Gift Exchange

One of the most momentous cross-cultural collisions occurred in the Caribbean in 1492, heralding a period of rapid change in both ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Worlds. During the early years of the colonial period, when new relationships were being established, material objects became active agents in the interactions between the indigenous Taíno and the Spanish. The Taíno gifted the Spanish with objects that had significance in their own world, in an attempt to enmesh the Spanish into Taíno socio-political and economic networks. In turn, Spanish objects entered into Taíno value
systems. Glass and jet beads, mirrors and brass ornaments were integrated into prestigious objects, such as the two surviving Taíno cotton sculptures that form the focus of this paper: a belt in the collections of the Weltmuseum Wien and a composite sculpture in the Museo Nazionale
Preistorico Etnografico ‘Luigi Pigorini’, Rome. These pieces offer a glimpse into how Old World exotics were reinterpreted and integrated into indigenous value systems during a period of cultural transition and change.

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SUMMARY: Chapter 9, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers the various types of trade and exchange in past societies, and how one may assess it, including different types of interactions (e.g., gift exchange), various scientific techniques (e.g., microscopic examination of materials; trace-element analysis; isotopic analysis), studying material and/or artifact distributions, assessing production and consumption, and analyzing the various means of exchange and interaction.  In my view, this is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record. UPDATED/REVISED March, 2021, some editing and new formatting, minimal new materials.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that roman patronage, as antiutilitarian phenomenon, fairly follow the gift theory by Marcel Mauss.
In the first part of the paper, I will briefly explain the evolution of the patronage phenomenon inside the roman society. Following the studies of Richard Saller we can observe that the Roman patronage is a dependence relationship between people, in which there is a reciprocal exchange of goods and services that persist through the time. Furthermore, this relation must be absolutely asymmetric, in the sense that the two parties must come from two different social classes and they must offer appropriate goods and services according to the position that they occupy in the society. If we assume this definition, we can identify four different kind of patronage rapports in the roman society: patronus-cliens, patronus-libertus, the juridical patronage and the collective patronage. Therefore, in this first part I will explain all of these different kind of relationships.
In the second part, I will try to define the social role of patronage in the Roman Empire with the help of the histoire comparée postulate, inter alia, by Marc Bloch. This method also permits an anthropological approach to the topic, since dependant relationships are inborn in every human society. Here, for example, I will compare the social role of potlatch in the Kwakiutl communities of the North America, well described by Franz Boas, and the patronage relationships in the Roman society. I will explain the similarity of the both systems: for example they are strongly based on the idea of reciprocity and they are mainly out of the codified laws of the two societies.
In the third and last part, I will conclude that different phenomena regulate the role of the people inside the human societies, but all this phenomena mainly follow the guidelines postulated by Marcel Mauss in his work essai sur le don: give-receive-reciprocate. In this paper, I choose to compare the Roman patronage with the potlatch system, but we can find similar phenomena in every societies for example in the feudal system or in the Mafia model or even more in the kula ceremony. In this way, I will try to define the important social role that the patronage relationships had in the Roman society. Maybe this approach could be advantageous also to inspect the general human behaviours.

Gift exchange is a repetitive behaviour of everyday life. We give and receive gifts during many rituals and social practices, which are both pre-determined and arranged to happen in a specific time (e.g. anniversaries, Mother’s day, graduations, weddings), or ad-hoc, like when we buy a souvenir for a friend to share feelings or to build up social networks. Theodor Adorno (1951/2005) describes the pleasure of giving and argues that “real giving had its joy in imagining the joy of the receiver” (p. 42). Echoing the words of Lacan and Hegel, Dilnot (1993) underlines the
recognition as the most desired want, and therefore, the thing that the receiver gets besides the gift-object. “The object, no matter what its mundanity, is like a collective gift: it is issued for all of us, and its function or work is gift like in that its form embodies recognition of our concrete needs and desires” (p. 58). So, through recognition, a gift can act as a tool to indirectly improve human-to-human interaction.

