ABSTRACT
Marcel Mauss’s book The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies has been criticized mainly for overstating the continuity among concepts and practices across cultures. Critics also argue that the book’s evolutionary framework ties it and its author more to the past than the future of anthropology and sociology. Mauss’s supporters argue that his analysis in The Gift was methodologically sound and empirically accurate. They point out that his other work on mind–body connections and the interrelated social and biological spheres of human existence was ahead of its time. Mauss oriented his work according to a social evolutionary framework throughout his career, as seen in his 1938 publication on the evolution of autonomous individuality. His work has inspired generations of those conducting research in the field to map out reciprocal transfers as a point of access to interlinked sociopolitical institutions.
