The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies

Since its first publication in English in 1954, The Gift, Marcel Mauss's groundbreaking study of the relation between forms of exchange and social structure, has been acclaimed as a classic among anthropology texts.

A brilliant French sociologist and anthropologist, Marcel Mauss (1872?) used case studies of Melanesia, Polynesia, and northwestern North America to demonstrate that gift exchange is a total system at the center of society.