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The Unbearable Ambiguity of the Gift*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Alain Guery
Alain Guery*
Affiliation:
CRH
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Abstract

In his book, Pour une histoire naturelle du don, François Athané questions the various anthropological, sociological, and philosophical discourses surrounding the fundamental social role of the gift. Taking as his point of departure the notion of the transfer of goods or services as a basic factor both in the exchange of gifts and of the gift itself, the author proceeds to deconstruct certain theories, beginning with Marcel Mauss’s The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (first published in French in 1923, and later published in English in 1954). Since such an approach does not permit considering the “gift—receipt—counter-gift” triad as a whole, it does not take into account the obligation to reciprocate highlighted by Mauss and thus deprives the gift of its constitutive role as a social link. Athané thus proposes a new interpretation of the place the gift occupies in human perception and social behavior. He refers to the universalizing nature of the gift as an expression of parental altruism. However, while this establishes a connection between nature and culture (the gift being the cultural form of this natural parental altruism), Athané makes no reference to the social and biological studies that were previously challenged by the authors he cites. This reconsideration of nature, in which society and its rules are said to originate, should give rise to new debates.

Type
Economic Theory and the Social Sciences
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 573 - 589
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2013

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Footnotes

*

On the subject of François Athané’s book, Pour une histoire naturelle du don (Paris: PUF, 2011).

References

1. Godelier, Maurice, The Enigma of the Gift, trans. Nora Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

2. Athané, Pour une histoire, 2.

3. Claude Lévi-Strauss takes up the term “commodities” in his discussion of Marcel Mauss’s The Gift. See Chapter 5 of his The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. James Harle Bell, John Richard von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 54. He also shows that the goods which are the object of gifts extend beyond this notion.

4. See, for example, in addition to the monumental and unavoidable Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954): Jean-Claude Perrot, “Économie politique,” in Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich, 1680-1820 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1988), Heft 8, 51-104; reprinted in Jean-Claude Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 1992), 63-95; and more recently Alain Guery, “L’honneur et le profit. Économie du pouvoir et économie de la richesse chez Montchrestien,” in Montchrestien et Cantillon. Le commerce et l’émergence d’une pensée économique, ed. Alain Guery (Lyon: ENS, 2011), 417-39.

5. Kojève, Alexandre, Outline of a Phenomenology of Right Google Scholar, trans. Bryan-Paul Frost and Robert Howse (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 39.

6. On this point see Guery, Alain, “Les conditions de la pluralité juridique. L’hypothèse du pré-droit,” in Le pluralisme juridique à l’épreuve de l’histoire, ed. Marie Bassano and Pierre Bonin (conference proceedings, April 28 and 29, 2011 Google Scholar, Université Paris 13 and Université Paris Descartes, forthcoming).

7. Durkheim, Émile, Hobbes à l’agrégation. Un cours d’Émile Durkheim suivi par Marcel Mauss (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 2011)Google Scholar; particularly the presentation of this lecture by Jean-François Bert, “Enseigner en philosophe, penser en sociologue: Hobbes entre les lignes,” at 7-24.

8. Sahlins, Marshall, “The Spirit of the Gift,” in Stone Age Economics (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1974), 149-84 Google Scholar.

9. Mauss, Marcel, Écrits politiques, ed. Marcel Fournier (Paris: Fayard, 1997)Google Scholar.

10. Maunier, René, “Recherches sur les échanges rituels en Afrique du Nord,” L’Année sociologique, n.s., 2, 1924-1925 (1927): 11-97 Google Scholar; reprinted in Maunier, Coutumes algériennes (Paris: Domat-Montchrestien, 1935); republished in Maunier, Recherches sur les échanges rituels en Afrique du Nord (Saint-Denis: Bouchène, 1998), where it is preceded by a substantial introduction by Alain Mahé, “Un disciple méconnu de Marcel Mauss: René Maunier,” at 7-51.

11. If the alsa, described by Nathan Wachtel, had been included in the comparison, it would have enabled the similarities and divergences in the functioning of these ceremonial celebrations to be accentuated and the shared principle governing total social facts to be demonstrated. See Wachtel, Nathan Le retour des ancêtres. Les Indiens Urus de Bolivie, XXe-XVIe siècle. Essai d’histoire régressive (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 104-50 Google Scholar.

12. Athané, Pour une histoire, 130.

13. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss, trans. Felicity Baker (London: Routledge, 1987; repr. 2001). For the Introduction in its original context, see “Introduction à l’œuvre de Marcel Mauss,” in Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris: PUF, 1950), ix-lii.

14. For example by Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, “From Mauss to Claude Lévi-Strauss,” in Signs, trans. Richard McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 114-25 Google Scholar.

15. Lévi-Strauss, Elementary Structures, 52.

16. On this point see Hénaff, Marcel, Claude Lévi-Strauss et l’anthropologie structurale (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 1991; repr. 2011), 67-112 Google Scholar.

17. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (Paris: PUF, 1949), 66 Google Scholar. In the English text, “admirable” is translated as “famous” (Lévi-Strauss, Elementary Structures, 52).

18. Lévi-Strauss, Introduction, 46.

19. Claude Lefort, “L’échange et la lutte des hommes,” Les Temps Modernes 64 (1951); reprinted in Claude Lefort, Les formes de l’histoire. Essais d’anthropologie politique (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 15-29.

20. Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Derrida, Jacques, Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992);Google Scholar the question of the gift features in most of Derrida’s works.

22. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Notebooks for an Ethics, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)Google Scholar, where certain pages are dedicated to Mauss.

23. Testart, Alain, Critique du don. Étude sur la circulation non marchande (Paris: Syllepse, 2007)Google Scholar.

24. From a proposition in Leibniz’s Elementa juris naturalis (1670-1671). It is deontic logic that governs the formalization of the relations between the four possible alternatives that characterize a law or a norm: compulsory or voluntary, authorizing or forbidding. The study of systems of moral or legal norms according to this logic began with the foundational article by Georg Henrik von Wright, “Deontic Logic,” Mind 60 (1951), 1-15. For an overview of this specific logic, still underdeveloped in philosophy and legal history, see Bailhache, Patrice, Essai de logique déontique (Paris: J. Vrin, 1991)Google Scholar.

25.Testart, Critique du don, 19.

26. Guery, Alain, “L’État. L’outil du bien commun,” in De l’archive à l’emblème, bk. 3 of Les lieux de mémoire 3: Les France, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 818-67 Google Scholar.

27. Clastres, Pierre, “Archaeology of Violence: War in Primitive Societies,” in Archaeology of Violence, trans. Jeanine Herman and Ashley Lebner (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2010), 237-278 Google Scholar.

28. Athané, Pour une histoire, 235.

29. It is always important to remember, in the modern political context, that “nation” has had various usages throughout history. What it refers to today, in the wake of the political meaning given to it by the French Revolution, is nothing less than the basis of democracy. It is far from the usages of those who would take it outside the socio-political field or the obfuscations of those who prefer the technocratic path to impose their views.

30. Robert Castel preferred to call it a “social state.” See From Manual Workers to Wage Labourers: Transformation of the Social Question, trans. Richard Boyd (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2003).

31. Athané, Pour une histoire, 310.

32. Élisabeth de Fontenay, Le silence des bêtes. La philosophie à l’épreuve de l’animalité (Paris: Fayard, 1998); Alfred Espinas, Des sociétés animales. Étude de psychologie comparée (Paris: G. Baillière, 1877); William D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 7, no. 1 (1964): part 1, 1-16 and part 2, 17-52; Regan, Tom, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983; repr. 2004)Google Scholar.

33. Athané, Pour une histoire, 281.

34. Ibid., 280.

35. Ibid., 296-304.

36. See the special issue “Enfances. Bilan d’une décennie de recherché,” Annales de démographie historique 2 (2012).

37. For a recent example, see Fouque, Antoinette, Génésique. Féminologie III (Paris: Éd. des Femmes), 2012 Google Scholar.

38. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, “La sexualité féminine et l’origine de la société,” in Nous sommes tous des cannibales (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2013), 203-15 Google Scholar.

39. Godelier, Maurice, Au fondement des sociétés humaines. Ce que nous apprend l’anthropologie (Paris: Albin Michel, 2007), 196 Google Scholarn1.

40. We can only regret the absence of important authors, even if they do briefly appear over the course of certain discussions. On such issues, one cannot ignore—or almost ignore, as is the case here—Godelier’s works, L’énigme du don and Au fondement des sociétés humaines. Nor can one leave aside the contributions of Alain Caillé and MAUSS, which is the result of a renewed and updated reading of The Gift, and which he discusses in many works. For an overview of the first publications of this sociological movement see Chanial, Philippe, La société vue du don. Manuel de sociologie anti-utilitariste appliquée (Paris: La Découverte, 2008)Google Scholar. The same is true of the writings of Jacques Godbout and Marcel Hénaff. The lack of reference to the work of historians is more easily explained, due to the fact that for a long time they showed little interest in the gift, with the exception of certain classicists, such as Moses Finley and Paul Veyne, certain medievalists such as Eliana Magnani and Anita Guerreau, and the American specialist of the sixteenth century Natalie Davis. The absence of the magnificent book by Nathan Wachtel, Le retour des ancêtres, which combines history and rigorous ethnological study, can scarcely be explained. At the very end of his book, Athané provides a brief but not entirely convincing justification based on lack of space (Pour une histoire, 305). We can hope that debate will be sparked with these too numerous absentees, whose approaches to the gift fall within the critique developed in the book.

41. This is already visible in Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory.

42. Athané, Pour une histoire, 102.

43. Ibid., 311.