ABSTRACT
People everywhere exchange goods, services, and courtesies, but how they do so and who they exchange with is culturally patterned and socially organized. Through exchange, people establish and maintain social relations based on reciprocity and indebtedness. A basic analytic contrast distinguishes gift exchange, which nurtures social relations over time, from commodity exchange, which forms the basis of economic systems in which goods circulate from producers to consumers in exchange for money. However, both types of exchange often coexist. Which form of exchange predominates and what each means varies depending on historical, economic, political, and other factors. Crises, such as the 2008 global financial crash, can encourage people to question how exchange is organized and examine possible alternative forms of redistribution and social justice. Anthropologists were the first to recognize similarities in gift exchange systems found across the world and have pioneered the theoretical and descriptive advances in understanding gift exchange and its relationship to other forms of exchange such as capitalism.
