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On the Theoretical and Practical Relevance of the Concept of Gift to the Development of a Non-imperialist Economics
Abstract
There is growing awareness of the need for interdisciplinary research on complex issues, but also of the obstacles that historical boundaries between social disciplines pose to such dialogue. It is increasingly recognized that the somewhat constitutive autonomy, the progressive autonomization, and finally the “imperialism” of economics have severely reduced the possibility of interdisciplinary discussion. This paper is a first step towards developing a research program on the foundations of a non-imperialist economics. It investigates gift exchange as a missed opportunity for economics. It aims at showing that, by refusing to tackle the complexity of the gift, economics has not only lost an opportunity to develop a method suitable for the analysis of complex problems, but has voluntarily chosen not to follow a path which would have prevented it from colonizing other disciplines. Reintroducing the concept of gift into the economic discourse may thus represent a required precondition to produce an innovating discourse on economics.
... Mauss's foundational work has been considered a missed opportunity in economics (Cedrini & Marchionatti, 2017;Cedrini et al., 2020) when it comes to acknowledging the diversity of economic practices that involve a complex mix of freedom and obligations that ensure social cohesion, and make ongoing exchanges possible. Accordingly, the economy is not something that exists outside moral and social practices. ...
Neoliberalism rests on a fatalistic rhetoric about more perfect markets, individualistic calculus, and technologies for domination as crucial for the creation of financial value. This neglects any alternative ways of keeping people together, other than through markets, where the erosion of social cohesion is viewed as a natural effect of development. This neoliberal project has been holding accounting studies in a stranglehold, and there is a need for studies on how accounting can create social cohesion and make plural economies possible. This study’s exploration contributes to the theory of relational accounting practices by building a deeper understanding of accounting’s social function and the plurality of economies. Taking Graeber’s revision of Mauss as its starting point, it elaborates on how social relations are created through accounting practices that give rise to different reciprocities that involve morals together with autonomy and democracy, and it also examines when accounting may dissolve such social cohesion. Based on an illustrative case of pre-industrial farmers’ relational accounting practices in 18th- and 19th-century Sweden—consisting of notched wooden sticks used for balancing contributions and rights in the village—the study explains how accounting as a means of balanced reciprocity is important for social cohesion, having peacemaking functions, being important for democratic governance, teaching morality, and creating a sense of fairness. It emphasizes the relevance of Graeber’s revision of Mauss for a deeper understanding of relational accounting practices in certain contexts and as a way to combat the fatalism of neoliberalism.
... Our Keynesian traditions, and by Institutionalists à la Veblen, an economist we shall mention below (see Martins 2013 for a review). 4 See Cedrini and Marchionatti (2017) for a synthesis. 5 Another best-seller on the history of humankind nicely points out that culture (in the wide German sense: he does not use the word institutions) is the DNA of human societies (Harari 2014: 38, 119-120). ...
This paper was inspired long ago by Jared Diamond (1997), and in particular by his extensive use of the concept of economic surplus as the key to the development of civilization. Unfortunately, Diamond does not mention the origin of the concept in classical and pre-classical economics, nor does he pay much attention to debates in economic anthropology about the role of economic analysis in studying primitive and ancient economic formations. These debates were the subject of a recent book by Cedrini and Marchionatti (2017), who dispute the neoclassical "imperialist" attempt to occupy the territory of economic anthropology. The authors rely on the institutionalist background provided by Karl Polanyi and his substantivist tradition and by other anthropologists of similar inspiration. Substantivists, however, fail to complete their institutional analysis by anchoring it to the changing modes of generation and distribution of the economic surplus. Yet their emphasis on the need to introduce institutions from the beginning, when speaking of economic surplus, should be taken into consideration by the classical surplus approach.
The rational choice approach to religion ( RCAR ) applies neoclassical economic principles to religion to create models of religious behavior. It presents both those principles and the resulting models as universal. Most critics of that approach have challenged those models’ empirical predictions. In contrast, this article develops an ‘upstream’ critique of the theory by examining the problems with its chosen approach in economics itself. The history of that discipline shows that the utility-maximizing figure of Homo economicus is a modern construct, as is the notion of a self-correcting free market. Both are contextual and ideological, not universal. Early 20th-century sociologists already provided a comprehensive and radical rebuttal of these ideas – a critique that was a major source of the early sociology of religion. Recent alternative approaches by economists show that neoclassical formalism even fails to account for basic economic phenomena. Models built on this formalism – such as RCAR – thus cannot be naively imported to explain religious action. This does not mean that the sociology of religion should avoid economics tout court . Some non-formalist economic approaches show much more promise.
