Definition of Gift Economy

The term comes from the Latin donum —translated into Spanish as offering or gift—, derived, in turn, from the verb do, as 'give'. The idea of ​​the gift is very present in the biblical tradition, just as it has also been taken up again in the field of humanities and the social Sciences.

The notion of the gift in precolonial societies was studied by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), who understands the

exchange as a constitutive factor of all social activities. In these societies, exchanges of goods, wealth or products do not occur in a simple way between individuals, but are collectivities —whether clans, tribes or families— that exchange with each other, through the physical persons who specify the action. In the same sense, what is exchanged are not exclusively economically useful objects; but, fundamentally, symbolic objects: courtesies, dances, rites, feasts, military services, women, children.

Mauss calls this organization of the exchange: economy of the gift, under which objects are delivered without the mediation of an explicit agreement of rewards at a time ruled, but within the framework of a more general and permanent contract, which exceeds the circulation of riches. What makes objects comparable in exchange is not—unlike the way Western society conceives it—being subjected to law of value, but share the common character of being transferable, even when they are not equal or have the same value.

In the logic of the gift, there is an implicit contract that requires the restitution of the donation together with a supplement. For this reason, the gift is never disinterested, since, although there is no scheduled compensation, the prestige of the person who receives it the gift obliges to return it with usury with respect to the thing granted, since only in this way can said gift be increased. prestige.

In contemporary Western societies, the idea of ​​exchange rests on the notion of the exchange value that is assigned to products on the market. However, in societies that anthropology classical termed primitives, the conception of exchange did not have at its base an idea of ​​equivalence of values ​​of what was exchanged, but what was central was the unlimited reciprocity of the exchange same. The work invested in the object destined for exchange has a ritual character and, in this sense, is think under the category of the gift, that is, of what is given and lost, without expecting in return a retribution for the Energy used in the production process.

The figure of the gift in the philosophy of deconstruction

One of the interlocutors who has problematized the figure of the gift in the work of Marcel Mauss was the philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), who proposes an alternative logic of the gift, from the perspective of of construction. Derrida emphasizes the difference between gift and exchange, the former being characterized as not involving retribution; however, this leads to an aporetic formulation —that is, without a way out—, since, to the extent that something is recognized as a gift, it remains inscribed in a scheme of refunds.

The gift and the exchange belong to exclusionary logics, insofar as the former embodies a structural value, defined by the excessive character that is is at the base of the donation, unlike the second, which implies an immediate transaction, in which a mere circulation of goods occurs. In the economy of the gift, Derrida points out, the dimension of the material is tied to that of the symbolic, through an act that dislocates the conditioning structure characteristic of the exchange. For the philosopher, what is interesting about the notion of the gift lies in the fact that it constitutes a regime that resists that of productivity, remaining as an irreducible event.