| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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The implication is clear: reciprocity (i.e., balanced reciprocity) in gift exchange is a social good.
A key work in modern reciprocity studies is Essai sur le Don (1925) by Marcel Mauss, translated into English as The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies.35 Mauss designated three types of obligation in gift systems: to give, to receive, and (after an appropriate interval) to reciprocate.36 The sequence of these three events—giving, receiving, and reciprocating—is seen as fundamental in reciprocity systems. In everyday English usage, the concept of reciprocity is often muddled with that of mutuality, which strictly defined refers to a feeling or an action that is felt or performed by each party towards the other party. (The common expression “mutual friend” is a widespread but incorrect usage.) Reciprocity refers only to the return of a gift or service or to a system in which this return is an integral part of the transaction.
As pointed out by Mary Douglas in her foreword to the English edition of Essai sur le Don, Mauss made a blunt departure from previous assumptions about gift exchange. In her words, there is no such thing as “a free gift”: “each gift is part of a system of reciprocity in which the honour of giver and recipient are engaged.”37 Douglas traced the originality of Mauss’s theories to his studies in Vedic religion, but his book is primarily about politics and economics.38 Mauss’s attempt to undermine modern intuitive belief in free and spontaneous reciprocal altruism has been only partially successful, even in anthropological research. A question for present times, only tentatively explored in Essai sur le Don, is how the system of gifts has been or is being replaced in part by commercial market transactions in contemporary developed and developing societies. Colonial and postcolonial societies are fertile territories for examining this kind of change.