ABSTRACT
The focus of Marcel Mauss’s analysis in The Gift is small-scale or archaic societies throughout the world but especially in the Pacific region of Melanesia, Northwest North America, and ancient Eurasia. Mauss shows how the obligation to give, to receive, and, after a set period of time, to return gifts sustains long-term social relationships that bind individuals and groups in positive and negative ways. Mauss demonstrates how reciprocal exchanges bind individuals and groups but also protect their autonomy, whereas commercial transactions are more favorable to exploitation. Basing his analysis on gift exchange, Mauss shows that culture plays a major role in shaping human behavior. In contrast to the then-current notion that social features were determined by ecological, material, and biological factors, Mauss focuses on social institutions and cultural beliefs or collective representations as he did in earlier work on magic and religion.
