The Gift Relationship

4th May, 2011 British Psychological Society Annual Conference, Glasgow Phenomenological Psychology and the Question of Complexity The gift relationship Peter Ashworth1 Abstract

Symposium:

In early anthropological work, Mauss (1990/1925) argued that the exchange of gifts was a major means of maintaining social cohesiveness, and entailed both self-interest and concern for others. Derrida (1992) radicalized this finding in claiming that all gift relationships are in danger of being reduced to relationships of economic exchange. Effectively, it may be that gifts always have strings attached. This position is reminiscent of the exchange theory of the social behaviourists and of Homans (1961) sociology. But what is the complexity of the gift relationship? The work reported in this paper involves the qualitative analysis of accounts of giving and receiving. Eighteen written accounts of gifting are analysed using established phenomenological tools of reflection as the basis of a preliminary description of the various meanings involved in giving and receiving. It is an attempt at a phenomenology of the gift relationship, that is, a descriptive account of the essential features of the experience(s) involved. It is shown that the dynamics of the gift relationship are extremely varied (a gift can evoke a number of emotions; the urge to reciprocate varies in strength and form, etc). In particular its relationship to conventional economic exchange is by no means straightforward. The implications of the phenomenology of the gift relationship are far-reaching since many events of social experience have gifting features (for example any encounter in which gratitude may be evoked; any encounter in which a power-asymmetry has been graciously ignored by the more powerful participant; any encounter in which a normal economic exchange has been complicated by gifts of the bakers dozen kind). It is argued that the use of economic models in psychology is to be attempted only with circumspection. In particular, they should be restricted to the realm of the practical - not the expressive (Harr, 1979).

Contact: Professor P D Ashworth, Faculty of Development and Society Graduate School, Sheffield Hallam University, Unit 1, Science Park, Howard Street, Sheffield S1 1WB. Email: p.d.ashworth@shu.ac.uk
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The Gift Relationship

Introduction Laidlaw (2000, p 621) puts the problem precisely: What is the basic, irreducible idea of a gift? One party makes over something of theirs to another. There is no 'price', and there is no recompense. It is given, and that is that. ... But if we reflect on what would need to be the case for a pure and incontestable example to occur, then it emerges as deeply paradoxical. This from a social anthropologist. But many approaches to psychology would not just regard the gift relationship as paradoxical, but would regard it as mis-described. It is, properly viewed, nothing but an instance of exchange. It is part of a cycle of response and reinforcement, or it is providing a benefit to another in recompense for expected or past benefits from them. In this paper we try to explore the gift relationship and come to a preliminary phenomenological description which will allow psychological research to avoid over-hasty reductive accounts of giving gifts, if such reductive accounts fail to cover the actual phenomenon. The gift relationship and economic exchange It was Marcel Mausss short anthropological monograph The Gift (1990 / 1925) which opened up this realm of research within the social sciences. It remains a central reference in the contemporary literature. Yet it carries many of the ambiguities of the idea of the gift. and it an apt starting point for this study In The Gift, Mauss reflected on a widespread custom noted by anthropologists (notably Malinowski, 1922, 1926), for one tribe to give another, maybe very distant tribe, an exceedingly generous gift ceremony, which might last for some period of time. In such an event one tribe would conduct the ceremony for the other; at some later date the recipient tribe would take its turn as host. A key feature for Mauss of these customs is that, though they constitute economic systems, they are seen by their participants primarily as gift events rather than events of market economics. The cardinal function of these customs is the cementing of social relations. It seems in Mausss account of the gift - though Mauss does not develop it - there is an understanding by participants that the event is indeed one of gifting, and such an understanding is necessary to the establishment of social cohesion. Being given a gift creates an obligation and to be obliged is to be socially related. However, because one has been given a gift and one is obliged to reciprocate means that the gift is now no longer precisely a gift but is one phase in a cycle of exchange. This aspect of the gift - that it imposes an obligation and moves into the realm of economic exchange - must be left unexamined by participants if the gift is to have its cohesive effect, just as a birthday present must be accepted with gratitude as an uncoerced expression of affection if it is to have its effect (rather than be thought of as something that must be reciprocated later). Mauss wrestles with this, as Laidlaw (2000) shows. Mauss tells us ... that the transactions he describes 'take the form' of gifts. He never elaborates exactly what this implies, except for the repeated use of expressions such as 'free','disinterested', and 'generous'. So the point is that although these transactions are serious politics and serious economics ... they are 'given as' free gifts. The complementary move is where Mauss says that, their gift-like quality notwithstanding, they are always also obligatory (1990 / 1925, e.g. pp 33, 65, 68, 73). So these transactions both are and are not free gifts. ... (Laidlaw, 2000, p 627) In fact we see a certain hesitation towards the end of Mausss (1990 / 1925, pp 72-3) book where he remarks, The terms that we have used - present and gift - are not themselves entirely exact. The idea Mauss is dealing with seems rather to be a hybrid of the free, purely gratuitous gift and purely utilitarian exchange. A number of functionalist anthropologists (e.g. Douglas, 1990; Laidlaw, 2000; Venkatesan, 2011) have argued that the idea of a free gift with no obligation on the part of the recipient just does not work. With the anthropological focus on the forces that are conducive to the coherence of a society, gifting only makes sense insofar as it leads to gratitude or some other sense of obligation
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The Gift Relationship