This conference presentation returns to the famous "Essay on the Gift" by Marcel Mauss in search of theoretical tools for understanding the huge ongoing globalization of the calendar and festivals alien to diverse cultures be it Halloween in China, St. Valentin in Macau or the Chinese New Year in Lisbon.

Deputy sheriffs make arrests for many reasons: to solve problems, generate statistics, rectify perceived moral wrongs, or enforce compliance with the law. Many studies of discretion in arrests have looked at situational and structural determinants of the decision to arrest. Citizen demeanor, race, gender, and the nature of the crime have all been examined. Turning from these approaches, this study considers the institution of policing, focusing on the relations among deputies to try and explain who makes an arrest, especially when more than one deputy is on scene. Drawing from data collected during a year and a half of ethnographic research as a deputy sheriff in a rural California county, we show that arrests are a form of symbolic capital. Arrests are given, taken, and fought for as deputies struggle to work with each other and compete for prestige and positions within the Sheriff's Office. Exchanged, gifted, and stolen as a valuable good, an arrest has the power to solidify existing relationships as well as foster divisions. As such, the arrest is a vehicle of social meaning and bonding, and a valued social commodity.

MA thesis: Ajijic: American dream, just in Mexico

Maģistra darbā “Ahihika: amerikāņu sapnis, tikai Meksikā” aplūkota plaša
pensionētu ārzemnieku kolonija nelielā Meksikas vidienes pilsētā, par darba mērķi izvirzot Ahihikas kopienas divu galveno iedzīvotāju grupu, iebraucēju un meksikāņu, savstarpējo attiecību izpēti, piedāvājot to iespējamo sadzīvošanas modeli un tā sekas.
Pēdējo desmitgadu laikā vērojamais milzīgais ārzemnieku skaita pieaugums un importētais dzīvesstils, ko veicinājusi tā saucamo jauno imigrantu iebraukšana, ir izmainījuši gan Ahihikas vidi, gan attiecības ar vietējiem iedzīvotājiem. Pretēji tradicionālajiem imigrantiem, kas vēlas iedzīvoties Meksikā, patiesi izprast tās kultūru, tradīcijas, apgūst
spāņu valodu un labprāt iesaistās vietējās aktivitātēs, jaunie imigranti izvēlas dzīvot savā ASV kopijā, tikai Meksikā. Arvien vairāk manāms, ka abas iedzīvotāju grupas - ārzemnieki un meksikāņi - dzīvo nosacītā izolācijā viena no otras, saskarsmei notiekot lielākoties došanas-ņemšanas kontekstā, kad katram ir kas nepieciešams.
Darbā aicināts palūkoties uz šīm attiecībām caur reciprocitātes perspektīvu. Kā galvenie apmaiņas veidi apskatīti darbinieku un darbadevēju attiecības, privātuzņēmumu darbība, labdarības aktivitātes un Meksikas netieši sniegtais ārzemnieku kopienai - iemesli izvēlēties Ahihiku kā pensionēšanās galamērķi. Došanas-ņemšanas mehānismi Ahihikas
ikdienā ir gan veidojuši un saliedējuši kopienu, gan arī iespaido kopienā valdošo nevienlīdzību starp abām grupām un no tās izrietošos konfliktus.
Ārzemnieki, kontrolējot meksikāņiem nepieciešamos resursus, piemēram, darbu, vidi, valodu, no “viesiem” ir kļuvuši par “saimniekiem” un arvien skaļāk sāk izvirzīt savas prasības, piemēram, iesaistoties vietējās politikas aktivitātēs, pamatojot to ar savu sniegumu Ahihikai. Tai pat laikā publiskajā diskursā tiek uzsvērta vienlīdzība un tirgus attiecības.

