ABSTRACT
An exploration of how Boulding’s Grant’s Economics (of love and fear) differs from the reciprocity based approach to gift relationships in economic anthropology (e.g. Mauss; Polanyi and Sahlins) will allow us to see gifts and grants as characterised by three principles of interaction (institutions): sacrifice, reciprocity and utilitarian calculation.
While Boulding takes Gouldner’s (1996[1960]) emphasis of “receiving something for nothing” in the gift seriously, there is a fluidity from sacrifice to reciprocity preceded or accompanied by utilitarian reasoning in his approach. The particular significance of the gift as a form of social interaction lies in its potential to attain and secure peace (Sahlins, 2004[1972]). A gift as sacrifice can break the spell of the Nash Equilibrium in a Prisoners’ Dilemma and lead a society from a war of all against all to a peacefully cooperating society based on reciprocity. In arguing on the basis of benevolence (love) vs. malevolence (threat) and combining these concepts with utilitarian calculus and the opportunity cost principle Boulding’s Grants Economics goes beyond the conventional wisdom of the gift. This chapter will show how Boulding’s theoretical framework can be used fruitfully for an institutionalist analysis of the Marshall Plan as a historical case study of a grant/gift. This is a surprising result because the potential of the gift to establish and sustain peace is much more likely in small groups than on a geopolitical scale.
