The Organizational Gift and Sociological Approaches to Exchange

Abstract

The first part of this chapter considers what happens in the domain of biomedicine, examining here what is meant by a “gift” in the case of organ transplantation, in contrast with the Maussian conceptualization of gift-giving behavior. The main finding is that there exists a specific form of gift-giving behavior in which an organization, or a set of organizations, intervenes between the donor and the donee: this should be called an organizational gift. The second part elaborates this finding, and delineates the main characteristics of this modern form of gift, entailing the presence of organizations in the absence of which the donor and the donee could neither give nor receive. The final part broadens the perspective, and provides a new way of mapping the forms of exchange that present themselves as alternatives to market exchange in current market societies.

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