and pressure to reciprocity. A free gift has no anthropological reason. (For debate on this, see Schift, 1997; Godbout and Caill, 1998; Godelier, 1999, and Komter, 2005.) This seems to be mapped at the individual level. When discussing the gift of blood in blood donation - voluntary and unrewarded in many national systems - Titmuss (1970, pp 268-269) in The Gift Relationship; From Human Blood to Social Policy also pointed to the only-partly altruistic motivation of donors. ...No donor type can be depicted in terms of complete, disinterested, spontaneous altruism. There must be some sense of obligation, approval and interest; some feeling of inclusion in society; some awareness of need and the purposes of the gift. What was seen by these donors as a good for strangers in the here-and-now could be (they said or implied) a good for themselves - indeterminately one day. There is a flourishing literature on health-related giving. On blood donation, see for example Piliavin, 1990; Robinson, 1996, and Busby, 2004. Also see discussion of the lay use of a rhetoric contrasting gift and commodity in donor-assisted conception (Shaw, 2007) and the sex-selection of foetuses (Scully, Shakespeare and Banks, 2006). Mauss and Titmuss seem to show empirically that, in very different contexts, what seem to be pure gift relationships actually entail reciprocity and are therefore less removed from economic exchange than we might have supposed. Derrida (1992 / 1991), moves the debate beyond the empirical by contending that the notion of a pure gift is unstable logically. If, The basic, irreducible idea of a gift, as we saw in Laidlaws account, is that, One party makes over something of theirs to another; there is no price, and there is no recompense, then, Derrida argues, any way in which the recipient feels obligated to the donor, or the donor feels recompensed or worthy of recompense for the gift, thereby undermines the gift - it becomes simply economic exchange. It is thus necessary, at the limit, that [the recipient] not recognise the gift as gift. If [they] recognise it as gift, ... this simple recognition suffices to annul the gift. Why? Because it gives back, in the place ... of the thing itself, a symbolic equivalent. (Derrida, 1992 / 1991, p 13) So, for example, when I realise that I have been given a present, my gratitude reciprocates the gift. A pure gift turns out to be impossible as long as it is recognised as a gift and the donor and recipient see themselves as donor and recipient, and there is a norm of reciprocity. Now, in criticism of Derrida, it is very likely that, if we were to quantify the cost and the benefit of an actual instance of gift and gratitude, we would find an inequality. More than this, gift and gratitude are surely incommensurable. In any case Derrida has a very broad view of what constitutes an economic exchange and there is a basis for dismissing his in-principle argument against the pure gift. (For such criticisms of Derrida, see Jenkins, 1998, and Venkatesan, 2011.) However, it is well to note that it is possible to argue that both logic and some evidence tell against the idea of the gift. Also ranged against the idea of a pure gift are the reductivist models of human social behaviour put forward by psychologists such as Thibaut and Kelley (1959) and sociologists such as George Homans (1961). Social exchange theorists (see Heath, 1976) model all human behaviour in terms of utilitarian decision-making. The utilitarian model of economic exchange, portrays the person as a rational decision maker within a social world construed as a market, and with decisions (whether conscious or not) based on cost-benefit analyses (for an account of gifting in these terms, see Thomas and Worrall, 2002). This view coincides, in the end, with that of the functional anthropologists. What would be the purpose in human relations of a pure gift? Models of human social behaviour based on utilitarian micro-economics are increasingly prominent. Sometimes these models are employed in practical settings - as when Westminster City Council (2011) uses such arguments in putting forward proposals to outlaw charity-workers efforts to comfort rough sleepers. This is despite their reliance on economic hypotheses which are not open to test (Redman, 1991; Hausman, 1982; Ashworth, 1983), and despite the fact that basic regularities in human behaviour which are assumed in micro-economics have come under psychological critique (Kahneman, 2003). The issue, methodology and method
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The Gift Relationship

