ABSTRACT
Marcel Mauss’s analysis of gift exchange combines elements from each of these perspectives. Mauss takes structural-functionalist premises for granted but also accounts for individual motivation. The overarching question that sociologists sought to address at the time of Mauss’s analysis of The Gift was how societies are organized and how their structure is related to the way they function. The core question that Marcel Mauss addresses in The Gift is: what is the purpose, meaning, and legal ordering of exchange in societies without money or laws governing contracts? Mauss found that ethnographers— those engaged in the study of people and their culture—were often perplexed that people in archaic societies, followed precise rules about how gifts were to be offered, accepted, and repaid. Mauss’s 1903 article coauthored with Emile Durkheim, Primitive Classification, explores how simple societies categorize objects, people, and phenomena. Mauss takes structural-functionalist premises for granted but also accounts for individual motivation.
