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The Gift: chapter four – The Bond

July 27, 2004 By Uncategorized

Now we get into the juicy stuff, as if the book hasn’t been juicy so far.

Chapter four of “The Gift” is called simply “The Bond” and it is this chapter that took Susan Kerr’s interest by storm at the Giving Conference. The essential point of this chapter is that gifts create bonds and commodities create boundaries.

It is characteristic of market exchange that commodities move between two independent spheres. We might best picture the difference between gifts and commodities in this regard by imagining two territories separated by a boundary. A gift, when it moves across this boundary, either stops being a gift or abolishes the boundary. A commodity can cross the line without any change in its nature; moreover, its exchange will often establish a boundary where none previously existed…Logos-trade draws the boundary, eros-trade erases it.

— pp. 60-61

There are all kinds of places we can go from this statement. One major thought that triggered for me was around the nature of markets. Our traditional sense of markets are changing largely because of the world wide web, but have we got to the place where markets are actually places where people create bonds? Seems to me that modern branding, and even the “markets-as-conversations” theory of Cluetrain operate within a transactional type of commodity exchange. Having said that, they do recognize that people do not form bonds with companies (or countries or other brands) but rather that bonds are formed between people. What is missing is companies (and their people) figuring out how to actually use the power of corporations to become givers. Corporate philanthropy is a step in this direction, but can it be taken down to the individual level? What is a corporation took a portion of its philanthropic budget and gave it to individuals within the company to pursue their personal giving plans in their communities, encouraging individual staff members to bond through sharing their gifts of time and money? Can we enable that for our staff? For our citizens? There must be some companies that do this. Are there countries that support their citizens’ engagement with their gifts?

Markets come up for me because I think of them as simply places (real or imagined) where people connect. What people choose to do there is up to them. People can connect in a gift relationship or they can connect to give something value and thus exchange it in a transactional deal. I think the kind of connection we forge here on the web is bulging forward a breach or a blurring in this traditional dichotomy. Even the revolutionaries are getting in on the act (thanks Tutor!).

Hyde goes on to talk about the social implications of these two kinds of relationships, giving and transactional:

Because of the bonding power of gifts and the detached nature of commodity exchange, gifts have become associated with community and with being obliged to others, while commodities are associated with alienation and freedom. The bonds established by a gift can maintain old identity and limit our freedom of motion…It seems a misnomer that we have called those nations known for their commodities “the free world.” The phrase doesn’t seem to refer to political freedoms ; it indicates that the dominant forms of exchange in these lands does not bind the individual in any way – to his family, to his community, to his state. And though the modern state is too large a group to take its structure from bonds of affection, still, the ideology of the socialist nations begins with a call for community.

Yes, I am advocating more bondage and less freedom in this sense. And it starts with more political freedom, leading individuals to be free to create their bonds and connections to communities that operate far from the madding trap of commodification.