The question that guided the study was whether the experience of gifting was reducible to, or identical with, or distinct from economic exchange - is the gift effectively a commodity in the experience of participants in the gift relationship or not? In order to tackle this issue, the approach of the research was to use qualitative data (brief written accounts of experience of giving or receiving gifts) as a basis for a preliminary phenomenological description of the gift relationship. Having developed such a description, it would then be possible to address the question of whether an economic model would cover the experience. The methodology is fundamentally that of Giorgis (2009) Husserlian phenomenologically-based psychology (though see Ashworth 2006a,b; 2007 and 2009 for a particular emphasis on the centrality for phenomenological psychology of the lifeworld). The key methodological feature is for the researcher to adopt a phenomenological approach, that is, to make every attempt to focus exclusively on the research participants experience of the gift relationship in order to achieve a description of this experience - or it may be to arrive at moe than one description if it so happens that there is no single phenomenon which can be recognised as essential to the gift relationship. This approach is the phenomenological reduction. In trying to achieve the phenomenological approach, any assumptions, etc., which would tend to distract the researcher from a focus on the experience of the research participant must be set aside, bracketed, subjected to the epoch. We have already implicitly set aside the issue of what research discipline we are primarily working in - is it economics, psychology, social anthropology? No matter. We have also set aside the issue of the cause of any experience we discover - we are focusing on experience as such. We also find that the hugely contentious idea in the literature that a gift might, or might not, necessarily evoke a motivation to reciprocate, a feeling of obligation, must be set aside. And so on (see Ashworth, 1996; 2007). It needs to be stressed that, setting these and other matters aside in order to pay proper attention to the research participants experience, does not at all mean that they might not re-appear in the findings (gift might indeed evoke a sense of obligation). But this happens only if it is clear from the meanaing of the experience. It is not imposed on the description of the experience. Phenomenology is not merely a matter of going through some mechanical process of analysis of the qualitative data and thereby producing a description of experience. The reading of the data is an in-depth one so - for example - it is right to report as part of the experience of research participants unstated aspects of the persons awareness of the gift relationship which they must be assuming, taking for granted, for the experience to make sense. Husserls (1983 / 1913) use of free imaginative variation to get to grips with the essentials of an experience is one appropriate method. Jonathan Smith and others (Smith, Flowers and Larkin, 2009; Langdridge, 2007) insist that this makes the methodology interpretative (they draw on a certain understanding of Heidegger (1962, 1988) to found this contention). In my view this shifts attention illegitimately from the work of phenomenology as developing a description of experience. For this is the aim, for the researcher themselves to reach a description of the key features of the research participants experience - the essence. Reflexivity is entailed. Linda Finlay has rightly found it useful to develop the details of reflexivity in phenomenological research (e.g. Finlay, 2008), for reflexivity has not usually been thematised by phenomenologists though it is necessary and intrinsic to phenomenological method at every stage. Having reached a description, or some discrete descriptions, claims made about the gift relationship are open to test, either by phenomenological replication or (and here mixed methods would come to the fore) by the use of hypothetico-deductive logic. In this case phenomenological psychology becomes an example of the realm of discovery: as Reichenbach (1938) pointed out, prior to hypothesis testing comes the generation of hypotheses - he named the earlier creative process the realm of discovery, and the later testing of the hypothesised discovery the realm of justification. Also, the notion of the gift relationship which is developed phenomenologically may be used to form part of a testable causal hypothesis. To actualise the methodology just outlined, a sample of 18 research participants was built. Of course, since we cannot guess what the nature of population parameters in the case of gift
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The Gift Relationship

