Diabetes

Abstract

As one of the oldest forms of social actions that bind people together and as an arresting example of the universality and diversity of humanity, gift exchange has long been a focus of anthropological inquiry. This entry starts with the distinction between individual gifts and collective gifts which explains some cross-cultural misunderstandings, and moves on to review the two basic theoretical models on the engine of gifting—the spirit of the gift and the principle of reciprocity. While revealing that the highly diversified patterns of gift exchange derive from different perceptions of the relationship between culturally- constructed notions of personhood and material objects in the larger social setting, the anthropology of the gift also unpacks the nuances of social life by examining patterns of gift-giving behaviour all over the world.