
























































The Enduring Relevance of Mauss’ “Essai sur le don”


5

Elementa
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology 
and Empirical Perspectives

3 
(2023) 

1-2

The Gift

Edited by Francesco Fistetti

Francesco Fistetti
Editorial – What Is the Gift Paradigm? A Reading Guide 7

First Section

Alain Caillé
Recent Extensions of the Gift 15

Jacques T. Godbout
The Enduring Relevance of Mauss’ Essai sur le don 43

Francesco Fistetti
The Gift Paradigm: Towards a Science of “total social facts” 59

Annalisa Caputo
Ricœur, Gift and Poetics 81

Second Section

Andreana Lavanga - Francesco Sulla
Praise as a Gift in the Relationship between Teachers 93 
and Their Students

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6

Anna Daniela Savino
The Gift of Desire: The “inner voice” between Neuroscience 105 
and Theory of Attachment

Various

Roberta Baldini - Maria Grazia Mada Logrieco
The Gifted Student: Gifts and Talents Development 125

Alessandro De Santis - Stefania Fantinelli
Digital Well-Being as a New Kind of Adaptation 135 
to the New Millennium Needs: A State-of-the-Art Analysis

Salvatore Iuso - Pia Marinaro
Education and Culture: Pluralism in the Age of Globalization 153

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43

The Enduring Relevance 
of Mauss’ Essai sur le don
Jacques T. Godbout
Institut national de la recherche scientifique, University of Québec (Canada)

doi: https://doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2023-0102-godj
jacques.godbout@inrs.ca

Abstract

The author rereads Mauss’ “Essay on the Gift” to focus on the essential differences between 
the archaic gift and the modern gift, the first of which is the separation between people 
and things. In fact, if in so-called primitive societies the gift is a “total welfare” (religious, 
economic, social, political), in modern societies the circulation of things becomes autono-
mous and we find the gift in the sphere of primary ties and, only partially, in those of 
the market and the state. The paradox of the gift, which Mauss emphasises, is its being a 
mélange of obligation and freedom: why do we in turn give when we receive something 
as a gift? This aspect – reciprocating the thing received – in Māori society is referred to as 
“hau” and contains the identity of the giver: the gift encloses, in a way, the self of the giver. 
For Mauss, even in modern society, presenting something to someone implies presenting 
something of the Self. Even when it comes to the gift between strangers, such as the gift 
of blood or the gift of organs, it expresses the social identity of the giver and the recipient, 
since it can be perceived as society’s recognition of a general gift or of the recipient’s belong-
ing to this society.

Keywords: gift as a link between people; gift as freedom and obligation; gift as 
positive indebtedness; gift as total social fact.

How can we think about the gift today? Two models seem radically 
opposed: that of the archaic gift and that of the modern gift. For many 
authors, Mauss’ thinking on the gift applies to archaic societies, it cannot 
be used to understand giving in our own. It is true that in his seminal 
essay, first published in 1924, he writes: “We believe we have found one of 
the human foundations on which our societies are built…” (Mauss, 1990, 

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Jacques T. Godbout

44

p. 42). But this is a conclusion most authors reject. As Goux says: “One 
cannot jump from potlatch to social security so blithely” (Goux, 2000, 
p. 283). “Mauss wants to extend his observations to our own societies, as 
if they were two manifestations of a single phenomenon, or at least of the 
same order. Mauss is blinded by his discovery” (Piron, 2002, p. 134). The 
archaic gift is obligatory and reciprocal, the modern gift, free and unilat-
eral; “anonymous and impersonal” adds Titmuss in his renowned work on 
blood donation (Titmuss, 1972). The argument goes that early societies 
relied on coercion to make their society work: they forced their members 
to give. How can we possibly apply a forced donation such as this to our 
society, the solidarity of which, in Durkheim’s words (Tarot, 1999), is 
“organic”, where freedom to act plays a larger part? 