relationships might be, sample is a misnomer. But some variety of person is plainly advisable if the description of the phenomenon is not to be artificially restricted. Each participant was given a written request: The Gift - Receiving and Giving In this study I am asking you to write about giving and receiving a gift. The nature of the gift doesnt matter - you can interpret gift as broadly or narrowly as you like. Please describe the giving or receiving of a gift. What were your feelings about the gift, yourself, the giver / recipient and any other relevant people? Did it affect your relationship to them? Any other circumstances at all would be of interest to me. Write in some detail if you can. Many thanks. Findings - the phenomenology of the gift relationship The features which emerged as key to the understanding of the gift relationship had different levels of salience in different accounts, though my contention would be that they do apply in all instances of gifting. I will discuss them by providing extracts from participants writing which bring them out particularly graphically. In the first example, a feature that is taken for granted in most accounts came through clearly, and we would be right to regard it as an essential aspect of giving generally. This is simply that there is a donor and a recipient. a. Appropriateness: The occasioned nature of a gift It was a gift of money, by cheque, from my stepfather. This was unfamiliar as very little contact had occurred for over 6 years. On visiting my stepfather he wrote a cheque as a gift I had not told him I had changed my surname. I was in a dilemma, as he wanted to do something nice but I wasnt ready to tell him Id changed my name. Having a very short moment to decide, I explained that I had changed my name. He didnt really listen and said, Ill leave it blank. I accepted the cheque and thanked him. I havent cashed it yet. It sat on the shelf tied up in that moment. I think I feel some guilt at not telling him sooner about my name change. Im also disappointed that it happened as it did. He wanted to do something nice but for me it was the wrong time. Id rather not have the money and would have preferred more time to get to know him again. (Account 14) As we have seen, Laidlaw (2000) hazarded a statement of the basic nature of a gift, One party makes over something of theirs to another. There is no 'price', and there is no recompense. It is given, and that is that. But in Account 14 we see that the right to be a donor or recipient is not unproblematical. Yes, a gift has to be given and received, but sometimes it is inappropriate to offer a gift - here, because the gift ought to be a token of affectionate recognition of relationship between stepfather and step-daughter, and the relationship is insufficiently established for such a gift to be offered. More generally, we see that gifts are events, occasions, and have an appropriateness which includes those who play the roles of giver and recipient, but also includes time and place. b. Reciprocity - Market economics or ? I had bracketed reciprocity, being wary of projecting this feature onto the accounts. Yet it was indisputable that something like exchange was reported as part of the experience of the gift relationship. But was it economic exchange? Was the gift simply a commodity? Here are two instances. In the first, a recipient fells the pressure to repay his benefactor by being successful through the opportunity which the gift has provided. But is making the giver proud that they gave me the gift equivalent to an economic exchange?