Can taxation and the redistribution of wealth through the welfare state be conceived as a modern system of circulation of the gift? But once such a gift is institutionalized, regulated and sanctioned through legal mechanisms, does it not risk being perverted or corrupted, and/or not leaving room for genuinely altruistic motives? What is more: if the market's utilitarian logic can corrupt or 'crowd out' altruistic feelings or motivations , what makes us think that the welfare state cannot also be a source of corruption? To explain the standard answers to the abovementioned questions as well as their implications I will first reexamine two opposing positions assumed here as paradigmatic examples of other similar positions: on the one hand, Titmuss's work and the never-ending debate about it; on the other, Godbout's position, in-so-far as it shows how Titmuss's arguments can easily be turned upside down. I will then introduce and reinterpret Einaudi's "critical point" theory as a more complex and richer anthropological explanation of the problems and answers considered herein.
Through the analysis of these paradigmatic positions I will develop two interrelated arguments. 1) The way these problems are posed as well as the standard answers to them are: a) subject to fallacies: the dichotomy fallacy and the fallacy of composition; b) too reductive and simplistic: we should at least try to clarify what kind of ‘gift’ or ‘corruption’ we are thinking about, and who or what the ‘giver’, the ‘corrupter’, the ‘receiver’ and/or the ‘corrupted’ party are. 2) The answers to these problems cannot be found by merely following a theoretical approach, nor can they be merely based on empirical evidence; instead, they need to take into account the forever troublesome, ambiguous and unpredictable matter of human freedom.
Can taxation and the redistribution of wealth through the welfare state be conceived as a modern system of circulation of the gift? But once such a gift is institutionalized, regulated and sanctioned through legal mechanisms, does it not risk being perverted or corrupted, and/or not leaving room for genuinely altruistic motives? In this paper I will develop two interrelated arguments. 1) The way these problems are posed as well as the standard answers to them are: a) subject to fallacies: the dichotomy fallacy and the fallacy of composition; b) too reductive and simplistic: we should at least try to clarify what kind of 'gift' or 'corruption' we are thinking about, and who or what the 'giver', the 'corrupter', the 'receiver' and/or the 'corrupted' party are. 2) The answers to these problems cannot be found by merely following a theoretical approach, nor can they be merely based on empirical evidence; instead, they need to take into account the forever troublesome, ambiguous and unpredictable matter of human freedom. To explain the standard answers to the abovementioned questions as well as their implications I will first reexamine two opposing positions assumed here as paradigmatic examples of other similar positions: on the one hand, Titmuss' work and the never-ending debate about it; on the other, Godbout's position, in-so-far as it shows how Titmuss' arguments can easily be turned upside down. I will then introduce and reinterpret Einaudi's "critical point" theory as a more complex and richer anthropological explanation of the problems and answers considered herein.
This paper revisits chapter 18 of Keyness The General Theory in the light of A Treatise on Probability. It shows that the notions of cause and independence used to discuss the relationships between the variables of The General Theory in the chapter are related to the concept of independence for knowledge, which concerns logical connections between arguments rather than material connections between events. We demonstrate that such logical connections are rediscussed in chapters 1921 by the use of a two-stage methodology, which allows for probable repercussions between factors heretofore taken as independent and removes the simplifying assumptions previously introduced. After stressing the methodological continuity this method provides with the analysis of credit cycles in A Treatise on Money, we argue that chapter 18 is an indispensable tool to decode the text structure of The General Theory and show that Keyness economic theory is in truth an analytical method allowing readers to emulate his efforts to grasp the complexity of the economic material.