This is what is at stake in the passage from archaic to modern giving. 
When we think of giving in society today, we spontaneously bring to mind 
a particular type of gift: philanthropic, humanitarian. The gift is defined 
as free in the sense of requiring no reciprocity: “What one gives to some-
one without receiving anything in return”, says Le Petit Robert diction-
ary. This way of seeing the gift is opposed to the dominant view in the 
social sciences, where it is reduced to aelf-interested exchange, tending 
towards equivalence; unilateral gift on the one hand, exchange tending 
towards equivalence on the other. Let us note that these two positions, 
while opposed, nevertheless share a common trait: definition of the gift as 
a comparison of what circulates between the donor and recipient. These 
are the two simplistic approaches that – until recently – have character-
ized donation. The last fifteen years have seen a change. For the first time, 
the word “gift” has appeared as an entry in the Dictionnaire de sociologie 
(Boudon et al., 1999). And in an article by Alain Testart it is defined in the 
following way:

It is the legal aspect that allows us to distinguish the two phenomena [gift 
and exchange]: the right to demand a counterpart/return characterizes the 
exchange and is missing in the gift. To give is therefore to deprive oneself of 
the right to demand something in return. (Boudon et al., 1999, p. 68)

This definition conceptualizes the gift in a way that distinguishes it from 
the two simple approaches – the common understanding and that of 
the social sciences. Crucially, it fails to assert that there is no return (the 
common conception), and it also fails to assert that the return is equivalent 
(the social science conception). This definition, in other words, fails to 
make any statement at all about actual return. Return is not its starting 
point. As a consequence, the gift is no longer defined by the terms of the 
previous definitions, i.e. simply that which circulates. Because from the 

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The Enduring Relevance of Mauss’ “Essai sur le don”

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moment we acknowledge that we voluntarily deprive ourselves of the right 
to return, we cease to define the gift by the fact that there is, or is not, a 
return. And we take into account its relationship with the social bond. We 
recognize that giving is influenced by the nature and intensity of that bond 
between giver and receiver. We define ourselves by our ties, and the more 
intense the bond the more of it circulates through the gift. It is possible to 
establish certain relationships between what circulates, and the nature and 
intensity of the bond, by examining the meaning of what is in circulation. 
This is what many authors have done, Sahlins as the best known: “The 
social gap between the parties conditions the mode of exchange” (Sahlins, 
1976). This general rule establishes a relationship between the bond and 
that which is in circulation.

Note that denying the right to return does not mean that there will be 
no return. There may or may not be one. The essential point is that the gift 
is no longer defined by this criterion. It is certainly a negative approach: 
to deprive oneself, to voluntarily renounce. But it is not difficult to turn 
it around; for if there is no requirement of return, if there is no right to 
return, we can deduce that any return will be free, in the sense that it will 
not be made by virtue of an obligation, contracted by the recipient. We 
could therefore propose, starting from this definition, but using its com-
plementary proposition, that giving makes the receiver free to give. Or that 
giving is a form of circulation of things, a form of transfer that frees the 
partners from the contractual obligation to give something in exchange for 
receipt of something else. Conversely, we could define the contract as the 
fact of depriving the other of the freedom to give. This reverses the usual 
way of posing the question: rather than asking why one gives, one asks why 
it might be good to deprive the other of their freedom to give. With such 
a definition, we take the gift gesture away from a contractual meaning, the 
commercial or legal. We move away from conceptions of giving that are 
extreme but have in common with them the comparison of that which 
circulates.

Why is this fundamental? Because this definition forces us to take 
into account the meaning of the gift; it opens the way to meanings that 
are multiple. The meaning of what circulates is no longer a given. It is to 
be discovered, even in cases where there is a return. With this definition, 
we break away from the dominant model explaining what circulates – the 
market – and can now penetrate to the heart of the phenomenon of the 
gift. It is an indispensable entry to the world of giving. And it is what 
allows us to think of the modern gift and the archaic gift in the same way. 

This is precisely what Marcel Mauss did in his Essay on the Gift. 
Instead of simply observing and comparing what was flowing in one direc-

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46

tion and then the other, he asked himself the question of the meaning of 
the relationship between those who were giving.

