outcolder 's review for:

The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies by Marcel Mauss

---

This was more difficult than I expected. I'd already read more than one summary of the book, and was eager to see the arguments laid out in detail. Mauss was writing for other anthropologists and he expects the reader to be familiar with Malinowski and the Potlatch at a level I just don't have. Still, it was a lot of fun and gave me a great deal to think about.