Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth
Thinking aloud about some atypical exchanges and applying the gift-giving frameworks we learnt to assess these.
Topic
anthropology
A collection of 3 issues
The Anatomy of Gift-Giving
This is an essay based on the summary of a well-cited academic paper by J.F. Sherry on "Gift-Giving - An Anthropological Perspective" written in 1984. This paper provides useful vocabulary and frameworks through which dyadic relationships can be viewed in a gift-giving situation.
Unwrapping 'The Gift' - A study of embedded reciprocity
Marcel Mauss 'The Gift' is a seminal work on gift-giving. It is a 107 page long essay, written in 1924 on interpreting gift-giving or what he calls the gift economy from an ethnographic perspective revealing insights about social bonds, that have stood the test of time.