This article offers a new interpretation of Marcel Mauss's The Gift. It situates Mauss's argument within his broader thinking on the politics of sovereign debt cancellation and the question of German reparations paid to the Allies after World War I. Mauss applauded the policies of reparation and debt cancellation proposed by the French " solidarist " activists who were responsible for inclusion of reparations provisions in the Versailles Treaty. But Mauss was also aware that their legal mobilization could not by itself restore a sense of solidarity among European peoples. Broader systems of political alliance and anthropological norms of gift-making were also necessary. In Mauss's writings on war reparations, as in The Gift, he described the legal, political, and macrostructural dynamics at work in the settlement of reparations and sovereign debts, which he differentiated from the dynamics at work in the speculative logics of financial capitalism. In doing so, Mauss provided insights into the settlement of sovereign debt crises, which still agitate the international community today.

Jeremy Corbyn in the summer of 2015 declared that he wanted to create a “new politics” and offer authentic change to the British Labour Party post the New Labour era under Blair and Brown. In this paper I assess the political philosophy of Jeremy Corbyn against that of the anti-New Labour Blue Labour movement, which proclaims itself to be Labour’s “radical tradition”. Blue Labour like the Red Tory tradition of Philip Blond is rooted in the anti-modernist Radical Orthodoxy movement that rejects the rationalisation and disenchantment of the world and its offshoots, particularly the political philosophy of liberalism (in both its economic and social dimensions). Although there is a definite sympathy with the anti-capitalism of Corbyn with regards to the economy, there is concern that his statism is ultimately liberal. Blue Labour argues that the alleviation of society’s ills would be best served through the adoption and application of Catholic Social Thought (CST), which rejects the liberal atomistic conception of human beings abstracted from their broader communities. To change to a more “relational” conception of humanity, as Blue Labour’s advocates argue, would have the potential to create far more positive radical change for our social and economic relationships than merely depending on state intervention as the left has historically done in the pursuit of equality.

Scholars and practitioners often consider the 'perfect gift' to understand the qualities of the most cherished gifts or to encourage givers to choose such gifts. Whilst useful, this represents a utopian view of gift-giving. This study explores the concept of 'best gift ever' through 35 in-depth interviews in order to understand the properties of significant gifts as defined by givers and receivers. Findings reveal that the 'best gifts ever' are often associated with unforgettable and life-changing experiences. These properties are compared with those of the 'perfect gift' to produce an integrative framework for truly special gifts. Specifically, this paper: 1) identifies the properties of 'best gifts ever' as distinct from 'perfect gifts'; 2) uncovers insights into the 'perfect gift' beyond the existing conceptualization; and, 3) integrates the 'best gift ever' and the 'perfect gift' into a unified framework capturing what makes a gift successful.

Anthropological analyses of charity are often based on Maussian theories of gift exchange and inequalities between donor and recipient, sometimes compounded by spectacular displays of giving or by aid, both humanitarian and faith-based, from the global north to the south. Other accounts complicate this understanding, variously showing the charitable gift as the recipient's right or considering charitable work as a technology of self care. The context and nature of the donation also affect both donor and recipient; money and blood have very different connotations and effects as charitable gifts. Ethnographies of charitable action suggest it is a total social fact, entangling economic, politics, religion and notions of relatedness. 108 words

L’article prolonge les travaux d’Alain Testart et de François Athané, reprenant l’idée qu’une société sans État n’est pas pour autant une société sans droit et que le critère de l’exigibilité s’avère universellement valide afin de caractériser les différents transferts de biens. Revenant sur la définition de l’échange obligatoire et sur la classification des transferts illégitimes, il explore ensuite les situations intermédiaires entre les formes pures de transferts, qui avaient motivé la réflexion initiale de Marcel Mauss. Il distingue les cas d’indétermination (privilégiés par l’Essai sur le don), des cas de combinaison. Plusieurs exemples historiques et ethnologiques sont examinés, en particulier celui du tee de Nouvelle-Guinée, qui se révèle constituer une articulation originale d’échange et de don.

