The Dangers of Gifts from Antiquity to the Digital Age

ISBN-13: 9781032298542 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022 / 272 str.

Alexandra Urakova; Tracey A. Sowerby; Tudor Sala

Opis

This is the first volume that examines dangerous gift-giving across centuries and disciplines. Bringing to the fore the subject that features as an aside in gift studies, it offers new insights into the ambivalent and troubled history of gift-giving.

Spis treści

Introduction: Unpacking the Dangerous Gift  Part 1: Gifts Divine, Demonic, and Devout  1. Demonic Gifts and Counter-gifts in Ancient Zoroastrianism  2. Blessings, Bribes and Bishops: Cyril of Alexandria, the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Making of Orthodoxy  3. ‘The most precious of all gifts’: Sentimentality, Consumption, and The Gift of Death in Warner, Phelps, and Twain  Part 2: The Precarious Politics of the Gift  4. The Dangerous Gift as Diplomatic Tool: Relics and Cross-confessional Gift-giving at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century  5. A Pandora’s Box of National Hostility?: The Széchényis and Aristocratic Donations in Nineteenth Century East-Central Europe  6. The Dangerous Gift of Universal Income: The Problem of Rentier Dependency in Venezuela  Part 3: The Dark Side of the Gift Economy  7. Taking Aim at ‘Exchange Gifts’ and the ‘Christmas Tax’: Dangerous Gifts in the Progressive Era and the Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving  8. The Dual Dangers of the Gift  9. The Birthday Cake: Commodity, Thing, Object, and Token.  Afterword: Gifts, Dangers and Their Performative Context