Abstract
Over the course of the development of human society, the mark of civilization has been the readiness of actors to engage in thoughtful contemplation of others with whom they interact. This sociability was not natural to the human species but had to be developed and refined across four stages of social evolution. The norm of reciprocity appears with the “gift,” that is, your bestowal of something of value on a person who did a good turn for you in the past. With the theorized move toward a developing global order, this gift ethos is expected to expand beyond the dyadic, interactional, or small group level, beyond even national boundaries, and into international arenas where ethical reciprocity would take hold even among those not engaged in exchange relations directly. This contemporary idea of a sympathetic taking into account of global others can be traced to key figures in the history of western thought who glimpsed the importance of the norm of reciprocity, including Aristotle, Adam Smith, Lester Ward, and Alvin Gouldner, to name a few.
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