Dans le numéro spécial de L’Europe en formation sur « Le fédéralisme personnaliste », c’est en en appelant à « Marc au-delà de Marc » qu’il était « vu de Ouagadougou » par Lazare Ki-Zerbo, soucieux d’en compenser la relative insensibilité aux enjeux de la spatialité tels qu’ils se présentent en Afrique. J'ai tenté d'ébaucher ici la réponse à ce défi qui pourrait provenir d’en amont de Marc, en me basant sur un ensemble de textes inédits d’Arnaud Dandieu que ce grand ancêtre du fédéralisme personnaliste avait pu rassembler avant sa mort prématurée en 1933 sous un titre qui parle de lui-même: L’espace ami de l’homme. C’est que Dandieu s’y propose précisément de « Repartir de la durée Bergsonienne »  pour opérer un « Renversement du bergsonisme »  , en construisant une phénoménologie de l’espace qui en fasse ressortir l’aspect hétérogène négligé par Bergson -et par Alexandre Marc à sa suite, ainsi qu’a pu le relever Ki-Zerbo. Si selon lui « les afro-fédéralistes appréhendent l’hétérogénéité à travers la spatialisation de la vie », la pensée de Dandieu franchit allègrement la « coupure épistémologique » située par Ki-Zerbo dans la Méditerranée, car elle comporte de nombreuses allusions explicites ou implicites à des aspects caractéristiques de la culture et de la pensée africaines comme points d'appui d'une phénoménologie de l'"espace vécu" (Eugène Minkowski) jusque dans ses implications sociopolitiques, voire religieuses.

Partendo da un’indagine condotta a Torino dall’AVIS su un gruppo di volontari italiani e marocchini, l’autrice mette in rilievo il carattere culturale e sociale della donazione del sangue. La sua ricerca analizza in primo luogo il rapporto tra donazione del sangue e la categoria antropologica e etnografica del dono. Quindi, prende in considerazione le figure del medico e del donatore, ridefinendone ruoli e implicazioni. Infine, confronta le due tipologie di donazione, da parte di italiani e immigrati, per comprendere meglio le dinamiche di questo tipo di dono, nel tentativo di individuare quale posto rivesta nella società contemporanea.

Centering on the Jesuit’s reducciones of Paraguay, this study examines the relationship between European musical practices and the idea of “city”, and explores the selective appropriations some native groups effected, investing musical celebrations with new political meanings. In the Spanish crown’s endeavor to civilize the American Indians, music was an important means towards the achievement of urban status. Taking cues from José de Acosta’s differentiations between “levels of civilization”, music is shown to constitute a central tool in furthering “advances” in all of his main categories: order in time, space, and law, respect for authority, social stratification, material well-being, reading and writing. A second section centers on the celebration of Corpus Christi in the Chiquito reducciones and its preserved musical repertoire, interpreted as a symbolic interchange between the city and the surrounding forest: the villagers “traded” the offering of their uncivilized goods and gods for the priest’s gift to them, the Eucharist and European civilization. One aria, “El cordero de los cielos”, represents the priests’ construction of the holy contract between them and their flock. When the Jesuits abandoned the Indians, the tradition (unlike other feasts) was also gradually neglected, because the transaction between Indian rural values and European urban contributions was no longer equitable.
From Geoffrey Baker y Tess Knighton, eds. The Resounding City: Music and Urban Society in Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 208-229

In The Efflorescence of Caricature, 1759–1838, an international, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational team of scholars reconfigures the geography of modern visual satire, as the expansive narrative reaches from North America to Europe, to China and the Ottoman Empire. Caricature's specific visual cultures are also laid bare, its iconographic means and material support, as well as the diverse milieu of its making—the military, the art academy, diplomacy, politics, art criticism, and popular entertainment. Some of its greatest practitioners—James Gillray and Honoré Daumier—are seen in a new light, alongside some of their far flung and opportunistic pastichers. Most trenchantly, assumptions about the consequences of caricature's rise come under intense scrutiny, interrogated for its cherished and long-vaunted civilizational claims on individual character, artistic supremacy, political liberty, and global domination.

