Gift Paradigm Research Articles

THE ROLE OF MORALLY RELEVANT THEORY OF MIND AND PARENTS' EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION ON PROSOCIAL LYING CHILDREN AGED 7–9

Prosocial lying refers to deceptive behavior performed for the benefit of others, which children may sometimes engage in to maintain positive relationships with peers and others. This research aims to identify the role of morally relevant theory of mind (MoToM) and parental emotional expression on prosocial lying behavior among children aged 7–9 years. The participants consisted of 66 parent-child pairs selected through the convenience sampling technique. The assessment of prosocial lying and MoToM was conducted through behavioral testing. Child participants (M=101.91 months; SD=8.36) were tested individually using the disappointing gift paradigm protocol and the MoToM. Meanwhile, parents were requested to respond to the SEFQ inventory. The results of the hierarchical logistic regression analysis revealed a significant relationship between MoToM and prosocial lying behavior, even after children's age was statistically controlled (X2(2)=5.872, p<0.01). In contrast, no significant influence was observed concerning parental emotional expression and children's prosocial lying behavior. This study highlighted insights on the relationship between MoToM and prosocial lying behavior, revealing that understanding MoToM is an influential factor in prosocial lying. Children should understand moral judgment and the impact of their behavior on others before engaging in prosocial lying.

Recent Extensions of the Gift

Abstract In this essay, Alain Caillé reconstructs the “singular history of the MAUSS (Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences)” from when in early 1980 a group of friends from different disciplines (sociologists, economists, philosophers, etc.) decided to found the “Bulletin du MAUSS” to counter the growing hegemony of utilitarianism and economism in the human sciences and in the philosophical disciplines themselves. The Bulletin would initially become the “Revue du MAUSS trimestrielle” from 1988 to 1992 and from 1993 to 2022 the “Revue du MAUSS semestrielle” until its current anglophone extension “MAUSS International”. The author takes Marcel Mauss’ definition of the gift as a “total social fact” and explains that the gift paradigm is a “translation operator” in the sense that it is continuously enriched in interaction with existing discourses. The theoretical operation that Caillé proposes is to explicate Mauss’s discovery by moving from a simple gift paradigm, based on the perspective of simple reciprocity between giver and recipient, to an expanded gift paradigm. In this way, it can dialogue with other paradigms and other currents of thought (theory of recognition, theory of care, theory of human development, etc.). And from here to a conception of the gift as “adonnement”, i.e. the commitment of human subjects to bring something new and unprecedented into the world.

The Gift Paradigm: Towards a Science of “total social facts”

Abstract In this essay I argue that Marcel Mauss’s “Essay on the Gift” (1925) is not only intended to inaugurate a new paradigm on the terrain of ethnology and anthropology, but at the same time to make the gift a kind of novum organum of the social sciences and of moral and political philosophy itself. In the first part, I reconstructed the critique that M. Merleau-Ponty and C. Lefort have made to Lévi-Strauss’s “structuralist” reading of Mauss, and, in a second part, I emphasised the importance that M. Hénaff assigned to the ceremonial gift of traditional societies as an intentional procedure of public mutual recognition between groups. But, using some of A. Caillé’s indications, I explain that this device of mutual recognition and alliance, characteristic of the gift cycle (giving/receiving/ reciprocating) also applies in modern societies whenever legal-political institutions become sclerotized and lose their legitimacy in the face of new actors in political action (newcomers or new arrivals, to use the Arendtian category of natality in a broad sense).

What Is the Gift Paradigm? A Reading Guide

What Is the Gift Paradigm? A Reading Guide

Receiving an organ: The ambivalence of the debt and the question of giving back

Taking the Maussian gift paradigm as its theoretical framework ( to give-to receive-to repay), this article adopts an original approach to analysis of the lived experiences of organ recipients on an individual and psychological level. Clinically oriented interviews with 9 transplant patients and semi-structured interviews with a further 13 patients reveal the existence of four forms of mental processing around organ donations and the existence of a debt in three of these forms. These debts are ambivalent and recipients experience them both positively and negatively. Organ donation seems to fit into the gift paradigm in an original way inasmuch as, instead of repaying it directly, recipients settle their debt by giving back to others and by other means, whether to real people or to their fantasy donor. In order to improve the well-being of transplant patients, recommendations are set out for the biomedical agencies: a humanised donor discourse should be developed alongside the traditional mechanistic discourse around the body and long-term, multifaceted psychological support should be made available for transplant patients and their families. The marketing implications of our research are also put forward with a view to turning transplant patients into promoters of organ donation. The results are also transferred to other social marketing contexts. Finally, the gift exchange paradigm is proposed as a means of enriching marketing fundamentals in a society in which consumers are increasingly searching for connections and meaning beyond the goods and services they consume.

