The Return of the Gift: European History of a Global Idea - Hardcover

Liebersohn, Harry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107002184 ISBN 13: 9781107002180

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

This book is a history of European interpretations of the gift from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth century. Reciprocal gift exchange, pervasive in traditional European society, disappeared from the discourse of nineteenth-century social theory only to return as a major theme in twentieth-century anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy, and literary studies. Modern anthropologists encountered gift exchange in Oceania and the Pacific Northwest and returned the idea to European social thought; Marcel Mauss synthesized their insights with his own readings from remote times and places in his famous 1925 essay on the gift, the starting-point for subsequent discussion. The Return of the Gift demonstrates how European intellectual history can gain fresh significance from global contexts.

About this title

Book Description

This book is a history of European interpretations of the gift from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth century; it demonstrates how European intellectual history can gain fresh significance from global contexts.

About the Author

Harry Liebersohn is a Professor of History in the Department of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of several books, including Fate and Utopia in German Sociology, 1871-1923 (1988), Aristocratic Encounters: European Travelers and North American Indians (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and The Travelers' World, Europe to the Pacific (2006). His article 'Discovering Indigenous Nobility: Tocqueville, Chamisso, and Romantic Travel Writing', which appeared in the American Historical Review, was awarded the 1995 William Koren, Jr Prize of the Society for French Historical Studies. Professor Liebersohn was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1996-1997 and a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin) in 2006-2007.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1107002184
• ISBN 13: 9781107002180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224