Die Sache der Reziprozität findet sich in alltäglichen Phänomenen wie dem des Grüßens und des Sich-Verabschiedens, des Dankens und des Schenkens. Um sie auf den Begriff zu bringen, wird ihr in diesem Lehrbuch zunächst exemplarisch nachgespürt, indem Protokolle der alltäglichen Phänomene mit der Objektiven Hermeneutik analysiert werden. So wird ein erster Begriff struktureller Reziprozität entwickelt. Mit diesem Begriff im Gepäck wird sodann eine Reise durch die Explikationen von Reziprozität durch M. Mauss, C. Lévi-Strauss und M. Hénaff unternommen. Sie entwickeln anhand ethnographischen Materials und philosophischer Reflexionen Begriffe von Gabe und generalisiertem Tausch. Diese Begrifflichkeit wird nach einer Re-Analyse des Materials und nach argumentativer Überprüfung der Reflexionen mit den zuvor gewonnenen Erkenntnissen konfrontiert. So wird ein empirisch gesättigter und theoretisch plausibler Begriff der strukturellen Reziprozität gewonnen. Im Verlauf der Darstellung wird immer wieder auf leicht zugängliche Phänomene hingewiesen, die den Lesern des Lehrbuchs Forschungsmöglichkeiten zur Prüfung und Anreicherung der Argumentation bieten.

If home is the engine room of Palestinian subjectivities, what does Airbnb do to the functioning of that engine? What do the experiences of Palestinian hosts demonstrate about the logics, presuppositions, and effects of Airbnb as a technology of platform capitalism? This essay makes two arguments: First, in enrolling people into new relations with their homes and the homes of others, Airbnb shapes and is shaped by socialities, modes of exchange, and material conditions. Second, encoded within Airbnb’s operation are assumptions that users are located in benevolent, democratic states with functioning infrastructures. An analysis of the platform must thus take politics, history, and culture into account. Part I introduces the concept of “occupied home-sharing” for understanding Airbnb’s manifestation in Palestine. Occupied home-sharing highlights that Palestine’s hosts are incarcerated and host unfreely. It also helps reframe occupation and settler colonialism as forms of coerced hosting that allow intrusions of violence into home spaces. Part II examines four different aspects of hosts’ experiences of the platform: 1) property as flexible infrastructure, 2) gifts, family, community, 3) rejections, and 4) exclusions. The conclusion considers what these help us to understand about the relationship between Airbnb and precarity in Palestine. Airbnb is both a result of existing forms of precarity born from occupied home-sharing and an instrument for mitigating and making worlds within them.

In 1663 Mary Beale recorded her thoughts on how to paint apricots. Beale’s statement, ‘Observations by MB in her painting of Apricots in August 1663’, is the first known text in English about the act of painting written by a female artist. It is all the more remarkable for having been written at a time when convention expected married gentlewomen to be deferential, modest and virtually silent. This monogrammed manifesto is anything but modest: it is an authoritative exemplar for others to follow, and it represents Mary’s implicit acceptance of her place in a shared artistic inheritance and a stake in her own legacy for the future. Observations - here taken together with Beale’s other texts and with self-portraits spanning the years 1659 to 1681 - forms part of an oblique autobiography and is read as an statement of intent encoded in what appears to be innocuous technical information.

Storytelling is a gift which does not demand a return. In the giving and receiving of a story, no one loses: ‘It is a theatre in which all perform freely.’1 The stories that we love and return to throughout our lives are those which transmit vitality from the writer’s soul to ours, reviving us; they ‘circulate among us as reservoirs of available life.’2
In this paper, I propose to examine the role of the gift in creative writing and lessons for storytellers in other disciplines. I will review gift theory, from early, anthropological interpretations of the gift as a form of social exchange, through to recent theories which present creative practice, including writing, as a relational state of giving-and-receiving. In this state, a writer can create a story which genuinely gives to the recipient, without creating a sense of unwelcome indebtedness. The writer may achieve this, not solely through determined intention, but by being present in her creative practice, allowing the story to emerge free of ego yet immanent with authentic self.
There may be lessons from the field of creative writing practice, for storytellers in other disciplines, who are seeking to use storytelling to achieve particular outcomes, such as improved health or education. For example, an understanding of the role of the gift in creative writing may help non-creative writing practitioners to create stories which are at their most effective and impactful because, like creative writing practiced in a gift-relation, they refresh and revive.

