The Return of the Gift European History of a Global Idea [Paperback]

This book is a history of modern European interpretations of the gift in global context.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.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.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.Introduction; 1. The crisis of the gift: Warren Hastings and his critics; 2. Liberalism, self-interest, and the gift; 3. The selfless 'savage': theories of primitive communism; 4. Anthropologists and the power of the gift: Boas, Thurnwald, Malinowski; 5. Marcel Mauss and the globalized gift; Conclusion.This lucidly written and insightful book follows the fortunes of the gift in European social thought from Thomas Hobbes through Marcel Mauss. Evoking fascinating life stories, intellectual traditions, changing economies, and war-torn worlds, Harry Liebersohn describes the waning of the idea of the gift among 19th-century political economists and its flowering lc,