The Gift and its Paradoxes: Beyond Mauss

ISBN-13: 9781138271845 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 180 str.

Olli Pyyhtinen

Opis

Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, The Gift and its Paradoxes explores the ambiguity of the gift: it is at once both a relation and a thing, alienable and inalienable, present and poison. Challenging the nature of giving as reciprocal, the book engages critically with the work of Mauss and develops a new theory of the gift according to which the gift cannot be reduced to a model of exchange, but must instead entail a loss or sacrifice. Ultimately, the gift is examined in the book as the impossible occurrence of gratuitous giving.

Recenzje

’Since Mauss’s The Gift first appeared in 1924, the problematic of the gift has engaged theorists across the humanities and social sciences. Olli Pyyhtinen reviews much of this literature, while also using movies, novels, and fairy tales to offer a novel challenge to the privileging of relations of exchange and reciprocity by focusing attention back on the gift itself as a paradoxical object.’ Alan D. Schrift, Grinnell College, USA ’In this fresh take on classic theories, Olli Pyyhtinen shows not only the anthropological complexities inherent in the gift, but the necessity of engaging with it on an ontological level. By way of Derridean deconstruction, analyses of popular culture and a brilliant application of Serres's notion of the parasite, we're here presented with a most original take on an oft-misunderstood phenomenon.’ Alf Rehn, Ã…bo Akademi University, Finland

Spis treści

Contents: Genesis; The (im)possible gift; The generosity of the given; Parasites’ paradise (aka like hopping on the beach); In/exclusions: the gift of blood and alms for the poor; Gendered economies of the gift; Making a gift of death; The gift is not one; Bibliography; Index.

O autorze

Olli Pyyhtinen is is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Turku, Finland and author of Simmel and 'the Social'.