A settant’anni dagli accordi di Bretton Woods – la conferenza che stabiliva, con la guerra non ancora conclusa, le regole delle relazioni commerciali e finanziarie tra i principali Paesi industrializzati del mondo – questo libro di Carabelli e Cedrini torna a occuparsi dello studioso che più di tutti ha segnato il Novecento con la sue proposte economiche e politiche, per i tempi rivoluzionarie: John Maynard Keynes. Nel discutere dell’attualità dei piani di riforma globale proposti dall’economista di Cambridge per il mondo del secondo dopoguerra, questo volume ci mostra come lo sguardo di Keynes, pensatore della complessità, sia utile a capire e risolvere i guasti seguiti al crollo del sistema di Bretton Woods: dal neoliberismo del Washington Consensus all’equilibrio del terrore dei global imbalances, alla crisi globale e infine europea, con il prevalere di dottrine e politiche dell’austerità.
«Nessun “Bretton Woods moment” in vista. Troppe convergenze in quella finestra della storia; troppe circostanze favorevoli, perché si possa sperare in una nuova Bretton Woods, e troppe persino per poter individuare in quel sistema un modello per il futuro. Ma di miti, oltre che di eroi, il mondo contemporaneo sembra aver bisogno»
This article offers a new interpretation of Marcel Mauss's The Gift. It situates Mauss's argument within his broader thinking on the politics of sovereign debt cancellation and the question of German reparations paid to the Allies after World War I. Mauss applauded the policies of reparation and debt cancellation proposed by the French "solidarist" activists who were responsible for inclusion of reparations provisions in the Versailles Treaty. But Mauss was also aware that their legal mobilization could not by itself restore a sense of solidarity among European peoples. Broader systems of political alliance and anthropological norms of gift-making were also necessary. In Mauss's writings on war reparations, as in The Gift, he described the legal, political, and macrostructural dynamics at work in the settlement of reparations and sovereign debts, which he differentiated from the dynamics at work in the speculative logics of financial capitalism. In doing so, Mauss provided insights into the settlement of sovereign debt crises, which still agitate the international community today.
The paper reconstructs Keynes's conception of the nature and method of economics focusing on The Theory of Probability and The General Theory and shows that Keynes's theoretical work as an economist was an attempt to cope with the complexity of the economic world and the organic interdependence of the economic variables. Keynes offers a theoretical framework where the macroscopic outcome of the model is the result of the interaction of heterogeneous and not fully rational agents that revise their behaviour as they accumulate information. In the presence of true uncertainty the interactions of agents generate macro-instability and out-of-equilibrium paths. This approach has much in common with the approaches to complexity that have recently emerged.
Résumé
Au début de son célèbre « Essai », Mauss oppose le don chez les archaïques au don dans nos sociétés. Mais au fur et à mesure qu’il progresse, il est porté à remettre cette opposition de plus en plus en question. Nous suggérons dans ce texte que Marcel Mauss a ainsi ouvert la voie à l’étude du don moderne, notamment avec la notion indigène de hau .
This paper investigates whether since the 1980s neoclassical economics has been in the process of being supplanted as the dominant research programme in economics by a collection of competing research approaches which share relatively little in common with each other or with neoclassical economics. A shortlist of the new approaches in recent economics includes game theory, experimental economics, behavioral economics, evolutionary economics, neuroeconomics, and non-linear complexity theory. Two hypotheses are advanced – one regarding the relation between economics instruction and economics research and one regarding the nature of the economics research frontier – to describe social-institutional practices that contribute to the replication of economics as a field. Two further hypotheses are advanced – one regarding the boundaries of the field and one regarding how the field appraises itself – to create a historical–methodological framework for evaluating the question of change in economics and change in recent economics in particular. Finally, the paper distinguishes three leading explanations – the ‘breakdown’ view, the ‘takeover’ view, and the ‘maturity’ view – of why neoclassical economics no longer dominates a mainstream economics.
Mainstream economics has changed radically since the 1980s, offering greatly enhanced opportunities for intervention by evolutionary and institutional economics. This article surveys the extent of this transformation and the extent that mainstream economics has moved in an evolutionary and institutional direction. There are also signs of a possible gestalt shift in the social sciences, where rules are seen as constitutive of social relations and social reality. This contrasts with the former emphasis in mainstream economics on incremental change and equilibria. On the other hand, mainstream economics has a preoccupation with technique over substance, and the barriers between disciplines impair appropriate conceptual developments. The character of mainstream economics changed significantly after the 1980s. 1) Since fractures appeared in the edifice of general equilibrium analysis in the 1970s, mainstream economics has visited a number of approaches, including game theory, evolutionary game theory, experimental economics and behaviouralism. One of the consequences is that evolutionary ideas and the study of institutions are now commonplace. Previously the longstanding preserve of mavericks and dissidents, such ideas are now fashionable.
