Gift or commodity: what changes hands in the U.S. garage sale?

Abstract

The U.S. garage sale incorporates elements of both gift and commodity exchange in a dynamic tension, one that complicates traditional characterizations of gift and commodity as oppositional and mutually exclusive. Despite its apparently marketlike mechanisms, much of garage sale exchange also partakes of the character of gift giving. The elasticity in pricing in this home‐based exchange allows sellers to take social relations into account, so that objects that change hands become hybrid varieties of “inalienable commodities.”

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