The Gift

"This is a classic of economic anthropology. Its central argument is that gifts of all kinds require reciprocity and that this plays a fundamental role in how societies cohere. And there is, as Mauss discovered in his ethnographic research, a competitive element in gift giving. Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest had an institution or ritual called the Potlatch whereby, in an effort to try and create a gift that could never be reciprocated by the other community, people would destroy all the property they owned in an act extreme self-harming generosity. This is a complete contradiction to the core idea in neo-classical and modern economics that human behaviour is entirely self interested. But, again, it also helps to explain why economic institutions can achieve such a tight control over us. Mauss was intrigued by the fact that we will go to extraordinary lengths to reciprocate, even to the extent that we will do harm to ourselves, in order to win the esteem of others. Another book that touches on this is Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class , which is where we get the notion of conspicuous consumption. This is the idea that I may actually consume in ways that are more about getting status than satisfying any material need or desire. I may well spend money I barely have. The quest for status, which is reciprocal and relational because it involves the eyes of the other, is a far more compelling force than simple hedonistic self-interest. The reason houses and cars keep getting bigger is because the quest for social recognition turns into an arms race. “We will go to extraordinary lengths to reciprocate, even to the extent that we will do harm to ourselves” Mauss showed that in every society there is this drive to reciprocate and that this ties us in ways which are very binding. He suggested that gift exchange is where all exchange beings, and that market exchange is actually a particular derivative of gift exchange. Gift exchange is the norm while market exchange is the exception rather than, as economists assume, the other way round. This point links us to the work of Pierre Bourdieu and to David Graeber’s Debt , which I’ll come to in a minute. Bourdieu says the key question posed by Mauss’s analysis is the length of time between outward and return gift. The longer the delay, he says, the more social cohesion there is. So, for example, if I buy a sandwich I hand over a fiver and it’s done, we walk away as strangers. But gifts take longer. If I give someone in the sandwich shop a book and a year later he gives me something that’s still an exchange but it connects us as friends or comrades rather than just as market actors. Meanwhile, society as a whole involves – or should involve – some kind of inter-generational reciprocity, where parties give and receive at different points in their life cycle. Marx’s principle of communism, “from each according to his ability to each according to his need,” is really an ideal of gift-exchange elevated to a societal norm. Behavioural economists have unwittingly stumbled upon Mauss’s insight much more recently. They have discovered that if you really want to change someone’s behaviour it is often more effective to have them sign a contract saying, for example, ‘I promise not to smoke’ than if you fine or incentivise them. There is something about engaging in a relational moral act — an intra-subjective commitment – that binds people in ways that extend way beyond narrow economic self interest. The utilitarian, Benthamite vision of human psychology turns out to be absurdly naïve."