The Gift Relationship

It has put pressure on my current situation as I want to make the giver proud that they gave me the gift, this is good pressure though as it gives me more motivation to succeed. I hope to prove to the giver how grateful I am by being successful. ... (Account 5) In the second account, a giver notes that recipients show affiliation (loyalty, respect) to her - which she interprets as reciprocity. But again, is this equivalent to economic exchange? I give and also advocate giving in the context of Christianity. On the recipient, it has affected my relationship to them. In one way, giving has attracted much loyalty to me from the recipient. Secondly giving has earned me a lot of respect. (Account 9) Here is a third instance that looks superficially to be an example of the pressure of the norm of reciprocity: On the eve of my graduation from my undergraduate degree course I went out for dinner with my Dad and elder sister to celebrate my achievement in obtaining a degree. Half way through the meal my sister produced a gift bag out of her handbag. She passed the gift bag across the table to me and says Well done. I was both stunned and touched that she had gone to such an effort to say well done. Inside the gift bag was a small charm for my charm bracelet. However a feeling of guilt also came over me. My sister graduated 3 years before me and I was desperately trying to think back to her graduation and remember what (or if at all) I had bought for her. She had clearly put a lot of thought into the gift she had given me and I really hoped I had done the same for her. (Account 10) On the basis of the presupposition of reciprocity, one could understand this account as meaning that the writer wanted to check that the give-and-take of the market had been properly observed. But surely this is not the correct understanding. If reciprocity is the right word for this, it is a reciprocity in marking affection. How embarrassing it would be for this recipient not to have shown similar affection to her sisters gesture when she had earlier been able to offer her sister a congratulatory gift. But here is an instance where giving does show features of market reciprocity: This was a gift to an acquaintance who I was attempting to influence in that he would come and play for a cricket team that I help run. He has a liking for JD whiskey and it had been his birthday so I used this as an excuse to present him with this gift for his birthday whilst strategically trying to have him obligated to me. ... I was also attempting to enhance our relationship which had not been particularly close. I held him in high regard with reference to his cricketing ability and knowledge and more than worthy of my engagement with him on cricketing matters. The gift therefore was a token of this regard a were chums together on an equal footing of expertise so lets get together. (Account 1a) The economic approach to giving would have no difficulty with this example. But the phenomenology to the gift relationship certainly does! The meaning of this instance places it in a different category to the others. Here the gift is a commodity judged to have market value in the effort to influence the recipients behaviour. (It would, for example, be reasonable for the donor to consider whether a less-expensive gift would do the job as well, in a cost/benefit analysis). If this is a gift relationship, it has different essential features. This example helps establish the meaning of reciprocity in the gift relationship. c. Aesthetics of giving Consider this account: I always pride myself on trying to buy something that they actually want, or something that makes reference to an in-joke, shared experience or fact that I know about them. I also try to
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buy most things second hand (ebay / charity shops) for cheapness and out of care for the planet! In this case I knew Keith was (a) a big Oasis fan and (b) had just moved to near, or at least the same county as Knebworth. So I bought him, off eBay, an original handbill/poster from Oasiss famous open air gig at Knebworth, c. 1996, famous for the line, Did Jesus ever play Knebworth? I also bought a cheap frame and framed the poster. Keith liked the present and clearly appreciated the thought involved. I felt a mixture of genuine happiness and smugness! (Account 2) Other accounts told of gifts that somehow had not worked. There is a thoughtfulness involved in giving - part of the expression of affection can be showing awareness of the preferences of the recipient, and this can be erroneous. An aesthetics is involved. Notice also in Account 2 that there can be immediate gratification for the donor - here a smug awareness of ones skill in the choice of present. In other examples the donor may feel pride or empathic pleasure, or the donor can benefit from the gratitude of the recipient. Some writers on the gift relationship (such as Derrida, 1992 / 1991) have argued that the