1. Mauss’ mixture

This is the thesis I wish to put forward and it is a proposition that is far 
from obvious. For if we now return to Mauss, we begin by getting a shock. 
Such a conception seems to radically contradict the opening of the Essay on 
the Gift. In archaic societies, the gift, Mauss says at the outset, is apparently 
free and disinterested, but in reality it is constrained and self-interested. 
Mauss speaks of the “[…] apparently free and gratuitous, yet coerced and 
self-interested character of these services” (Mauss, 1990, p. 147). And how 
does he demonstrate that the facts contradict appearances? By observing 
that there is, in fact, a return. In other words, Mauss proceeds exactly as I 
have just tried to suggest that one ought not to! Instead of focusing on the 
meaning of what circulates for the actors, he observes what circulates and 
concludes that since there is a return, the gift was self-interested.

Thus begins the Essay. Many authors stop their reading or their 
understanding of the text here. But one must continue, because it becomes 
clear that Mauss allows himself to be immersed in and inf luenced by what 
he observes, and little by little, modifies his position. The further he gets 
into his investigation, the more he seeks to understand the gift’s meaning, 
the more he focuses on its spirit, its atmosphere. Thus Mauss says of the 
potlatch that it is: “Noble, replete with etiquette and generosity; and, in 
any case, when it is made in another spirit, with a view to immediate gain, 
it becomes the object of very marked scorn” (Mauss, 1990, p. 37). And 
then we notice that Mauss, because he looks for the meaning of the gesture 
he observes, makes fewer and fewer oppositional comparisons between the 
constraint of the archaics and the freedom of the moderns. He modifies his 
theoretical conception. His questioning remains the same, but his quest 
shifts. Its emphasis on the contrast of the ideal (pure gift; Malinowski, 
1989, p. 238) with the reality (the obligation to give) moves to a docu-
mentation of the mixture of both (obligation and freedom). This is shown 
in the formulas he uses to describe giving: “In disinterested and obligatory 
form at the same time” (Mauss, 1990, p. 33), “obligation and freedom 
intermingled” (p. 65), “to go out of oneself, to give, freely and obligatorily” 
(p. 71). This displacement is fundamental because it constitutes the gift as 
a social fact.

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The Enduring Relevance of Mauss’ “Essai sur le don”

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2. The gift as a social fact

Why is this so important? First, because, with his focus on obligation, 
Mauss begins by breaking with pure giving and constitutes his object of 
study as a sociological phenomenon. As Mary Douglas notes, the notion 
of the pure unilateral gift: “Puts the act of giving outside any mutual ties” 
(Douglas, 1990, p. 7). Mauss introduces obligation and interest: without 
these dimensions, the gift is an unrelated transfer, a non-social, individual 
act. Any return, or even idea of return, signals its condemnation, its nega-
tion.

Such a gift… cannot exist: neither as an affective relationship nor as a moral 
experience. It represents at most an advertising gimmick, or the mystique 
of a narcissistic [and ultimately despotic] self-confirmation of its own self-
sufficiency. (Sequeri, 1999)

But it is not only by introducing obligation, and opposing it to the pure gift, 
that Mauss makes the gift a social fact. It is also by reintroducing freedom. 
For the gift as pure constraint is not a “complete” social fact either. Human 
society is not a society of ants. In his essay, Mauss gradually moves from the 
classical ethnological conception of the archaic gift as a determined com-
pulsory system to one of freedom 1 or, more precisely, of obligation mixed 
with freedom. The gift becomes the expression of the symbolic nature of 
human communication (Tarot, 1999). And there is no symbolism without 
freedom. In bringing this to light, Mauss decompartmentalizes the archaic 
gift and makes possible a general reflection on the gift.

Mauss does not fall into the trap of reciprocity-equivalence on the 
one hand, pure gift on the other. He frees himself from the obsession with 
equivalence, in the short or long term, which often characterizes the study 
of the gift among ethnologists. Mauss asserts that the return may not exist, 
and that this risk is, in fact, one of its necessary conditions: the gift is 
uncertain. This is why it seems to me that to make the obligation to return 
a necessity, as many readers have done in order to remain true to his point 
of departure, is to deny the spirit of the Essay on the Gift and the point at 
which Mauss ends up. 