The paper aims at showing that revisiting Keynes's early writings on international economic relations and some less well-known episodes of his economic diplomacy, with special attention being paid to the methodological issues involved, may disclose useful insights in understanding the features of his desired new global order. We contrast the three main pillars of Keynes's vision as detected in this revisitation (coordinated multilateral responses to global imbalances, a rational international monetary regime, and enhanced policy space) with the major shortcomings of the current non-system, and show the continuing relevance not only of Keynes's specific proposals for global reform, but also, and most importantly, the legacy of his way of reasoning about international economic relations.
In the attempt to deepen the understanding of Keynes' thought as an international macroeconomist, we explore the hypothesis of consistency between his general methodological approach to the economic material and his way of reasoning about international economic relations. As a first step toward this direction, we investigate the methodology of >i>The Economic Consequences of the Peace>/i> and find that it reflects Keynes' attempt to cope with the attributes of the complexity characterizing the European settlement for the post-war period, e.g., 1) organic interdependence among variables at play, 2) irreducible dilemmas and situations of conflict, as well as 3) the need for external, public assistance to overcome the impasse and promote a "shared responsibilities" approach to the imbalances. Striking similarities appearing with the method of Keynes' economic diplomacy in the 1940s are shown to substantiate the current rediscovery of his plans for Bretton Woods.
Game theory is central to understanding human behavior and relevant to all of the behavioral sciences-from biology and economics, to anthropology and political science. However, as The Bounds of Reason demonstrates, game theory alone cannot fully explain human behavior and should instead complement other key concepts championed by the behavioral disciplines. Herbert Gintis shows that just as game theory without broader social theory is merely technical bravado, so social theory without game theory is a handicapped enterprise. This edition has been thoroughly revised and updated. Reinvigorating game theory, The Bounds of Reason offers innovative thinking for the behavioral sciences.
Why do humans, uniquely among animals, cooperate in large numbers to advance projects for the common good. Contrary to the conventional wisdom in biology and economics, this generous and civic-minded behavior is widespread and cannot be explained simply by far-sighted self-interest or a desire to help close genealogical kin. InA Cooperative Species, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis--pioneers in the new experimental and evolutionary science of human behavior--show that the central issue is not why selfish people act generously, but instead how genetic and cultural evolution has produced a species in which substantial numbers make sacrifices to uphold ethical norms and to help even total strangers.The authors describe how, for thousands of generations, cooperation with fellow group members has been essential to survival. Groups that created institutions to protect the civic-minded from exploitation by the selfish flourished and prevailed in conflicts with less cooperative groups. Key to this process was the evolution of social emotions such as shame and guilt, and our capacity to internalize social norms so that acting ethically became a personal goal rather than simply a prudent way to avoid punishment.Using experimental, archaeological, genetic, and ethnographic data to calibrate models of the coevolution of genes and culture as well as prehistoric warfare and other forms of group competition,A Cooperative Speciesprovides a compelling and novel account of how humans came to be moral and cooperative.
There is strong evidence that people exploit their bargaining power in competitive markets but not in bilateral bargaining
situations. There is also strong evidence that people exploit free-riding opportunities in voluntary cooperation games. Yet,
when they are given the opportunity to punish free riders, stable cooperation is maintained, although punishment is costly
for those who punish. This paper asks whether there is a simple common principle that can explain this puzzling evidence. We show that if some people care about equity the puzzles can be resolved. It turns
out that the economic environment determines whether the fair types or the selfish types dominate equilibrium behavior.
Gift-giving has often puzzled economists, especially because efficient gifts-like cash or giving exactly what a person asks for-seem crass or inappropriate. It is shown in a formal game-theoretic model that gifts serve as "signals" of a person's intentions about future investment in a relationship, and inefficient gifts can be better signals. Other explanations for the inefficiency of gift giving are advanced, and some stylized facts about gift-giving practices are described (many of which are consistent with the signaling view of gifts).