Dear readers, I have now made available the inventory that should have been included with this article.  I apologize for that oversight.

I transcribed and translated the inventory (shown above on Academia.edu,

Published with appendix, 3 August 2018, with "French History".

Book chapter in WORK, SOCIETY, AND THE ETHICAL SELF
Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era, available from Berghahn Books https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HannWork

Rather than accept formal commodity-like contractual definitions of ‘free’ labor, this chapter reflects on the ambivalence in Mauss’s concept of “prestations totales” (‘total services’) to reconsider the ‘voluntary character’ of work. It discusses Vanuatu’s colonial and unfree labor history, as well as the impact of overseas labor migration on attitudes to work in contemporary Vanuatu. It shows how the meaning and value of ‘free work’, both in terms of working without payment, or working autonomously, depends on the worker’s standpoint within their social and political relations, and how they confront their social obligations.

In 1986 Jonathan Parry’s ‘The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift'’ claimed to overturn conventional understandings of Marcel Mauss, by arguing that market societies most idealise the distinction between gifts and commodities, and gift giving need not entail reciprocity. Based on an analysis of Hindu religious gifts, Parry proposed a broad framework for understanding how ideologies of exchange function in different economic and cosmological contexts. 30 years later, this symposium considers the intellectual milieu in which The Indian Gift was written, and interrogates whether or not the work remains relevant to contemporary research and analysis.  The symposium opens with a short introduction that provides some background to Parry’s essay and incorporates material from a recent interview with him. This is followed by critical comments on it by five influential thinkers on gift exchange:  James Carrier, Chris Gregory, James Laidlaw, Marilyn Strathern and Yunxiang Yan. It ends with a short ‘revisionist’ note by Parry in which he tries to identify some of the limits of the Maussian approach for contemporary anthropology.

This special issue of Body & Society explores critical issues arising from enactments of blood donation and transfusion in different parts of the world. With articles focusing on Brazil, China, India, the Navajo Nation, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, the United States and elsewhere, description and analysis is presented of a modal and mobile constellation of practices and knowledges, transnational in distribution, but also situationally enacted in particular instances. What comes across is the scope of blood donation: its extraordinary emotive force, the complex methodologies it requires for the mobilization of populations, its ability to stimulate imaginative thought among diverse constituencies, its variations of transactional form, the ways in which it reproduces controversies globally. The scope of blood donation – the remarkable heterogeneity of its enactments and of the associations condensed therein – can perhaps only begin to be captured with the bringing together of such a wide-ranging set of ethnographic accounts as is presented in this special issue.

The author in her article investigates the rules, norms and practices of gift-giving at weddings in Ghimeș (Romania). She presents local people’s experiences about gift exchange at weddings and the way they interpret the process of gift giving and reciprocation, what calculations precede the compilation of guest lists, what factors are taken into consideration when people accept or reject wedding invitation and in what way they calculate the proper sum of money to be given as gift to the young couple. The return of gifts does not take place automatically in each case, the indebted party is not always asked to reciprocate, and not every indebted guest accepts invitation and returns the gift. The author has reconsidered the local norms of gift-giving at weddings relying upon Marcel Mauss’ model of gift exchange (1925). She wondered to what extent this model elaborated on premodern societies can be applied to societies in the 21st century. She observed gift giving at weddings on her
fi eld site in Ghimeș between 2007 and 2016, and points out that beyond the trinity of giving, accepting and reciprocating fixed by Mauss, some other factors also have to be taken into consideration as not all practices and norms of local gift exchange at weddings can be described with these three acts, which might call for a supplementation and further elaboration of the model.