 1 I admit that Mauss remains ambiguous. For example, on page 180, while he speaks 
of “determined partners in a determined sense” his description does not correspond to 
something determined, and he adds that we do not know the precise rules that guide it 
(Mauss, 1990, p. 184), nor do we know the sanctions that would follow its contravention 
(p. 185). Finally (p. 186), he speaks of uncertainty.

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3. Mauss recognizes the differences

But if Mauss gradually leaves this initial opposition behind, it does not 
prevent him from recognizing the essential differences between archaic 
and modern giving. The most important, for him, is the appearance of the 
separation between people and things.

We now live in societies that strongly distinguish […] persons and things. 
This separation is fundamental: it constitutes the very condition for a part of 
our system of property, transfer and exchange. But [this distinction] is for-
eign to the law we have just studied (i.e., that of archaic societies). (Mauss, 
1990, p. 47)

This idea runs throughout his Essay, as does the insight that the: “Coming 
and going of souls and things that are all intermingled with one another” 
(Mauss, 1990, p. 49) constitutes the fundamental explanation of the 
archaic gift, at the same time as it explains the primary difference between 
them and us. To get to modern society, we have passed from a system of 
“total welfare” or the unity of social spheres to the appearance of law or 
“rights” as a sphere unto itself. The dynamic established between the gift 
and law will become an essential element in the understanding of modern 
society and that which circulates within it.

This difference explains the characteristics of the modern gift, and 
in particular, the fact that it is found principally in primary ties, even if it 
exists to some extent in the spheres of the market and the state. But these 
spheres have different regulating principles. This is how Mauss invites us 
to think about the gift in its unity and its differences. Systems of circula-
tion of things, previously confused, have become autonomous. Does this 
mean that the mixture of gift and rights, freedom and obligation, no longer 
exists? No, but it takes different forms, more obligatory here, freer else-
where. The change leads to a higher degree of potential freedom overall, 
as the gift is not as closely involved with everything circulating in society. 

This reflection on the mixture of obligation and freedom will lead 
Mauss to a key idea of the Essay, that of the gift as an expression of social 
identity. How can we explain the force that leads one to give back when 
one has received? This is the question that Mauss asked himself about the 
gift. And he answered it by way of the indigenous notion of hau, as pre-
sented by a Māori sage, and which he interpreted as signifying a transfer of 
identity: “Even when abandoned by the giver, [the thing received] is still 
something of him” (Mauss, 1990, p. 12); “[…] to make a gift to someone 
is to make a present of some part of oneself ” (p. 12).

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The Enduring Relevance of Mauss’ “Essai sur le don”

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4. The modern idea of “hau”
This is the most controversial part of the Essay and the one that has been 
most commented upon. “How can one give oneself through the gift of a 
thing?” wonders Goux (2000, p. 267). “How can someone transpire in 
something?”. Or again: “How can a finite thing… embody the being of 
the giver? There lies the mystery or the paradox of the gift. Transpiration 
of the being in the having, presence and existence of other in the finished 
thing”. For many authors, the answer given by Mauss is unacceptable, even 
scandalous. Why does one give when one has received? Because of the hau 
of the thing received, answers Mauss, which contains the identity of the 
donor. Many authors have proposed their own interpretation of the words 
of the Māori sage, among the most famous, Lévi-Strauss (1950); Firth 
(1959); Sahlins (1976); Godelier (1996). What was wrong with this great 
thinker, such a modern mind, asks Firth (quoted by Sahlins, 1997, pp. 206-
207)? Does one need the involvement of spirits to explain the return of the 
gift, when the fear of sanction, the desire to receive again – in short, social 
control or interest – are sufficient to account for the phenomenon? For his 
part, Lévi-Strauss concluded that Mauss had allowed himself to be entan-
gled in the indigenous theory, rather than adopting the necessary scientific 
distance. Since then, while recognizing Mauss’ genius, those in his orbit 
never cease to return to the theory of the hau and Mauss’ supposed error. 
Thus, Babadzan (1998) entitles his article Pour en finir avec le Hau (To put 
an end to the Hau) and laments the fact that Mauss believed in spirits. 

