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

5.0

This kind of made me feel creeped out about all gift giving and reciving. Mauss was optimistic about how the older laws and positivity of exchange could be returned to, that hasen't exactly happened. I would normally give this four stars, because the limited scope of the etymological section wasn't so great, but the legacy of this book is too epic for me to quibble about such things. As Mauss knew, others have followed him and gotten all that work done. Where to find it though?