ANTA02H3 Lecture 6: Week 6
Document Summary
Essai sur le don, or, the gift: form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. Focuses on how the exchange of objects form and affect relations between people and the world. Structuralist: social and cultural systems have elements that are functionally related. School of thought that asserts that there are subsystems (spheres that are related to one another in one way or another) Society is like an organism; when one part changes, the rest adapts too. Mauss: there"s no such thing as a free gift. What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back? . Each gift binds the giver and recipient in a moral relationship (there is an imbalance in the relationship that will only be balanced when they give one back) Obligation to give gifts (shows you as a certain type of person) Obligation to return gifts (pay them back) [shows you as equally good, equally moral]
