Gift and obligation

In her wonderful The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude , the incomparable Margaret Visser contrasts the freedom of modern gift-giving with the obligatoriness of gifts in “Gift societies”: “In our culture, once a gift is given, it belongs entirely to the receiver. The giver may have desires as to what should be done with it, but her wishes have no force; the new owner is now responsible, which means he is free to do what he likes with what once was ‘her’ gift. He might take her wishes into account – indeed, he ought to do so if her wishes are wise, for by doing so he can demonstrate gratitude. But if he does, that is his virtue. It is not the giver’s right” (p. 125).

Visser seems obviously right: Our notions of ownership preclude the possibility that a gift could continue to exert the mana of the donor. We believe in possessive individualism, hence possessive individuals.

Still, I think Paul Camenisch is right to note that mana is not so easily dispersed as that. Would you, he asks, use a heirloom soup tureen given by your mother for a high school science experiment? If No, it’s not because of the inherent value of the tureen. Using the gift in this way would seem abuse, almost a kind of sacrilege. In this sense as in many others, Bruno Latour is right: Try as we might, we have never been moderns.