Two questions spontaneously come to mind. First, how could a 
sociologist and anthropologist unanimously recognized as possessing such 
breadth and rigor have committed such an elementary error, one which 
Mauss himself undoubtedly taught generations of students to avoid? And 
why, more than 70 years later, are we still motivated to comment on the 
passage so often if it is so obviously wrong? How have we not moved on? 

Personally, I don’t know whether Mauss was right to interpret the 
Māori hau in this way. Perhaps Sahlins, or Lévi-Strauss, or Firth, or some 
other author, is closer to what Ranapari, the Māori sage, really meant. But 
in any case, the answer to the question accounts neither for the popularity 
of the concept nor for the fact that it has appealed to so many authors 
(most recently Iteanu, 2004). For my part, I am inclined to believe, with 
Graeber, that:

[…] in his interpretation of the hau, Mauss himself created a kind of myth, 
and as with all myths, Mauss expresses something essential, something that 
would have been difficult to express otherwise. Otherwise, his explanation 
would have been long forgotten. (Graeber, 2001, p. 155)

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Mauss’ interpretation put his finger on a fundamental phenomenon, on 
a dimension of the gift that affects us all: that it affects the identity of the 
partners. This idea: “Of the power that is given to the other contracting 
party by anything that has been in contact with the party proposing the 
contract” certainly belongs to the archaic world, since as Mauss writes, 
it is: “A direct consequence of the spiritual character of the thing that is 
given” (Mauss, 1990, p. 48). But far from being solely archaic, we find it 
surprisingly central to our current conception of the gift. “This vase, it is 
my aunt”, says an heiress while showing her apartment to Anne Gotman 
(Gotman, 1989).

And what do we find when we observe people who have been given 
a gift that is not in the least primitive, made possible by the latest refine-
ments of modern medical technology: organ transplantation? It is the fear 
of losing one’s identity (Godbout, 2000). More generally, it is the idea 
of “giving of oneself ” that is found at every turn in modern thinking on 
donation and which explains the danger than can accompany it, and why 
it is not always desirable. It is also the idea of recognition, which Marcel 
Hénaff tends to reserve for ceremonial giving (Hénaff, 2002). Often, in the 
gift, writes Mauss about the Brahmans: “The bond established between 
donor and recipient is too strong for both of them” (p. 59). This danger 
explains why it may be preferable to go through the market. Money allows 
things to circulate without transporting the identity of the giver, as Mon-
taigne wrote when he exclaimed that he would rather buy a royal office 
than have it given to him, for: “By buying it, I give only money; otherwise, 
it is myself that I give” (quoted in Davis, 2000, p. 74).

When objects pass through the world of the gift, everything happens 
as though they still had a soul. And one can even wonder if, far from having 
been fooled by the indigenous interpretation as Lévi-Strauss believes, 
Mauss did not, on the contrary, project a modern idea onto the archaic 
society. For this is a constant theme in writings on the gift in our society.

Rings and other jewelry are not real gifts but only pretend to be… The only 
present, the only gift is a fragment of yourself. It is a gift of your blood that 
you must give me. (Emerson, 2000 [1844], p. 131)

It is therefore worth taking seriously Mauss’ most controversial theory. 
When objects pass through the gift, it is still as if they have a soul, even 
in societies that have relegated animism to those considered un- or under-
developed. Mauss’ most controversial idea, the one closest to indigenous 
thought, according to Lévi-Strauss, joins the family of beliefs we call 
common sense. “After having cleared the indigenous theory, it was neces-
sary to reduce it by an objective criticism that would allow it to reach the 

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The Enduring Relevance of Mauss’ “Essai sur le don”

