Mauss The Gift Analysis

After presenting his arguments and providing the three examples, Mauss attempts to show the relationship between the concept of gift economy and the modern day social democracy in his conclusion. He tries to connect his theory on gift exchanging to the contemporary situations of the states. However, he fails to do so. This is because Mauss completely ignores the characteristics of the modern states, especially the coercive power that they have. Unlike individuals, states have the power to make laws and to punish its citizens, which make the exchange non-obligatory. His conclusion on trying to tie the notion of gift and social democracy together is disappointing as it barely has any logical connections to his other arguments presented throughout the book. It seems like

Although Mauss’ account of gift as being reciprocated may make sense in some contexts, it does not seem to make sense in terms of family members. He argues that the reason why husbands occasionally give gifts to their wives is to recompense for sexual services that the wives provide (x). Here, it is clear to see that Mauss tends to commodify everything so that they could fit into his interpretation of the economic structure. Overall, he sounds like an emotionless person who has never had the feelings of love.

First of all, due to the fact that The Gift was written more than fifty years ago, some of the contents of the book are very old school. As a result, it is hard to fit some of the arguments presented by Mauss to the modern society. Some of his claims conflict with the contemporary thoughts of our society. For instance, all of examples that he provides are based on the ancient societies. He does not look into the social evolutionary perspective that puts societies into distinct