Spirit Of The Gift Summary

AS1 14/15 - Why has gift exchange been a seminal topic in social anthropology?

Gift exchange within social anthropology became a more expanded and discussed topic after Malinowki's writings on the Trobian Islanders throughout the period of the First World War. In this writing he discussed the rituals involved in the Kula ring in his ground breaking research write up in the book "Argonauts of the Western Pacific" (Malinowski, 1922). This was shortly followed by the writings in Marcel Mauss' "The Gift". The text provided an insight into a new way of looking and evaluating the nature of gift exchange (Mauss, 1954). Looked at from a non anthropological perspective gift exchange is merely the exchange of items between two people; commonly seen at public holidays or at anniversary events within communities, however, when looking at it through an anthropological scope you begin to
Firstly you must look at the significance of spirit of the gift; essentially what makes a gift a gift. This can be explored through the writings of Marshall Sahlins in his book the 'Stone Age Economics' (Sahlins, 1972). The chapter 'Spirit of the Gift' focuses on what compels a person, group or tribe to repay a gift (Schrift, 1997, p. 70). The idea is reciprocity comes from the nature of gift exchange. Between the exchanging of gifts there has to be a period of time. This period of time is determined between the individual who is indebted to the original gift giver (Sahlins, 1972). This is seen as the basis of a relationship. If the people involved do not have a debt to each other than essentially there is no relationship between them. This brings up a key reason that gift giving has become a seminal topic in social anthropology, it looks at reciprocity as a means of building relationships between peoples within a society or multiple