Gift exchange
Gift exchange is the social practice of giving and receiving valuable objects to create or confirm relationships and obligations between people.
Reciprocity: Reciprocity is the exchange of actions or benefits between people in response to one another. A gift can invite a return without fixing its timing or value.
Commodity exchange: Commodity exchange transfers goods or services through transactions in which value is commonly expressed in money or agreed equivalents. It typically settles obligations more directly than a continuing gift relationship.
The Gift: The Gift is Marcel Mauss’s 1925 essay analyzing gift practices and the obligations to give, receive, and repay. This work established a lasting account of gifts as social obligations.
Gift economy: A gift economy is an economic system in which goods and services circulate without prices being the primary means of allocation. It extends interpersonal giving into a wider pattern of distribution.
Gift theory: Gift theory is the interdisciplinary study of how giving, receiving, and repayment shape social relations. It gathers competing explanations of obligation, value, and generosity.
Marcel Mauss: Marcel Mauss was a French sociologist and anthropologist known for his essay on the social obligations of giving, receiving, and repaying. His account explains how gifts create durable ties and duties.
Barter: Barter is the direct exchange of goods or services without using money as the medium of exchange. Unlike many gifts, barter usually makes the return exchange explicit.
Bronisław Malinowski: Bronisław Malinowski was a Polish-British anthropologist whose fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands shaped modern social anthropology. His account of the Kula ring documented ceremonial exchange in detail.
Christmas gift-giving: Christmas gift-giving is the practice of exchanging presents during the Christmas season. It combines ritual, family ties, and expectations of reciprocity.
The free gift: The free gift is an ideal of giving without expectation of return or social advantage. It challenges accounts that treat every gift as creating an obligation.