An article on the gift (forms of exchange in archic societies and their causes)

The gift increased with Muza from a mere attribute of economic activity to the rank of "the comprehensive social phenomenon," and this is the central concept in Muza's work, which was concerned with understanding social facts in their entirety. Perhaps this book is a clear proof that approaching such social phenomena in their totality enables us to view them as general phenomena distinguished from institutions of a contingent or local nature, as well as to realize the reality of these phenomena in terms of their representation and perception by individuals and groups within their specific environments, and thus the process of social action formation in the lived reality emerges. This is Muza's project in this book, which derives its value from being the most famous text in anthropology and the most knowledge-dense, in which there is an attempt to understand the motives that compel people not only to give but also to accept and respond to the gift. It studies the gift as a relaxed form of exchange in ancient economies and legislations across several civilizations (Hindu, Roman, Germanic, Native Americans, Pacific Islands, Arabs, etc.) to conclude that exchange based on gifts, although not part of the utilitarian economies dominated by the "cold calculative mentality" in contemporary societies, still retains some of its manifestations today, as we sometimes appear to be "the great lord" (giving gifts during holidays, weddings, hosting feasts, etc.). Muza even goes so far as to suggest that some legal principles that might be thought to be products of modernity are nothing but a form of exchange based on the principle of the gift (social security, retirement, social protection, etc.). According to Muza, the gift is an eternal and universal principle, and contemporary market societies engaged in the capitalist system should not forget or neglect it.