ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses material on heterosexual dating gifts from the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first century and draws on behavioural research in the contexts of ‘dating’, personal favours, and business embeddedness. Both analyses of traditional dating gifts and of more recent hookup apps such as Tinder problematize the distinction between gifts and commodity exchanges. The ambiguities inherent in these contexts exemplify the dangers that exist at the intersection of gift-giving and marketplace exchange. Although love and money should remain discrete and non-overlapping value regimes, they are necessarily intermingled in most acts of gift-giving. The interpenetration of the utilitarian and symbolic aspects of the gift means that the giver and receiver can each make mistakes and interpret gifts inappropriately when they assume only one of these frameworks. When a gift is too tied to business-like reciprocal obligations, it can become a bribe, guanxi (connection), or a marketplace transaction disguised as a gift. At the other extreme, givers and recipients may be driven into romantic/friendship obligations that while more diffuse are equally entangling and sometimes unwelcome. Between the two extremes are more congenial gift practices that may occur in both business and personal contexts, but without the onerous obligations.