Macmillan International Economic Association Series October 2000 400 pages Description: Reciprocity is a pervasive type of social interaction in encounters, groups and organizations. Simple giving is one of the major ways of transferring goods. And others regarding social sentiments, play crucial roles in the working and in the quality of society. This volume gathers basic recent works in its main domains such as, among others, the theory of reciprocity, the public economics of transfers, the economics of the family, charities, gifts of organs, or the motivations for gift-giving. It constitutes a landmark in this rapidly expanding field of research. Read PDF sample chapter: http://www.palgrave.com/catalogue/catalogue.asp?Title_Id=0333747690
The article argues that economics will have to become a complex systems science before economists can comfortably incorporate institutionalist and evolutionary economics into mainstream theory. The article compares the complex adaptive system of John Foster with that of standard economic theory and illustrates the difference through an examination of familiar production function. The place of neoclassical, Keynesian economics in complex systems is considered. The article concludes that convincing, multiple models have been made possible by the increase in widely available computing power available.
This two-volume work, first published in 1843, was John Stuart Mill's first major book. It reinvented the modern study of logic and laid the foundations for his later work in the areas of political economy, women's rights and representative government. In clear, systematic prose, Mill (1806–73) disentangles syllogistic logic from its origins in Aristotle and scholasticism and grounds it instead in processes of inductive reasoning. An important attempt at integrating empiricism within a more general theory of human knowledge, the work constitutes essential reading for anyone seeking a full understanding of Mill's thought. Continuing the discussion of induction, Volume 2 concludes with Book VI, 'On the Logic of the Moral Sciences', in which Mill applies empirical reasoning to human behaviour. A crucial early formulation of his thinking regarding free will and necessity, this book establishes the centrality of 'the social science' to Mill's philosophy.
David Hume’s essays were “the cradle of economics,” suggested John Hill Burton, in his important biography of Hume. Although this may be a biographer’s exaggeration, there can be no doubt that Hume’s work provided an important contribution to political economy as a discipline, together with a significant critique of the “mercantile” system that was later attacked by his friend Adam Smith. ECONOMICS: THE BACKGROUND Mercantilism is difficult to define. As the historian P.J. Thomas put it: “Mercantilism has often been described as a definite and unified policy or doctrine, but that it has never been. In reality it was a shifting combination of tendencies which, although directed to a common aim - the increase of national power - seldom possessed a unified system of policy, or even a harmonious set of doctrines. It was a very complicated web of which the threads mingled inextricably.” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the object of policy was the enhancement of the power of the nation state, a strategy that was to be attained in a number of ways, at least one of which was economic. The power of this state was to be enhanced by the accumulation of treasure through trade, the maximization of employment, and the encouragement of population growth.
Is or has economics ever been the imperial social science? Could or should it ever be so? These are the central concerns of this book. It involves a critical reflection on the process of how economics became the way it is, in terms of a narrow and intolerant orthodoxy, that has, nonetheless, increasingly directed its attention to appropriating the subject matter of other social sciences through the process termed "economics imperialism". In other words, the book addresses the shifting boundaries between economics and the other social sciences as seen from the confines of the dismal science, with some reflection on the responses to the economic imperialists by other disciplines. Significantly, an old economics imperialism is identified of the "as if market" style most closely associated with Gary Becker, the public choice theory of Buchanan and Tullock and cliometrics. But this has given way to a more "revolutionary" form of economics imperialism associated with the information-theoretic economics of Akerlof and Stiglitz, and the new institutional economics of Coase, Wiliamson and North. Embracing one "new" field after another, economics imperialism reaches its most extreme version in the form of "freakonomics", the economic theory of everything on the basis of the most shallow principles. By way of contrast and as a guiding critical thread, a thorough review is offered of the appropriate principles underpinning political economy and its relationship to social science, and how these have been and continue to be deployed. The case is made for political economy with an interdisciplinary character, able to bridge the gap between economics and other social sciences, and draw upon and interrogate the nature of contemporary capitalism.
From the mercantile monopolies of seventeenth-century empires to the modern-day authority of the WTO, IMF, and World Bank, the nations of the world have struggled to effectively harness globalization's promise. The economic narratives that underpinned these eras-the gold standard, the Bretton Woods regime, the "Washington Consensus"-brought great success and great failure. In this eloquent challenge to the reigning wisdom on globalization, Dani Rodrik offers a new narrative, one that embraces an ineluctable tension: we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. When the social arrangements of democracies inevitably clash with the international demands of globalization, national priorities should take precedence. Combining history with insight, humor with good-natured critique, Rodrik's case for a customizable globalization supported by a light frame of international rules shows the way to a balanced prosperity as we confront today's global challenges in trade, finance, and labor markets.