Sociology as political philosophy: Alain Caillé’s anti-utilitarian sociology

The article presents an overview of the intellectual trajectory of Alain Caillé, the founder and animator of the anti-utilitarian movement in the social sciences (MAUSS) in France. Going back to early influences of Claude Lefort, Karl Polanyi and Pierre Clastres, it shows the centrality of the symbolic constitution of the economy in the development of an intellectual front against rational choice. It also considers how Marcel Mauss’s famous Essay on the Gift has been developed into a ‘gift paradigm’ that aims to unify the various social sciences into a comprehensive alternative to the interest paradigm.

Cultivating Enduring and Reciprocal Relationships in Academia

This article takes form following an exchange of letters in which the Chickasaw and Hopi authors reflected on an Indigenous mentorship relationship in higher education as the embodiment of a carved-out space for Indigenous ways of knowing and being. They begin the story of their faculty mentor-doctoral mentee relationship with the memory of the mentee’s graduation from the doctorate program and the gifting of a shawl. This moment was both a culminating and rebirthing of a relationship, an Indigenization of the institutional university hooding graduation ceremony. The authors privilege an Indigenous gift paradigm based in values of care and notions of kinship. Together, they ask and explore questions of how such a gift paradigm is created, enacted, and sustained in higher education. They reflect on practices which cultivated, nurtured, and sustained the mentorship relationship through the years from admission and leading up to the doctoral graduation ceremony, and beyond.

Alain Caillé and the gift paradigm as a response to the problem of social order

This text proposes a reading of the work of the French sociologist Alain Caille, focusing on the problem of the social order that the author works on the basis of Marcel Mauss’s “theory of the gift”. This problem is fundamental to position the gift as the third paradigm of social action, and that problematizes the utilitarian model. So, in our argument, we try to account for the problem of social order in sociology; from here to relieve Mauss theory as an alternative paradigm to individualism and holism, showing in this review the consequences that utilitarianism has generated in the way of thinking about the gift. In this line, a reading is proposed that highlights the dialectical component of the gift as logic as strategy and as a relational paradigm; and that allows another form of critical intelligibility for the social sciences in order to enable contemporary social struggles.

Axel Honneth´s normative proposal for the renewal of human rights

This paper examines some aspects of Axel Honneth’s normative theory, focusing on his theory of recognition, that can contribute to the renewal of human rights. To this end, it will start by making a few philosophical considerations about the justification and content of human rights, exploring the dialectic on the unity and diversity of human rights, in order to liaise the struggle for human rights and the struggle for recognition. It intends to move human rights away from the current inherent to Kantian philosophical thought, weakened by the decentralization of the European culture and conducted by 20th century postmodern reflections and by the critique of its categorical imperative as a pure duty of submission. It also examines the way to open space for a renewal of the discourse so as to enable it to confront delimited cultural and historical challenges. Other critical perspectives are included in this theoretical association, whether regarding the anti-utilitarian aspect, or the aspect of the gift paradigm, in order to contribute to the ethical renewal of human rights.

Corporate social responsibility practices as the apex of giving?

