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The Enigma of the Gift. By MAURICE GODELIER. Translated by Nora Scott. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. viii, 256 pp. $19.00 (paper).
The title of this fine book refers both to the anthropological theory of the gift and to Marcel Mauss's famous essay on the gift, published in 1925, in which that theory was first expounded-the theory that, in the simpler societies obligatory giftexchange is the central solidarity-maintaining social machinery. Mauss's "Essai sur le don" was but the sketch of a theory, though it was densely referenced to his wide knowledge of the ancient civilizations (including especially India, which he had studied under Sylvain Levi) and the new ethnography from professional anthropologists that was becoming available at the time. What it accomplished and the enigmas it left behind have, in combination, stimulated many others to analyze, critique, and complete the unfinished structure that Mauss had begun. Mauss's influence has been chiefly felt in two overlapping areas-works on economic anthropology such as Marshall Sahlins's Stone Age Economics, and Levi-Strauss's general theory of exchange. The list of those who have participated in the discussion Mauss inaugurated, as one may find from the bibliography of the book here reviewed, is long and full of illustrious names.
Maurice Godelier's meditation upon Mauss's essay is the fruit of a distinguished anthropological career marked by...