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underlying reality” (Lévi-Strauss, 1950, p. 38). But what is Mauss’ under-
lying theory when he speaks of hau? What if it is the current theory of 
giving in our society (Hénaff, 2002)? Indeed, what is Mauss saying? Let us 
return to the beginning of the Essay. He says there that what we observe in 
archaic societies takes the form of a gift, looks like a gift, but is not in fact 
a gift because it involves a return and an obligation to return (Lévi-Strauss, 
1950, p. 3). To conclude that it is not a true gift, Mauss refers to gratuity 
and disinterest, that is to say to the common conception of the gift in his 
own society. At the beginning, he radically opposes what one observes in 
archaic societies – the obliged return – to his reference conception – the 
true gift – the one not only with the form, but (because it is free and 
gratuitous) the reality of it. The observed gift has the form, the appearance 
of a true gift, but in actuality it is not one. Thus for Mauss the true gift 
must be free and disinterested. To say that it has only the form but not the 
reality, is at the same time to define the gift as free and gratuitous, to main-
tain this definition as a reference. This is his initial position. But gradually 
he ends up mixing the two, thus modifying both his theoretical conception 
and his interpretation of what he observes. What he observes is a mixture 
of freedom and obligation. In the Essay, the moral foundation is shifted 
from the idea of free and gratuitous to one of transfer of identity through 
the hau: to the idea that a true gift is a gift of oneself. It is impossible not to 
recognize oneself in the Maussian notion of the gift. This is why the idea of 
the hau has been so frequently commented upon: because it is ours.

The Essay constantly speaks of the “true gift”, the ideal gift, without 
saying so explicitly. Contrary to Lévi-Strauss’ belief, the Maussian concep-
tion of the hauis typically western, it is the idea of giving of oneself that 
spontaneously comes to the mind of the modern individual when one 
speaks to them of the gift. Let us add that the model of circulation of the 
archaic gift developed by Mauss, based on his three moments (to give, to 
receive, to return) is found nowhere, as such, in the societies he observed. 
Even though it is certainly an eminently valid interpretation of what Mauss 
(or more precisely the ethnologists read by Mauss) observed, it corresponds 
to no actual representation of the behavior of early people. On the other 
hand, we do find it historically in western society, first of all in Seneca 
“[…] a benefit is a service given by someone who would have been free, 
so it is just as well not to give it” (Sénèque, 1972, p. 77); “there is no gift 
because it could not have been given” (Caillé, 2000, p. 201). The model 
itself is therefore not indigenous, and probably reflects our own society’s 
preoccupation with the gift.

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52

5. Identity and giving to strangers

We find the same phenomenon when we look at the modern gift par excel-
lence: the gift to strangers. The experience of donation by organ recipients 
cannot be explained by interest or fear of sanctions, but by the obligation 
to give back or risk, not only a transformation of one’s identity, but pos-
sibly even an attack from the donor’s identity (Godbout, 2000). The ten-
dency to personalize giving in philanthropy has also been noted, as Silber 
points out: “[In philanthropy], far from being separated from the gift, the 
identity of the donor retains its imprint and remains attached to the gift” 
(Silber, 1999, p. 143). In this regard, she quotes one of the greatest Ameri-
can philanthropists:

It is neither expected nor desirable to find the principle of competition in 
the most judicious use of surplus wealth. What matters most to the trustee 
[donor] is the best use for him, for his heart must be in his work. (Andrew 
Carnegie, quoted in Silber, 1999, p. 142; emphasis added)

“[There exists] a deep connection between giving and the identity of the 
donor” (Silber, 1999, p. 141; Pulcini, 2001). Radley and Kennedy (1992) 
reach the same conclusion after comparing the philanthropic behaviors of 
three social groups (entrepreneurs, professionals, and workers): charitable 
giving reflects both the identity that donors ascribe to themselves as a 
group and the identity that they ascribe to recipients as a group. But aid for 
developing countries could equally highlight this phenomenon – with its 
negative dimensions. “Even more than through the market, it is through 
unreturned gifts that dominated societies end up identifying with the west 
and losing their souls”, says economist Serge Latouche in L’occidentalisation 
du monde (Latouche, 1992). Giving, even between strangers, can reinforce 
or threaten the recipient’s identity.