Exploring the Mongolian pawnshop institution through the analytical lens of anthropological exchange theory,this article argues that commodification has boosted the flow of dangerous agency and ‘spirit’ by easing the flowand exchangeability of belongings. While the distinction between gifts and commodities appears in Mongolianethnography, it is neither stable nor definite, and it is argued that commodification at the pawnshop mightactually serve to spiritually charge people and objects and thereby enhance their social agency and gift-likeaspects.

Im Mittelpunkt des Beitrags im Sammelband „Biographien des Buches“ steht ein Exemplar des "Herbarius latinus", ein pharmakologisches Handbuch, gedruckt und verlegt bei Peter Schöffer in Mainz 1484, das sich heute im Bestand der Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen befindet. Über sechs Stationen wird die Exemplargeschichte des Buchs entfaltet: von der Mainzer Offizin zum Pariser Verleger Henri II Etienne und als Geschenk Henris zum ungarischen Humanisten Johannes Sambucus, weiter nach Nürnberg in eine unbekannte Privatbibliothek und wenig später in die bedeutende Bibliothek in die Nürnberger Bibliothek des Arztes und Naturforschers Christoph Jacob Trew. Die Trew-Sammlungen gelangten  nach seinem Tod als Schenkung in die Universität Altdorf und und nach der Auflösung der Universität an ihren heutigen Aufbewahrungsort, die UB Erlangen. Diese letzte Station wurde kurzfristig  unterbrochen durch einen Ausflug des Exemplars, das von dem drogensüchtigen Erlanger Bibliothekar Mehringer gestohlen wurde, in den Münchner Antiquariatsbuchhandel die Bibliothek des Bibliophilen Otto Schäfer in Schweinfurt.

In der Raumsoziologie entstehen Kommunikationsräume auf der Grundlage der Wahrnehmung sozialer Güter von handelnden Akteuren in räumlichen Anordnungen. Damit ist der Rahmen für mögliche Strategien benannt, denen der Herbarius und sein kommunikatives Angebot zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten und an wechselnden Orten ausgesetzt ist. Das Schriftmedium ‚Buch‘ wird als Artefakt und Gegenstand symbolisch-kommunikativer Handlungen, von Praktiken und Bedeutungs-zuschreibungen, in den Blick genommen. Der Beitrag hat zwei Ziele: erstens zu zeigen, wie Methoden der historischen Buchforschung zur Rekonstruktion der Bewegungen eines Buchexemplars in Raum und Zeit genutzt werden können, und zweitens, das Medium Buch in den Kontext neuerer Diskussionen um das Konzept der Objektbiographie und der Materiellen Kultur zu stellen.

Le musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac conserve un costume d’apparat offert en 1919 au président de la République Raymond Poincaré par une délégation éthiopienne dépêchée par l’impératrice Zäwditu et le régent Täfäri Mäkwännən. Le choix de ce présent n’est pas seulement dû à son caractère précieux. Il reflète aussi bien l’histoire des pratiques honorifiques de l’Éthiopie que les enjeux politiques auxquels le pays fait face au début du XXe siècle, notamment celui de se rendre visible aux yeux des nations européennes. L’étude de la trajectoire de ce cadeau, de son acheminement vers la France à sa patrimonialisation, met en lumière la multiplicité des messages dont il est porteur : une polysémie que l’institution muséale a encore bien du mal à appréhender.

It has long been recognised by anthropologists that gift exchange is a worldwide phenomenon. Anthropologists’ attention was drawn to gift exchange during field work because of the sheer scale of the event or the aesthetic value of the things being exchanged or given away. Within different groups studied, spaced by time and distance, giving may have had many forms and reasons, including basic goods reciprocal exchange, the gaining of status, redistribution, or benevolence. The gathered knowledge of gift reciprocation traces its moral origin to the base of every society and anthropologists have learnt a lot about their own culture by giving gifts to the people they study.