Potlatch entailed a competitive exchange of gifts, with each individual or group attempting to out-do the others in order to attain higher status and greater degrees of honour. This model of gift-giving possessed political, religious, familial (in a broad sense), and economic implications for the societies which practiced it.

The most absolute form of gift-giving which Mauss investigates is that of potlatch, a kind of feast practiced by indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest. In bringing together these various studies, Mauss found that early systems of exchange centered around the obligations to give, receive, and most importantly to reciprocate. The thread that holds these geographically diverse investigations together is the notion of the gift, a practice of reciprocal exchange which reinforces solidarity. The essay is concerned with the economic practices of a wide range of so-called archaic societies, including societies in the Pacific Northwest, Polynesia, Malaysia, South America, and other regions. Other important thinkers have been influenced by or have written on The Gift, including Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard, however I would argue that it was Graeber who solidified Mauss’ impact on contemporary thought most of all. In part this is due to his influence on the writings of David Graeber, who brought many of Mauss’ central ideas to a wider audience, as well as updating them in places, in the construction of a fascinating history of debt. Mary Douglas, in the foreword to the Routledge edition, notes that Mauss’ influence in the latter three fields is not what it ought to be, but that foreword was written three decades ago now and I think it would be fair to say that Mauss’ influence has only gotten larger. Most obviously anthropology has been influenced by Mauss’ work on the gift, but so too have sociology, economics, and political theory. Considering the text’s brevity, it has managed to have an outsized influence on later thinking in a range of disciplines.

Marcel Mauss’ The Gift was originally written as an essay and consequently the published book is quite short, totalling at just over 100 pages not counting the (admittedly very substantial) endnotes. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (trans.

The gift book marcel mauss