emotional reward for the donor means that a gift can be a pure gift only if the donor does not know how the gift is received, or even only if the donor gives into the void, as it were, without thought of the donor. Venkatesan (2011, Note 8, p 54) comments: It seems to me that Derridas argument that the gift is impossible is based on a zero-sum type of logic, wherein giving and taking are equally balanced out. Venkatesan goes on to suggest the need for research of the kind we are now describing: It might be fruitful to explore perceptions of giving and taking that include emotions such as regret as well as retrospective calculations and unanticipated bonuses. Though his objection to Derrida is right, Venkatesan is still thinking in terms of market economics with its rational, self-interested seller / purchaser, governed by cost / benefit calculations. We have by now seen that this is an inappropriate model for the gift relationship. Summary and conclusions There are several other key features of the gift relationship, such as the formation of status differences (Bienenstock and Bianchi, 2004); the creation of obligations and the establishment of intimacy (Beck and Clark, 2010), and even the possibility that a person might find the anonymity of the market preferable in some circumstances to the social involvement which a gift relationship brings (Marcoux, 2009). But we move to the phenomenology of the gift relationship, which includes the following features: A gift is occasioned, and can be appropriate or inappropriate as regards time, place, and the identities of the donor and recipient. A gift is specifically interpersonal. It is about the relationship and cements, renders salient, or (for a marginal case) problematises that relationship. There is no space to discuss the issue here, but charitable giving has a difficulty on this score, and I would argue it has to be anonymous (but see Tonkin, 2009). So reciprocity in the gift relationship is not economic exchange but is about confirming affective identities. Here I am in agreement with the distinction made by the anthropologist Gregory (1982, p 19) between gifts and commodities: ... [C]ommodity exchange establishes a relationship between the objects exchanged, whereas gift exchange establishes a relationship between the subjects. In other words commodity exchange is a price-forming process, a system of purchase and sale. Gift exchange is not.
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(On gift versus commodity see also Frow, 1977, and Osteen, 2002.) There is an aesthetics or skilfulness in giving - both judging an appropriate gift and staging the occasion. The implications of the phenomenology of the gift relationship are far-reaching. Many events of social experience have gifting features. For example any encounter in which gratitude may be evoked; any encounter in which a power-asymmetry has been graciously ignored by the more powerful participant; any encounter in which a normal economic exchange has been complicated by gifts of the bakers dozen kind. One consideration in the psychological use of economic models is that they should be restricted to certain areas of behaviour. Market economics can be appropriate to what Harr defined as the practical aspects of social activity, that is, social activity that are directed to material and biological ends (Harr, 1979, p 19). But the gift relationship is part of the expressive realm, which includes the presentation of self as of such-and-such a description and worthy of respect. It seems that Adam Smith (2002 / 1759; see Min, 2002) was already aware of the distinction between the practical and the expressive when, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments he noted that to dutifully respond to a gift by ensuring that, in due course, one reciprocates -as if one were repaying a monetary debt - is quite inappropriate. It does not indicate proper personal gratitude. The logic of the gift operates in the expressive realm.

The Gift Relationship

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Sun,C.-T., Lin, H., and Ho, C.H. (2006) Sharing tips with strangers: Exploiting gift culture in computer gaming. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 9 (5), 560-570. Thibaut, J.W. and Kelley, H.H. (1959) The Social Psychology of Groups. New York, Wiley. Thomas, J.P. and Worrall, T. (2002) Gift-giving, quasi-credit and reciprocity. Rationality and Society, 14 (3), 308-352. Titmuss, R.M. (1970) The Gift Relationship; From Human Blood to Social Policy. London, Allen and Unwin. Tonkin, E. (2009) Is charity a gift? Northern Irish supporters of Christian missions overseas. Social Anthropology, 17 (2), 171183. Venkatesan, S. (2011) The social life of a free gift. American Ethnologist, 38 (1), 47-57. Westminster City Council (2011) Soup runs in Westminster. http://www.westminster.gov.uk/ services/livingcity/soupp-runs-in-westminster/ (Accessed 26.04.2011).

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