Understanding the Concept of Gift in Economics: Contributions from Other Social Sciences

• Authors: Sindzingre Alice Nicole
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In putting forth a view of economic agents as autonomous individuals driven by self-interest, mainstream economics precludes the possibility of gift. Gift could be found in non-market, “collectivist”, societies, where “informal” norms would include gift-giving. In this context, the paper argues that mainstream views regarding the impossibility of the concept of gift are inaccurate, via an analysis of conceptual and empirical contributions of other social sciences, notably sciences of mankind “par excellence” such as anthropology and philosophy. In particular, the paper shows that critiques of mainstream views that are based on simple contrasts and qualifications do not provide conceptual instruments for a rigorous critique (such as “collectivism”, “informality”, “altruism”). This is also the case with the more “heterodox” views that underscore the unrealistic character of mainstream models of social interactions and norms. The mainstream arguments of self-interest and exchanges, based on expectations of future returns as universal traits of human beings, are indeed not easy to refute, including with the conceptual tools of other social sciences. This paper instead argues that a deeper analysis of concepts such as selfishness, interest, exchange, or the individual yields a more relevant critique of mainstream conceptions of gift—“the interest of whom?” and “exchange shaped by what?” being the pertinent questions. Other social sciences show that these concepts actually always presuppose the pre-existence of societies before that of individuals, and this is expressed by the many facets of the conceptualisations of the act of giving, whether societies are market or non-market ones.

Keywords

EN

gift; exchange; neoclassical economics; developing countries; group membership

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski
• Journal: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 4-20

Dates

published

2017-12-15

Contributors

author

Sindzingre Alice Nicole

• National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS, Paris)
• EconomiX-University Paris-Nanterre
• School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Department of Economics, University of London