But what about blood donation, which Titmuss considers character-
istic of modern donation in his famous 1972 book? For Titmuss, the two 
primary differences between modern and archaic donation are anonymity 
and the consequent fact that the donation does not create a personal bond, 
does not entail reciprocity:

Unlike gift exchange in traditional societies, there is in the free gift of blood 
to unnamed strangers no contract of custom, no legal bond, no functional 
determinism, no situations of discriminatory power, domination, constraint 
or compulsion, no sense of shame or guilt, no gratitude imperative and no 
need for the penitence of a Chrysostom. (Titmuss, 1972, p. 239)

Not only is this gift given to strangers, but it is even possible to believe, 
as the author points out, that if they knew each other: “Both givers and 

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recipients might refuse to participate in the process on religious, ethnic, 
political or other grounds” (Mauss, 1990, p. 74). Titmuss contrasts Mauss’ 
model of the tight community with what he calls “the community of stran-
gers”. On the face of it, Titmuss completely deconstructs Mauss’ concep-
tion of donation by applying his schema to the modern donation of blood. 
But is blood donation representative of giving to strangers in modern soci-
ety? On the contrary, couldn’t it be thought to represent an extreme case, 
where the manipulation of blood by intermediaries ends up transforming 
the gift into a product of some kind for the recipient, thus rendering “the 
gift of blood” incomplete, unable to be received as such? The donor gives, 
but the recipient receives, not a gift, but a product often broken down 
into its elements, which they would have great difficulty “identifying” with 
the donor. Little research has been done on blood recipients, but a recent 
survey points in this direction. Most of the recipients received it as just one 
product among others. “It’s part of a package with other medications”, said 
one interviewee (Henrion, 2003). 

Blood donation is exceptional (Anderson & Snow, 1994). In most 
other cases, as we have just seen, even when donors and recipients do not 
know and will never see each other, we observe in the donation to strangers 
the phenomena and characteristics specific to donation analyzed by Mauss, 
and in particular the play of identity, positive or negative. And even in 
the case of blood, the phenomenon of personalization is not completely 
absent. In her survey, Henrion encountered two cases (out of ten) where 
the phenomenon of identification with the donor occurred despite every-
thing. “I am convinced that since the transfusion, I have been influenced 
in my evolution by this foreign body”, says an interviewee (Henrion, 2003, 
p. 103). In addition, some types of blood product (platelets or leuko-
cytes) are not sent to a blood bank, because they cannot be stored; they 
must go directly from the donor to the recipient even if they don’t know 
each other. In this case, the usual characteristics of donation are present, 
including: “An emotional relationship between the donor and the patient. 
If the patient dies from the disease, it may cause an emotional shock to 
the donor. The responsible institution will have to support the donor” 
(Hagen, 1982, p. 42). This is why it seems that in general, and contrary to 
what Titmuss asserts, donation to strangers also embodies social identity: 
that of the donor and that of the recipient. The specific characteristics of 
blood donation are readily explained by the fact that the recipient does not 
receive the blood as a gift. 

A Māori concept, the hau, as interpreted by Mauss, is also a modern 
concept. In our societies: “To make a gift to someone is to make a present 
of some part of oneself ” (Mauss, 1990, p. 12). “To accept a gift is [at least 

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in part] to accept an identity, and to refuse a gift is to refuse a definition 
of oneself […]. Gifts are one of the ways in which others convey to us 
the image they have of us” (Schwartz, 1967, p. 8). Giving, even between 
strangers, can reinforce or destroy the recipient’s identity. It is true that this 
threat can be mitigated by the presence of organizational intermediaries; 
this is a fundamental role in society. The function of these intermediaries 
is to depersonalize the donation, to anonymize the recipient and thus to 
reduce its harmful character in cases where the recipient considers themself 
incapable of giving in return. Doctors attempt to do this in organ trans-
plantation by hoping to convince the recipient to adopt a mechanistic 
model (a heart is only a pump, a liver is only a filter), which neutralizes 
the gift of life by turning it into an object. Mauss’ fundamental distinction 
becomes relevant again here to an understanding of the workings of trans-
plantation. The gift can then be seen as general and societal, as a recogni-
tion by that society of the recipient’s inclusion and belonging.

