The Gift Paradigm: A Short Introduction to the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences

Caillé, Alain

ISBN 10: 0996635599 / ISBN 13: 9780996635592

Published by Prickly Paradigm Press, 2020

About this Item

soft cover in fine condition.

Seller Inventory # 322783

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Gift Paradigm: A Short Introduction to the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences
• Publisher: Prickly Paradigm Press
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0996635599
• ISBN 13: 9780996635592
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • social history
  • local history
  • Philosophy

About this title

Synopsis

In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new modes of thought, none more so than what crystallized in the 1980s around an innovative group of French academics. In TheGift Paradigm, Alain Caillé provides the first in-depth, English-language introduction to La Revue du MAUSS—or, “Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences,” combining the work of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and others. Today, the very idea of a “general social science” seems unthinkable, unless you count the pervasive sway of a utilitarian logic in orthodox economics, or the diffuse influence of neoliberalism. Here, Caillé offers a distinctly different reading of economy and society, inspired by Mauss—as vital now as ever.

About the Author

Alain Caillé, the creator and director of La Revue du MAUSS, is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Paris X-Nanterre.