Unwrapping 'The Gift' - A study of embedded reciprocity
In January of this year I joined a book club that discusses themes from consumer culture. When one of the professors proposed reading “The Gift'' as a foundational text for discussion I was mildly amused. I wondered what a book about gifting could contribute to my understanding of consumers as marketplace actors. What is there to be said about gifting that occupies 107 pages as a long form essay (not including references and notes!)?
"The Gift" is a seminal work by French sociologist Marcel Mauss, first published as an essay in the year 1924. Turns out the essay is an insightful read into the origins of gifting. It uses the lens of ethnographic studies from tribes which have preserved these traditions to understand the larger contextual meaning of gifting in society. These tribes span Melanesia and Polynesia in the Pacific South, the American NorthWest and Andamans in the SouthEast. This reading served as a foundation for understanding the academic positions on gifting. It also put in context the subsequent work by consumer culture researchers on gifting and sharing as a way of economic exchange. Mauss' great contribution was to reposition gift economy as a historical viable complement to the prevalent market economy. These research outcomes are directly relevant to the design of public and private projects that constitute the modern digital businesses as we shall see in subsequent blogs. I also consider the insights here and related developments from the study of gift cultures to be useful in understanding the psychology of exchange, the very basis of transactions within the marketplace and in society. This will be a series of three blogs on gift economy beginning today with a summary of -"The Gift" written by Marcel Mauss.
Introduction to "the total system of giving"
Across cultures, the modern ideas of gifting are informed by occasions and recipients. Whether it is entirely true is questionable but as a society we like to believe that gifting is a salubrious social exchange where the giver is consumed with charitable thoughts of the recipient and the gift itself, is a token that shows the unmotivated courtesy of the giver toward the recipient. But of course we know from our private experiences that this isn’t always so. In India esp, the occasions for gifting are manifold from cultural celebrations to social events to private milestones. However, how and what we give is motivated by the ideas of previous exchanges, the anticipated future of the relationship and a certain amount of vanity. The central idea of Mauss’ essay was to allay the myth of gift-exchange as an altruistic exercise and stress upon the idea of honor and reciprocity built into gifting. Additionally, he distances gift-exchange from the prevailing dominance of utilitarianism that insisted on exchanges as essentially a material exercise motivated by needs and means. The theories and research support for them as provided in the essay assert that gift-exchange is a "total system of giving" - a ritualistic and evergoing exchange of goods and services between collectives (eg: clans, tribes, families) that involves the honour of the giver and the receiver. This system goes beyond a social exercise; it determines ranks and power, affords the ability of redistribution, decides the fate of children and is the basis for survival. It is a bridge between the physical and the spiritual and binds us into a system of giving that connects people and things. He concludes with extrapolating how these ideas persist into our modern vocabulary and practices.
Across the tribes in the American NorthWest (modern day Canada), in the extreme north near the Arctic circle, as also in Melanesia and Polynesia, a common practice of Potlatch was observed. These are ceremonial feasts involving gift-giving at scale that establishes the authority of chiefs and clan leaders. These practices have been studied by anthropologists because of their controversial nature as they even involve destruction of personal property as a means of showcasing prosperity and power. Canada has a history of criminalizing and subsequently decriminalizing these rituals. Potlatches are now well-understood to not be simply a festival or ritual but to be a total system of indigenous governance as these were occasions where decisions were taken about marriages and divorces, property disputes, designated roles within the clan as well as distribution of collective resources. The exchanges were between leaders of tribes and encompassed a bouquet of objects, people and services, and often lasted days till almost the entire wealth of the clan leader had been redistributed. It is the practice of potlatch that has lent credence to the idea of gift-giving as a “total system of giving” because it goes beyond material exchange and mere needs but is in fact a proxy for acceptable public conduct. Variations of potlatch across tribes exist from its observance as a festival, as a place of barter or a benign marketplace but also as a place that gave rise and fan to rivalries and hostile behaviour.
In the backdrop of potlatches, Mauss unpacks gift-giving and imbues it with sociological meaning, immediately widening the scope of its applications. You need to begin by breaking the associations of 'gifting' as a happy, selfless, occasion-bound, receiver appropriate exchange. Wipe the slate clean and begin first to think of gift-giving as-
a) an obligation to give
b) an obligation to accept/receive
c) and an obligation to reciprocate
He asserts that whether all three conditions are fulfilled or not, the intention must exist for an exchange to qualify as gift-giving. What this does is that it immediately takes away the “voluntary” and “disinterested” nature of giving and replaces it with an “obligatory” and “self-interested” outlook. I found that with this reconstitution, immediately I was able to reconcile the popular notions of gift-giving with my private experiences.
Aside on "obligation"
As a digression from the book, I sought to delve just a little deeper into the meaning of the term “obligation”. It was clarifying to find that an obligation as defined in the Law of Obligations* and perhaps finding place in modern legal practice is composed of-
i) an obligor (the one with the duty - fulfiller)
ii) an obligee (the one with the right - who demands the obligation)
iii) the prestation (the obligation to be tendered)
iv) the vinculum juris (the cause or bond that binds the obligants with the obligation)
It is surely a sign that I am beyond rescue when I go this deep down a rabbit hole, but it is 2021 and we are all forgiven our vices.