PurposeThis paper aims to analyze corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices from the epistemological position advocated by the MAUSS. The latter, beyond paying tribute to Marcel Mauss, refers to the project of combating all utilitarian and economistic reductionism.Design/methodology/approachThis paper discusses the question of the definition of CSR practices by basing the analysis on the definition proposed by Etogo, which considers CSR practices as all forms of key-giving transactions, material or immaterial, which update the primary and secondary links between the company and its human and non-human environment.FindingsThe sociology of CSR practices is seeking the notion of gift in companies which are places of profit and utilitarian calculus. This research emphasizes that the triple duty of giving-receiving-returning structures CSR practices. The approach extends the perspective of Godbout’s gift, which recalls how Homo donator, along with Crozier and Friedberg’s Homo strategus, is at the center of CSR practices.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed approach comes up against a particular limit. Despite its sociological fruitfulness, the gift paradigm is not immediately operational from a managerial point of view.Practical implicationsThis reflection suggests to consider that CSR practices participate in a form of reconfiguration of the efficiency of the company insofar as they call into question the partial analysis of the efficiency of the company for the benefit of the shareholders. For CSR practices to be effective, managers must understand the interdependence between society and business: the well-being of society and business development cannot be opposed. Managers therefore need to integrate CSR practices into the company's strategy.Social implicationsThis reflection can have interesting implications in terms of building citizen identity. Specifically, it is a question of rebalancing the link between social and economic logics, by legitimizing the social utility of companies as well as their involvement in the organization and functioning of the city.Originality/valueThis note seeks to emphasize the fecundity of the epistemological position advocated by the MAUSS to reconstruct the role of CSR practices by adopting a balanced approach.

Revealing Homo Donans: Liberating the Unilateral Gift from Commodity Exchange

The nurturing of the infant from birth onwards provides an example of unilateral gift giving made necessary by the helplessness of the child who cannot exchange an equivalent for what she is given. This material transaction, the giving and receiving of goods and care, creates basic interpersonal schemas of material communication, which underlie verbal communication. They differ from the schemas created by quid pro quo exchange. The market economy is composed of both types of transactions, but unilateral gifts are given to and taken by the exchange transaction mechanism in order to create profit. Reinterpreting maternal care as a free communicative economy points towards a redefinition of the human as Homo Donans and provides a way out of the end of the world scenario to which capitalism has brought us. Using ideas of Marx, Vygotsky, Rossi-Landi, Sohn-Rethel, Lakoff, the findings of recent infancy research, interpersonal neurobiology and modern matriarchal (Goettner-Abendroth) and matricentric (O’Reilly) feminism, I propose a radical shift towards the gift paradigm.

Regulating disappointment can impair cognitive performance in kindergarten children: Individual differences in ego depletion

Cognitive performance can be affected adversely when exerting self-control beforehand; a phenomenon known as ego depletion. The aim of the current study was to examine whether regulation of disappointment impairs cognitive performance in kindergarten children (mean age = 5 years, 6 months). Disappointment was induced by means of a modified version of the disappointing gift paradigm. Ego depletion effects were examined based on two different variables: cognitive performance and behavioral responses. Participants assigned to the experimental condition (n = 74) were disappointed before solving a cognitive executive function task. Participants assigned to the control condition (n = 74) were not disappointed before solving the cognitive task. Group comparisons (i.e., control group vs. experimental group) showed reduced cognitive performance for the experimental group in terms of accuracy and in terms of speed. Subsequent analyses for the experimental group revealed that only children who expressed appreciative positive emotions when receiving the unwanted gift showed impaired performance on the subsequent cognitive task. Children who expressed negative emotions when receiving the unwanted gift, as well as children who displayed no reaction toward the unwanted gift, did not show impaired cognitive performance. Furthermore, results revealed the crucial role of language for self-regulation skills. Overall, the current results underline the importance of taking individual difference in regulation strategies into account when examining ego depletion.

Cooperação Brasil-Timor-Leste sob o paradigma do dom e da hospitalidade

O presente artigo discute, a partir de uma pesrpectiva crítica, o processo de Cooperação Sul-Sul (CSS) no campo educacional entre Brasil e Timor-Leste, com base no paradigma do dom e da hospitalidade. Durante o governo Lula (2003-2010), a CSS se constituiu como uma das principais plataformas de inserção do Brasil no meio internacional. Além disso, foi o governo que mais energizou esforços ao desenvolvimento da cooperação educacional. No entanto, o argumento central é que o Brasil ainda necessita investir mais em políticas de recepção de estudantes estrangeiros orientadas por uma lógica do bem-receber. Nesses termos, a metodologia aplicada consistiu na análise de documentos oficiais, incluindo um protocolo de cooperação entre ambos os países, a literatura especializada e uma pesquisa de caráter etnográfico realizada com 30 estudantes timorenses. Diante do que foi observado, conclui-se que o processo de cooperação no campo educacional, quando compreendido a partir de variáveis endógenas e exógenas, revelam peculiaridades e desafios que podem ser superados a partir das práticas ancoradas no paradigma do dom e da hospitalidade.

The Gift of a Warmer Climate: Education for Courage

AbstractThe aim of this essay is to give hope to those who are in the middle of struggles relating to personal experiences associated with sexual/gendered harassment. In it, Kanako W. Ide inquires into the moral conditions around speaking out publicly about such incidents through critical analysis of the social norms of gender and economy. Jane Roland Martin's gender‐sensitive theory supports a discussion of how contemporary discourses against sexual/gendered harassment are embedded in the norms of a gender‐blind market economy. In seeking an alternative, gender‐sensitive discussion, the gift paradigm is addressed and critically examined. Ide applies the conceptual distinction between “labor” and “work” that informs gift theory to argue for the invisible spirit of the gift as an essence of feminine moral values. The Buddhist idea of altruism as asceticism is offered as a means of developing the concept of “labor” as a gift, and also as a way to conclude the essay by explaining negative incidents in an affirmative gift theory.

54-66 Aylık Çocuklarda Olumlu Sosyal Yalan Davranışı ile Zihin Kuramı ve Yönetici İşlevlerin Bağlantıları

<div><!--block-->This research examined the relationship between prosocial lie-telling behavior, theory of mind, and executive functions in children aged 54–66 months. The sample consists of 96 children (54 boys, 42 girls) aged 54–66 months (4.5–5.5 years) enrolled at five public schools and private schools in Istanbul. The children’s prosocial lie-telling behavior is tested by the good and bad drawing task and the dissapointing gift paradigm. Two false belief tasks and one appearance-reality task were used to measure theory of mind (ToM). Along with the measures for theory of mind, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhitory control were measured by the dimensional change card sort (DCCS) and day-night Strooplike test, respectively. As a result, there was no significant differences between the children’s cognitive scores (ToM, DCCS, Stroop) and pro-social lying tasks. However, there were significant predictive relationships with the DCCS and the disappointing gift paradigm’s swap condition. When age was controlled, Stroop and prosocial lie-telling in the good and bad drawing task correlated significantly in young children. White-lie-telling scores are differentiated, according to researchers, in older children. Thus, it is thought that social and motivational factors may affects children’s prosocial behavior. In this study, the disappointing gifts paradigm and good and bad drawing tasks were used to measure children’s prosocial lie-telling behavior, and it was discovered that there were quite different values for children’s lying rates.</div>

Educare all'atto creativo del dono tra gratuità e legame

The practice of gifting, observed by means of an interpretative model capable of integrating the utilitarian (individual) sphere of the act of giving with the conception of the gift as a cultural and anthropological expression aimed at building networks of relationships (community), as well as allowing to see concrete manifestations in this sense in contemporary Western society (volunteering is an example), raises questions about the very nature of the relationship that is created between the donor and the recipient of this act, reporting the question on the educational and pedagogical since one wonders what the theoretical-empirical reference models can nurture and support the gift paradigm. The reference to Japanese culture with the concept of mushotoku, in line with the Being of E. Fromm, but above all the ethno-anthropological studies of Marcel Mauss, allow us to hypothesize a creativity of the gift, from a pedagogical point of view, where the free act of giving and establishing a relationship with the other represent self-realization and creative gestures (Maslow), expression of a more general attitude of openness towards the Other and the surrounding environment. The donated and received object therefore seems to possess, in addition to a material value, a subtle meaning capable of sustaining the relationship between donor and recipient in a circular and recursive process, whose goal is not the equilibrium (extinction of the debt), but the building of a link of a moral nature.

The Competition for Gifts: The Social Mechanism of the Revival of Popular Religion – An Ethnographic Study of Fu Village in Eastern Zhejiang

AbstractThis article uses the “gift paradigm” to understand the social mechanism of the revival of popular religion in developed rural areas. In eastern Zhejiang, peasants burn “Buddha paper [money]” (fozhi)Althoughfoliterally means “Buddha,” in the local dialect of Zhejiang it is better understood as a generic term for “deity,” including Buddha. – Trans.as a gift when making vows and praying to deities. They consider the fulfillment of their prayers repayment by the deities. The reciprocity between human and deity forms a chain of return gifts, with the household as the unit and the year as the interval, which is permeated with affection and morality. In recent years the economic growth of rural economies in eastern Zhejiang has synchronized with social diversification. Village upper classes, which are the most sensitive to risk, have become the main bodies of faith consumption, purchasing masses of Buddha paper or even hiring people to chant scriptures. Their potlatch-style gift display has led to imitation by other classes. Different classes have gone into intense competition over the degree of intimacy with the deities. The competition for symbolic capital is the driving force of the constant expansion of popular religious activities in this area. The rapid growth of Buddha paper consumption has made it impossible for household providers who offer ritual services to meet the demand. They therefore convene older people to form scripture-recitation groups to enlarge their supplies. The use of scripture chanting (nianfo, literally “reciting Buddhist texts”) results in a redistribution of superfluous wealth in villages to their middle and lower classes, via acquaintance networks. Everyday practices of eastern Zhejiang villagers show that popular religious activities in their society have a self-contained logic that has brought about an expansion in the competition for intimacy with deities. Society, on the other hand, has achieved integration in the circle of gift exchange between human and deity. Although the holistic view of the “gift paradigm” is the key to unlocking this popular religion revival, both the “power paradigm” and the “society paradigm” of gift exchange are indispensable in understanding the nature of the relationship in local popular religion.

L’éthique de la mutualité et l’esprit du capitalisme

À partir d’une recherche empirique collective, l’ambition de cet article est d’esquisser un cadre théorique propre à problématiser la notion de « valeur sociale » en interrogeant quelles valeurs, autres qu’« économiques », mobilisent et produisent ces « économies non économiques » que constituent les mutuelles. L’hypothèse défendue ici est qu’une articulation entre théories du don et du care permet de mettre en lumière la face cachée de la valeur. Cette perspective invite ainsi à questionner sous un nouveau jour les ambivalences de l’éthique mutualiste et les enjeux auxquels elle doit faire face pour ouvrir une nouvelle alternative, politique, au social business contemporain.

The role of executive functions and theory of mind in children’s prosocial lie-telling

Children’s prosocial lying was examined in relation to executive functioning skills and theory of mind development. Prosocial lying was observed using a disappointing gift paradigm. Of the 79 children (ages 6–12years) who completed the disappointing gift paradigm, 47 (59.5%) told a prosocial lie to a research assistant about liking their prize. In addition, of those children who told prosocial lies, 25 (53.2%) maintained semantic leakage control during follow-up questioning, thereby demonstrating advanced lie-telling skills. When executive functioning was examined, children who told prosocial lies were found to have significantly higher performance on measures of working memory and inhibitory control. In addition, children who lied and maintained semantic leakage control also displayed more advanced theory of mind understanding. Although children’s age was not a predictor of lie-telling behavior (i.e., truthful vs. lie-teller), age was a significant predictor of semantic leakage control, with older children being more likely to maintain their lies during follow-up questioning.

Payments for ecosystem services and the gift paradigm: Sharing the burden and joy of environmental care

In response to the limited success of command-and-control interventions to ensure environmental stewardship, policy makers and practitioners have turned to financial payments to incentivize conservation. Many scholars and practitioners, including ecological economists, have cautioned that market-based approaches might modify human ways of relating to nature that are counterproductive to long-term conservation goals. Moving beyond critique, this article invites attention to the reconceptualization of environmental care labor and human–environment relations using the ideas of gift, reciprocity, and affect. Using the case of forest conservation by rural communities in Odisha, India, I discuss how the paradigm of the gift helps us to rethink transactions in ecosystem services, which might lead to more equitable and empowering ways of sharing of the burden and joy of environmental care. I argue that instead of framing conservation as a burdensome activity that entails sacrifice and costs alone, we need to pay attention to the joyful and life-affirming aspects of conservation care labor and its transformative potential.