The Gift Paradigm A Short Introduction to the AntiUtilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences

In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new modes of thought, none more so than what crystallized in the 1980s around an innovative group of French academics. In TheGift Paradigm, Alain Caill provides the first in-depth, English-language introduction to La Revue du MAUSSor, Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences, combining the work of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and others. Today, the very idea of a general social science seems unthinkable, unless you count the pervasive sway of a utilitarian logic in orthodox economics, or the diffuse influence of neoliberalism. Here, Caill offers a distinctly different reading of economy and society, inspired by Maussas vital now as ever.