts, giving
- Anarchism
- real-world efforts: