The Paradigm of the Gift: a View to the Scientific Concepts, Trends and Schools in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology Cover Image

Парадигмата за дара: поглед към научните концепции, направления и школи в етнологията и културната антропология
The Paradigm of the Gift: a View to the Scientific Concepts, Trends and Schools in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology

Author(s): Galin Georgiev
Subject(s): Customs / Folklore, Supranational / Global Economy, Agriculture, Regional Geography, Environmental Geography, Ethnohistory, Local History / Microhistory, Oral history, Social history, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Family and social welfare, Human Ecology, Sociology of Culture, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010)
Published by: Институт за етнология и фолклористика с Етнографски музей при БАН
Keywords: gift;exchange;cultural anthropology;historiography of the gift

Summary/Abstract: The topic of the gift in its various cultural, socio -economic, religious and so forth dimensions is for a long time in the focus of the scientific attention and has been a permanent research object in the field of humanities; the topic constantly excites and provokes. To review such a world-wide topic in humanities and from the point of view of its century-old presence and the engagement of scientific huminaries and thinkers such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Emile Benveniste, Vyacheslav Ivanov or Aron Gurevich rather than of its specific aspect or data from personal, „unknown“ field, is the challenge before this paper. The natural motive of such review (no matter how much distant it is from the orderly and consistent final result) is to trace the development and outline the fulcrums of the main theories dedicated to the gift and the exchange of gifts in ethnology and cultural anthropology. On the one hand, although more sketchily, this review is necessary in relation to their place and role for the formation of more general postulates and trends in these disciplines. On the other hand, they are examined as a separate aradigm departing from the field of study of these two disciplines but also drawing them near (together with topics such as magic, totem, taboo) a broad circle of ideas and imaginations intrinsic to man in general.

  • Issue Year: 2016
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 333-355
  • Page Count: 23
  • Language: Bulgarian