Gifts as language: gift code between relatives

• Type: Chapter or Part of a Book
• Date: 2020

Authors

Duarte, Alice (Author) FLUP

Book

Title: Anthropological approaches to understanding consumption patterns and consumer behavior

Pages: 51-65

ISBN: 9781799831150

Electronic ISBN: 9781799831174

Publisher: IGI Global

Indexing

ISI Web of Science

Scopus

Crossref

Scientific classification

CORDIS: Social sciences > Anthropology

Other information

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-3115-0.ch003

Abstract (EN): This chapter addresses the issue of gifts as a language of sociability. The culture of our industrial and post-industrial societies over the last centuries has largely become a culture based on mass-produced and mass-distributed objects. There is no doubt that people use these commodities as part of processes within which social and moral considerations come into play, but this is hardly explained in phenomenological terms. This chapter proposes to analyse consumption as a cultural practice, pointing out the instrumental role of commodities as a language available to social actors to express and to communicate. It highlights some aspects of the gift code between relatives, the key purpose of which is to explain how interpersonal relations are produced through the exchange of gifts between subjects, in this case linked by family ties. There is a significant degree of diversity in the exchange of gifts between relatives, encompassing emotionally charged contexts. The author conducted a qualitative research consisting of in-depth interviews and ethnography in Northern Portugal.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific