The Enigma of the Gift

Discussion on the book The Enigma of the Gift - Monday, 3rd December 2007 at 7pm. Our guests were Vesna V. Godina and Andrej Naterer. The event was organized in cooperation with Študentska založba.

Beginning with an analysis of the seminal work of Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strass, and drawing on his own fieldwork in Melanesia, Godelier argues that traditional theories are flawed because they consider only exchangeable gifts. By explaining gift-giving in terms of sacred objects and the authoritative conferral of power associated with them, Godelier challenges both recent and traditional theories of gift-giving, provocatively refreshing a traditional debate.