6. The postulate of donation

The gift to strangers certainly constitutes the most important challenge 
for thinking about the gift in its most general form. But Mauss’ question 
retains the whole of its meaning. Even if it is easy to understand the force 
that pushes us to give when the link is personal, it nevertheless also pushes 
us to give to strangers, the fact that the push is increased when we are 
offered something, even something small, remains in part an enigma. This 
phenomenon, at the core of Mauss’ Essay, is still very much with us today. 
Philanthropic organizations useit routinely, if not systematically. They 
accompany their request for a donation with a small symbolic gift. And it 
has been found to be very effective.

The discussion of giving doesn’t end with the model of the obligatory 
and reciprocal (i.e. equivalent) ritual of early societies on one hand, and 
the pure and unilateral gift of the moderns on the other. On the contrary, 
it begins here. Couldn’t there be a common source to all of these forms of 
giving, which we will one day better grasp, without erasing their differ-
ences? This is how we understand Mauss, who ended up asking himself 
whether the gift, far from being archaic, wasn’t actually the “rock” of soci-
ety, of any society. “We touch upon fundamentals” (Mauss, 1990, p. 70). 
And didn’t the “need” to give come from the fact that we are all, in the 
beginning, in a state of debt, and isn’t our identity built by making active 
what we have received, by giving in turn?

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Riassunto

L’autore rilegge il “Saggio sul dono” di Mauss per mettere a fuoco le differenze essenziali 
tra il dono arcaico e il dono moderno, la prima delle quali è la separazione tra le persone 
e le cose. Infatti, se nelle società cosiddette primitive il dono è una “prestazione totale” 
(religiosa, economica, sociale, politica), nelle società moderne la circolazione delle cose 
diviene autonoma e ritroviamo il dono nella sfera dei legami primari e, solo in parte, in 
quelle del mercato e dello Stato. Il paradosso del dono, su cui Mauss mette l’accento, è il 
suo essere un mélange di obbligazione e libertà: perché a nostra volta doniamo quando 
riceviamo qualcosa in dono? Questo aspetto – ricambiare la cosa ricevuta – nella società 
Māori viene denominato “hau” e contiene l’identità del donatore: il dono racchiude, in 
un certo qual modo, il Sé del donatore. Per Mauss anche nella società moderna presen-

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tare qualcosa a qualcuno implica presentare qualcosa di Sé. Anche quando si tratta del 
dono tra sconosciuti, come il dono del sangue o il dono di organi, esso esprime l’identità 
sociale del donatore e del ricevente, poiché può essere percepito come riconoscimento, da 
parte della società, di un dono generale o dell’appartenenza del ricevente a questa società. 

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How to cite this paper:
Godbout, J. T. (2023). The enduring relevance of Mauss’ Essai sur le don. Elementa. 
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives, 3(1-2), 43-57. doi: 
https://doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2023-0102-godj

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	Elementa_3-2023-1-2_00b_Sommario.pdf
	Editorial
	What Is the Gift Paradigm?
A Reading Guide

	First Section
	Recent Extensions of the Gift
	The Enduring Relevance
of Mauss’ Essai sur le don
	The Gift Paradigm: Towards a Science of “total social facts”
	Ricœur, Gift and Poetics

	Second Section
	Praise as a Gift in the Relationship between Teachers and Their Students
	The Gift of Desire: The “inner voice” between Neuroscience and Theory
of Attachment

	Various
	The Gifted Student: Gifts and Talents Development
	Digital Well-Being as a New Kind
of Adaptation to the New Millennium Needs: A State-of-the-Art Analysis
	Education and Culture: Pluralism
in the Age of Globalization