Evolutionary theory provides a firm foundation for the unification of the behavioral sciences, and the beliefs, preferences, and constraints (BPC) model is a useful analytical tool for understanding human behavior. However, evolutionary theory suggests that if other-regarding preferences expressed by humans have evolved under selection, they are ultimately, if not purely, in the constrained, relative self-interests of individuals who express them.
The paper seeks to offer [1] an explication of a concept of economics imperialism, focusing on its epistemic aspects; and [2] criteria for its normative assessment. In regard to [1], the defining notion is that of explanatory unification across disciplinary boundaries. As to [2], three kinds of constraints are proposed. An ontological constraint requires an increased degree of ontological unification in contrast to mere derivational unification. An axiological constraint derives from variation in the perceived relative significance of the facts explained. An epistemological constraint requires strong fallibilism acknowledging a particularly severe epistemic uncertainty and proscribing against over-confident arrogance.
The extension of economics to topics that lie outside its classical domain is known as ‘economic imperialism’. But there are territories of social science that persist to be largely intractable using the postulates of economic theory: the anthropological subject of primitive societies represents one such territory. This paper describes and discusses the representation of primitive societies by economists from the proto-imperialist model of Smith to the imperialist Posner's model. It maintains that (a) the economists’ attempt at interpretation is highly unsatisfactory and (b) it is possible to offer a different representation of the primitive societies, one more coherent with the anthropological and ethnographical data, and able to show the inadequacy and insubstantiality of many economic categories when applied to those societies.
This article provides a historical account of the developments of research into seemingly unselfish behavior between 1975 and 1993. I shall first argue that the triumph of the self-interest model in the examination of seemingly unselfish behavior can better be understood if it is remembered that the attempts by a handful of economists to expand their jurisdiction over phenomena that had remained outside their reach occurred at a time when natural scientists showed similar ambitions. As those economists' efforts found a more receptive audience within the profession, disputes shifted, within the discipline itself, to the public policy implications of seemingly unselfish behavior. Then I shall argue that the various efforts to go beyond the self-interest model in economics and political science failed to build a coherent alternative model and produced equally ambiguous policy implications. My conclusion stresses the difficulty of escaping the customary presupposition that seemingly unselfish behavior concerns close-knit groups whereas selfishness applies to impersonal gatherings.
When heterodox economists talk of pluralism they generally are talking about pluralism within the economics professionÑthey are asking: how can we have a more pluralistic economics profession? This paper argues that another, perhaps more useful, way to think of pluralism and economics is from the perspective of all the social sciences. When looked in reference to the social science profession rather than in reference to the economics profession, the amount of pluralism increases significantly, since different social sciences follow quite different methodologies. But looking at pluralism from the social science perspective reveals a different type of pluralism problem in social science. While there may be plenty of pluralism within social science as a whole, there is a serious question about whether it is appropriately distributed. This paper argues that heterodox economistÕs agenda should be a greater blending of all the social science departments. It summarizes proposals to do so on both the undergraduate level and graduate level, and explains why supporting variations of these proposals would be a strategy that would further the objectives of most heterodox economists more so than would their current strategy of pushing for more pluralism in economics.
Bronislaw Malinowski’s pathbreaking Argonauts of the Western Pacific is at once a detailed account of exchange in the Melanesian islands and a manifesto of a modernist anthropology. Malinowski argued that the goal of which the ethnographer should never lose sight is ‘to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world.’ Through vivid evocations of Kula life, including the building and launching of canoes, fishing expeditions and the role of myth and magic amongst the Kula people, Malinowski brilliantly describes an inter-island system of exchange-from gifts from father to son to swapping fish for yams-around which an entire community revolves. A classic of anthropology that did much to establish the primacy of painstaking fieldwork over the earlier anecdotal reports of travel writers, journalists and missionaries, it is a compelling insight into a world now largely lost from view. With a new foreword by Adam Kuper.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the meaning of giftgiving and reciprocity in modern society and thereby following the pointers left by Marcel Mauss. A critique will be made of the dichotomy of self-interest and normatively orientated action that forms the basis of sociology. For this conceptual dichotomization has caused forms of social interaction that cannot be localized either on the side of self-interest or on that of morality. It is the logic of the gift and the reciprocity thus evoked that in our view accompanies and structures all forms of interaction, from the social micro to the macrolevel. It is shown that in modern societies gifts and reciprocities form their own orders of interaction, and not only on a microsocial level. The principle of reciprocity even accompanies as a rule transfers owing to (state) compulsion as well as economic, selective exchange. As a basic principle of processes of sociation it is, fundamentally, present everywhere and in some areas it is explicitly and openly in effect (for example in welfare state transfers). Sociology has for too long overlooked the fact that this principle cannot be traced back either to normativist or to utilitarian explanations and nevertheless represents a principle of construction of modern societies.
