The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Marcel Mauss

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1334997837 ISBN 13: 9781334997839

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Discover how gift exchange shapes societies, obligations, and power. This edition unpacks how giving creates social bonds across cultures.

Marcel Mauss’s classic work examines the forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. It looks at gifts, debts, and reciprocity as the engines of social ties, authority, and ritual life. The book blends ethnography, history, and theory to explain how giving and receiving orders daily life, law, and religion.

Readers will follow the argument from simple exchanges to complex systems of obligation, learning why gifts can bind communities as strongly as laws or kinship ties. The text connects economic ideas with moral and symbolic meanings, showing how wealth, prestige, and social harmony emerge from exchange.

• How gifts create obligation, status, and long‑lasting bonds
• How rituals, feasts, and exchanges organize communities across borders
• Cross‑cultural perspectives from archaic societies to formal legal systems
• Methods and ideas for historians, anthropologists, and thoughtful readers

Ideal for readers of anthropology, social theory, and history who want a deeper view of how giving shapes human life.

Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1334997837
• ISBN 13: 9781334997839
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144