References

• Akerlof, George A. “Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 97, no. 4 (November 1982): 543–69.
• Arrow, Kenneth J. “Optimal and Voluntary Income Distribution.” In Economic Welfare and the Economics of Soviet Socialism: Essays in Honor of Abram Bergson, edited by Steven Rosefielde, 267-88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
• Arrow, Kenneth J. “Gifts and Exchanges.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 4 (Summer 1972): 343-62.
• Arrow, Kenneth J. Social Choice and Individual Values. 3rd ed. Cowles Foundation Monographs Series No. 12. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.
• Bandiera, Oriana, and Imran Rasul. “Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique.” Economic Journal 116, no. 514 (October 2006): 869-902.
• Bardsley Nicholas, and Robert Sugden “Human Nature and Sociality in Economics.” In Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, Vol. 1, edited by Serge-Christophe Kolm and Jean Mercier Ythier. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006.
• Becker, Gary S. “Altruism, Egoism and Genetic Fitness: Economics and Socio-Biology.” Journal of Economic Literature 14, no. 3 (September 1976): 817-26.
• Becker, Gary S. “A Theory of Social Interactions.” Journal of Political Economy 82, no. 6 (November-December 1974): 1063-93.
• Bell, Duran. “Modes of Exchange: Gift and Commodity.” Journal of Socio-Economics 20, no. 2 (1991): 155-67.
• Bourke, Andrew F. G. “Hamilton’s Rule and the Causes of Social Evolution.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 369 (2014): 1-10.
• Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. The Moral Economy of Communities: Structured Populations and the Evolution of Pro-Social Norms (mimeo) Amherst: University of Massachusetts, Department of Economics, 1997.
• Boyer, Pascal. “Tradition et vérité.” L’Homme 26, no. 97-98 (1986): 309-29.
• Boyd, Robert and Peter J. Richerson “Culture and the Evolution of the Human Social Instincts.” In Roots of Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Stephen C. Levinson and Nicholas J. Enfield. Oxford: Berg, 2006.
• Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996/1949.
• Camerer, Colin F., and Ernst Fehr. “When Does ‘Economic Man’ Dominate Social Behavior?” Science 311 (6 January 2006): 47-52.
• Carpenter, Jeffrey. The Sequencing of Gift Exchange: A Field Trial, Discussion Paper 10736. Bonn: IZA-Institute of Labor Economics, 2017.
• Deaton, Angus. Instruments of Development: Randomization in the Tropics, and the Search for the Elusive Keys to Economic Development. Working Paper 14690. Cambridge, MA: NBER, 2009.
• Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
• Eguia, John X. Discrimination and Assimilation. East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2015.
• Fafchamps, Marcel. “Ethnicity and Credit in African Manufacturing.” Journal of Development Economics 61, no. 1 (2000): 205-35.
• Falk, Armin. “Gift Exchange in the Field.” Econometrica 75, no. 5 (September 2007): 1501-11.
• Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gächter. “Altruistic Punishment in Humans.” Nature 415 (10 January 2002): 137-40.
• Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gächter. “Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments.” American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (September 2000): 980–94.
• Fehr, Ernst, and Klaus M. Schmidt, “The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism: Experimental Evidence and New Theories.” In Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, Vol. 1, edited by Serge-Christophe Kolm and Jean Mercier Ythier. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006.
• Fong, Christina, Samuel Bowles, and Herbert Gintis, “Strong Reciprocity and the Welfare State.” In Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, Vol. 2, edited by Serge-Christophe Kolm and Jean Mercier Ythier, 1439–64. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006.
• Friedman, Milton. “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” In Essays in Positive Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953, 3-43.
• Fudenberg, Drew. “Advancing Beyond Advances in Behavioral Economics.” Journal of Economic Literature 44, no. 3 (September 2006): 694-711.
• Gintis, Herbert, et al. “Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: Origins, Evidence, and Consequences.” In Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life edited by Herbert Gintis, et al. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.
• Godelier, Maurice. The Enigma of the Gift. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
• Greif, Avner. “Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies.” Journal of Political Economy 102, no. 5 (October 1994): 912-50.
• Greif, Avner. “History Lessons: The Birth of Impersonal Exchange: The Community Responsibility System and Impartial Justice.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 221-36.
• Hamilton, William Donald. “The Evolution of Altruistic Behavior,” The American Naturalist 97, no. 896 (September-October 1963): 354-56.
• Henrich, Joseph, et al., eds., Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Hirschfeld, Lawrence A. “Folksociology and the Cognitive Foundations of Culture.” Intellectica 2-3, no. 46-47 (2007): 191-206.
• Hoff, Karla, and Arijit Sen “The Kin System as a Poverty Trap?” In Poverty Traps, edited by Samuel Bowles, Steven N. Durlauf, and Karla Hoff. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
• Kahneman, Daniel, Jack L. Knetsch, and Richard H. Thaler. “Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics.” Journal of Business 59, no. 4, part 2 (1986): 285-300.
• Kirman, Alan, and Miriam Teschl. “Searching for Identity in the Capability Space.” Journal of Economic Methodology 13, no. 3 (September 2006): 299-325.
• Kurzban, Robert, Maxwell N. Burton-Chellew, and Stuart A. West. “The Evolution of Altruism in Humans,” Annual Review of Psychology 66 (2015): 575–99.
• Lazear, Edward. Economic Imperialism, Working Paper 7300. Cambridge MA: NBER, 1999.
• Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.
• Mahieu, François-Régis. Les fondements de la crise économique en Afrique. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1990.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge, 1922.
• Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Cohen and West, 1954/1924.
• Offer, Avner. “Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of Regard.” Economic History Review 50, no. 3 (August 1997): 450–76.
• Ostrom, Elinor. “Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no. 3 (Summer 2000): 137-58.
• Ostrom, Elinor. “Policies That Crowd Out Reciprocity and Collective Action.” In Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, edited by Herbert Gintis, et al., 253–75.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.
• Pignol, Claire. La théorie de l’équilibre general. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2017.
• Platteau, Jean-Philippe. Institutions, Social Norms and Economic Development. London: Routledge and Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000.
• Platteau, Jean-Philippe. Traditional Sharing Norms as an Obstacle to Economic Growth in Tribal Societies. Cahier de recherche de la faculté des sciences économiques et sociales 173. Namur: Centre de Recherche en Economie du Développement, 1996.
• Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time. Boston: Beacon Press, Beacon Press, 2001.
• Preston, Stephanie D., and Frans B. M. de Waal. “Empathy: Its Ultimate and Proximate Bases.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2002): 1-72.
• Rabin, Matthew. “Psychology and Economics.” Journal of Economic Literature 36 (March 1998): 11-46.
• Sahlins, Marshall D. “Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, no. 3 (April 1963): 285-303.
• Sahlins, Marshall D. Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine, 1972.
• Sekeris, Petros and Jean-Philippe Platteau. “On the Feasibility of Power and Status Ranking in Traditional Setups.” Journal of Comparative Economics 38, no. 3 (2010): 267-82.
• Sindzingre, Alice Nicole. “Concept and Causation: Issues in the Modelling of Institutions,” Forum for Social Economics (forthcoming 2017).
• Sindzingre, Alice Nicole and Fabrice Tricou. “Hierarchy, Market and Power in Capitalism: Conceptual Remarks.” 2nd Congress of the French Association for Political Economy (AFEP), Paris, 5-7 July 2012.
• Sindzingre, Alice Nicole. “The Relationships between Institutions and Growth in an Evolutionary Perspective: the Relevance of the Concepts of Membership and Hierarchy.” 24th Annual Conference of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE), Krakow, 18-21 October 2012.
• Stiglitz, Joseph E. “Markets, Market Failures and Development.” American Economic Review 79, no. 2 (May 1989): 197-203.
• Sugden, Robert. “On the Economics of Philanthropy.” Economic Journal 92, no. 366 (June 1982): 341-50.
• Sugden, Robert. “Spontaneous Order.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 3, no. 4 (Autumn 1989): 85-97.
• Sugden, Robert. “The Supply of Public Goods through Voluntary Contributions.” Economic Journal 94, no. 376 (December 1984): 772-87.
• World Bank, World Development Report: Mind, Society, and Behavior. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015.
• Ythier, Jean Mercier. “The Economic Theory of Gift-Giving: Perfect Substitutability of Transfers and Redistribution of Wealth.” In Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, vol.1, eds. Serge-Christophe Kolm and Jean Mercier Ythier), 230-31. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006.

Identifiers

DOI

10.26319/2911