Gifts: Forms and Reasons for Exchange in Ancient Societies

Author: (French) Marcel Mauss
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: The author of this book, Marcel Mauss, was a renowned early French sociologist and anthropologist. The Gift is one of his most important works. In Mauss's analysis of "the gift," the fundamental question is to explore how people relate to objects and to each other through objects. By citing a wealth of ethnographic evidence, Mauss proposed the concept of "gift economy," characterized by "total gift-giving," and compared it with the modern, impersonal system of commodity exchange. He presented a three-stage evolutionary schema and further explored the origins and essence of economic concepts such as property rights and contracts. This book is included in the "Mini-Classics" series of the Century Humanities series.