… and then all of a sudden it comes back to you. Finally you can say goodbye to that numbing feeling of being lost which has been haunting you for the last couple of months or actually it just vanishes as the words of Mary Douglas sieves through your brain:
“Though giving [solidarity and trust, my addition] is the basis for huge industries, we cannot know whether it is the foundation of a circulating fund of stable esteem and trust, or of individualist competion […] We cannot know because the knowledge is not collected in such a way as to relate to the issue” (Douglas, foreword in The Gift [1990] 1950: xv-xvi)
I’m reading Marcel Mauss’ The Gift for the first time since my first year of grad school. The book, even though it’s more than fifty years old and based on a fieldwork far away from the industrial society Mary Douglas talks about or the knowledge society of today it still present itself as the mother of all theories of relations. And I promise, you’re in for a treat if you’re open minded. I suggest replacing “… circulating fund of stable esteem and trust” with the notion of social capital. Then read the book with our present society or (as in my case) with organizations in mind. And extend the meaning of a gift to include all acts of reciprocity.
The literature on social capital I have been reading so far have had a tendency to be oriented mainly towards individuals. It is usually about individuals who either bring forward or stop the production of social capital, and about who and how many the individuals are related to.
The Gift focuses on the actual act of reciprocity in place of the people. From the perspective of organizational studies this means that instead of pinpointing who’s connected to whom Marcel Mauss prompts you to focus on how people are connected, and on the nature of the actions which connect people. Thus if you are interested in changing behaviour or encouraging certain behaviours you have to put your focus on the actual action and deeds. That was exactly what Mary Douglas foreword reminded me about and thereby replacing the growing feeling of despair with a warm and fuzzy, tinkling feeling of returning to my roots and at the same time moving forward.