Emile Durkheim assembled a team to promote his vision for sociology, but he and Mauss were in many ways a double act, like Marx and Engels. There was room for only one leader of the movement, so we speak of the Durkheimians and the Marxists. Mauss and Engels each assumed leadership of the movement they jointly founded after their partner's death, but the intrinsic inequality of the partnership was made worse in Mauss' case by age difference, kinship seniority, and his inability to write books of his own. The publication of an abridged English translation of Marcel Fournier's Marcel
Mauss:
A
Biography (2006 [1994]) allows us to reconsider his historical relationship with Durkheim, as well as his legacy for anthropology, history, and the social sciences today. French scholarship on Mauss is, of course, much more advanced than its Anglophone counterpart and it is less confined to academic anthropology. Fournier's 800-page collection of Mauss' Écrits
politiques (1997) remains virtually unknown to English-speakers and the collective organized in his name, the Mouvement
Anti-Utilitariste
dans
les
Sciences
Sociales (with its journal, revue
du
MAUSS), continues the eponymous founder's commitment to integrating progressive politics and intellectual work over a wide range of issues. In both cases, The
Gift (1990 [1925]) has iconic significance as Mauss' most discussed work; but, as Sigaud (2002) has already pointed out, the Anglophone academy, with assistance from one or two leading French anthropologists, has taken up its message in ways that depart seriously from the author's original intentions.
As President Nixon once observed, “we are all Keynesians.” And we do indeed live in a macroeconomic world, essentially, as
defined and elucidated by Keynes. But Keynes himself is underrepresented in both political science and in mainstream economics.
This is a costly intellectual error. Keynes’ prodigious writings, as well as his actions, offer a treasure trove of inspiration,
analysis, and insight. This article considers four themes in Keynes’ oeuvre that are especially worthy of revisiting: the
importance of economic inequality, the potentially fragile underpinnings of international economic order, the inherent dysfunctions
of the international monetary economy, and, perhaps most important, Keynes’ philosophy and its relationship to economic inquiry.
[eng] Use of economc theory in the sociological tradition : the case of gift exchange. . By tradition, the study of gift exchange belongs to the field of sociology. Some recent works have tried to make the connexion between economy and sociology by transposing the archaic exchange pattern (gift exchange) into our modem economic societies. The purpose of these attempts is to give some insights inlo some particular relationships, like for example, the work relationship. It appears that these insights are very limited and deceptive because of some strong hypothesis such as the perfect rationality of the agents. Nevertheless, their merits are to provide an hypothesis for the appearance of an non-intentional cooperation within an entirely non-cooperative system. Moreover, it seems that the introduction of non-utilitarist motivations in the theory of decision could help to understand the gift exchange relationship, which is a sort of compromise between moral action and interested action. [fre] L'emprunt de la théorie économique à la tradition sociologique. Le cas du don contre-don. . Le don contre-don est un objet d'étude qui appartient par tradition à la sociologie. Des travaux récents tentent de transposer les schémas de la réciprocité archaïque aux échanges qui ont cours dans la sphère économique des sociétés modernes. Le but de ces tentatives est de rendre compte de la forme atypique de certains échanges économiques, comme par exemple la relation de travail. Mais, à défaut de préciser davantage les hypothèses sur les comportements des acteurs, ou en faisant reposer exclusivement le don contre-don sur la rationalité instrumentale, l'économie laisse évanouir ce nouvel objet. Le contraire exigerait, au minimum, la réintroduction de motivations non utilitaristes dans la théorie de la décision. Le don contre-don se situe en effet dans une sorte de compromis entre l'action morale et l'action intéressée.