Note on Marcel Mauss's essai sur le don

Abstract

This article analyses M. Mauss's classic Essai sur le don, at the light of recent theoretical developments in Anthropology. It stresses Mauss's contribution to the understanding of the political dimension of gift exchange, as well as of its universality, ulteriorly demonstrated by C.Lévi-Strauss to be constituted as a formal and abstract principle, not an empirical fact. Taking this principle as its starting point, the article evaluates the thesis that the gift is the foundation of human sociability and communication, as well as the presence (or absence) of the gift and its different modes of institucionalization in several capitalist and non-capitalist societies that were analysed by Mauss.

Marcel Mauss; exchange theory; reciprocity; hierarchy