The three obligations of gift-giving: Explained
Now reverting to the three obligations built into gift-giving, we want to know why these actions have been termed as ‘obligations’ and here I add my interpretation of the text to the scaffolding provided in the essay. The obligation to give is intertwined with the idea of authority. To be able to exert authority and demand respect, the tribe leaders had to necessarily demonstrate their power to rival clans and potential leaders. The way to exhibit this was through display and redistribution of wealth and where that failed, the destruction of wealth. When you give a gift, make an offering, you have necessarily made the receiver beholden to you and naturally risen your status. With the redistribution of wealth within the clan, the leader was also able to demonstrate their ability to nurture and protect their clan. This afforded undisputed authority. This was further complicated with the idea of hau or the spirit of things. There was widespread belief in the spirit possessed by inanimate objects. Keeping things that should be redistributed or that possess a part of someone else’s soul was considered to bring bad luck. In effect the cyclicity of lives and the permanence of things made it possible to imagine that things possess souls and people are things of a rather temporary nature but relationships between clans outlive the people. With the distinction erased, it was only natural to think of men, women and even children as property. We see instances of exchange where people were traded or gifted as a show of solidarity. These reasons create an obligation to give.
The obligation to accept is also tied to the notion of honour, gratitude and the spiritual nature of things. Accepting a gift cements social bonds and indicates that a reciprocation is forthcoming. In the absence of formal currency, I imagine this was also necessary to partake in the economic cycle or risk social ostracism.
Once an obligation to reciprocate had been established, it was nearly certain that it would be fulfilled. To receive another’s possession is to now own a piece of another’s hau. You reciprocate to avoid bad luck. To not be considered inferior in status or entirely ungrateful, you reciprocate to avoid bad reputation. In an example from the book, to borrow again when you already have poor credit was to “sell a slave”. It is easy to see how this creates a perpetual system of giving that outlives generations. The idea of the soul being imbued in food and drink is why one was obligated to serve meals to guests and to return the favour. When you return the gift with possessions of value greater than those received, you naturally raise your status and are a contender for power. When you match the gift, you have at least preserved your honour.
Honor, Appeasement, Reciprocity and Credit
Lexically speaking, do ut des in Latin and dadami se, dehi te from the Sanskrit vedas translate to "I give, so you may give" and "As you give, so do I” respectively. In the Pacific South the Maori believe that "give as much as you receive and all is for the best". The Trobriand people from the same region believe "to possess is to give". This provides the basis to assume that exchange and reciprocity in giving is a deep rooted principle. To deny it in modern gifting is to bemuse ourselves with a shallow understanding of human motivation. Quite clearly now, the sacrificial practices are also connected to this idea of honour, appeasement and reciprocity. A sacrifice is the anticipation of reward but before that it is also the offering back of a possession that was yours only for having and not to own.
This idea of having v/s owning is essential to the understanding of consumer attitudes in sharing economy platforms like AirBnB and Lyft.
Sacrifices were a way of returning to the gods and the spirits what was theirs and was only loaned to mankind. The essay repositions sacrifices in the lexicon of gift-giving and as a way of adding that the “total system of giving” was well adjusted to the prevailing religious practices. What I found intriguing was how “giving” became a central precept around which rituals, people, things and gods were inextricably and cyclically bound.
In isolated tribes which were late to the invention of money as a contract of marketplace exchange, these systems of gift exchanges adequately, completely and more intensely replaced a system of buying and selling. The essay also makes references to tribes where the term for buying and selling, lending and borrowing are the same signifying perhaps the existence of a social phenomenon rather than a bi-partisan process. Eventually in certain tribes gift exchange or a sophisticated system of barter gave way to a system of exchange with the notion of time limit built into it. Previously arbitrary time limits for reciprocity were formalised into well understood time limits. In this, the author asserts, lies the roots of the credit system that forms the basis of modern society. Even the concept of interest originated at the same time. However just like the notion of gift-giving, it is explained to be a system more than a mere economic exchange. Being separate from the practice and idea of barter, the notion of interest was also more than what a “banker, merchant or capitalist” makes of it. It was considered acceptable to return more than what one had received to acknowledge the deferred consumption of the giver.
We call this opportunity cost and time value of money now, however I think articulating it as 'deferred consumption' has a manner of civility to it that the cold word 'interest' lacks. But perhaps that is me romanticizing the ideal.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Mauss’ thesis ‘The Gift’ implies that a gift that does not entail a social obligation of reciprocity cannot enhance social solidarity and is hence a contradiction. It needs to be both obligated and motivated and there’s plenty of remainders from archaic society to prove that indeed it has been so. In contextualizing it to modern behaviour [do remember that modern at the time of writing was the 1950s], Mauss says gifting is where obligation and liberty intermingle. Gifts are intention bound, time bound and honour bound. Occasions for gifting are more varied and numerous than the ones we traditionally associate the practice with. Is tipping gifting? What about charity? Flowers? Coffee? Compliments? The borrowing of kombucha starters from a neighbor? Social insurance systems? Product trials? Vouchers? Freemium? Once you have understood gift-giving on Mauss’ terms it is near impossible to not see versions of it everywhere, to not articulate all transactions as more than an economic exchange of needs and means. And on the other hand to not consider gift-giving as a viable means of economic exchange and social governance. Mauss’ work leads us to believe that to not consider the obligations involved in transactions is to disregard anthropological foundation about the nature and motivation of exchange itself. Gift-giving binds us into cycles of perpetuity and engenders a sort of sociality that may be necessary for our very survival as beings of purpose and community.
Additional Reading
1. Full text of the book - https://monoskop.org/images/a/ae/Mauss_Marcel_The_Gift_The_Form_and_Functions_of_Exchange_in_Archaic_Societies_1966.pdf
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_obligations
Ricochet Ink is a publication for contemporary research on consumption, behaviour science, responsible communication and product design. The pieces here are informed by foundational texts, published and ongoing academic research and practitioner case studies from around the world.
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