Examines gift exchanges as a foundational notion both in anthropology and in debates about international economic governance. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Numerous scholars in Social Theory and Theology discuss the concept of gift in our days. The present book seeks to benefit from this for the sake of ecumenical hermeneutics: A gift is presented by one to another person, so the person receiving it at the same time is enabled to a better self. Successful ecumenical dialogues consist in giving and receiving gifts of this kind. The book gives an exposition of this concept and then takes a tour d'horizon through ecumenical dialogues the Lutheran Church and theology are intertwined with, Lutheran-Anglican deliberations on the office of ecclesial oversight and Lutheran-Baptist dialogues on the concept of baptism among them. In the light of these findings the last chapter reflects on ecumenical hermeneutics in order to further improve its methods. [Gabentausch. Zur ökumenischen Hermeneutik] Der Band rezipiert Theorien der Gabe für die Fragen der ökumenischen Hermeneutik und schlägt ein identitätsbezogenes Konzept der Gabe vor: Eine gute Gabe ist nicht durch ihren finanziellen Wert bestimmt, sondern dadurch, dass sie erkennbar vom Geber kommt, zugleich aber den Empfänger besser ihn selbst sein lässt. Gelingende ökumenische Verständigung erzeugt semantische Gaben dieser Art. Nach der Vorstellung des Konzepts folgen beispielhafte Diskussionen aus dem Dialog evangelisch-lutherischer Theologie mit dem Anglikanismus, der römisch-katholischen, der baptistischen und der orthodoxen Theologie. Das Schlusskapitel nutzt die Ergebnisse für Vorschläge zur Weiterentwicklung einer gabenbezogenen ökumenischen Hermeneutik.

This book analyzes why the most influential novelists of the long eighteenth century centered their narratives on the theory and practice of gift exchange. Throughout this period, fundamental shifts in economic theories regarding the sources of individual and national wealth along with transformations in the practices of personal and institutional charity profoundly altered cultural understandings of the gift's rationale, purpose, and function. Drawing on materials such as sermons, conduct books, works of political philosophy, and tracts on social reform, Zionkowski challenges the idea that capitalist discourse was the dominant influence on the development of prose fiction. Instead, by shifting attention to the gift system as it was imagined and enacted in the formative years of the novel, the volume offers an innovative understanding of how the economy of obligation shaped writers' portrayals of class and gender identity, property, and community. Through theoretically-informed readings of Richardson's Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, Burney's Cecilia and The Wanderer, and Austen's Mansfield Park and Emma, the book foregrounds the issues of donation, reciprocity, indebtedness, and gratitude as it investigates the conflicts between the market and moral economies and analyzes women's position at the center of these conflicts. As this study reveals, the exchanges that eighteenth-century fiction prescribed for women confirm the continuing power and importance of gift transactions in the midst of an increasingly commercial culture. The volume will be essential reading for scholars of the eighteenth-century novel, economic literary criticism, women and gender studies, and book history.

A series of whimsical essays by the New York Times "Social Q's" columnist provides modern advice on navigating today's murky moral waters, sharing recommendations for such everyday situations as texting on the bus to splitting a dinner check.

Based on the author's fieldwork at assisted conception clinics in England in the mid-1990s, this is the first ethnographic study of the new procreative practices of anonymous ova and embryo donation. Giving voice to both groups of women participating in the demanding donation experience - the donors on the one side and the ever-hopeful IVF recipients on the other - Konrad shows how one dimension of the new reproductive technologies involves an unfamiliar relatedness between nameless and untraceable procreative strangers. Offsetting informants' local narratives against traditional Western folk models of the 'sexed' reproductive body, the book challenges some of the basic assumptions underlying conventional biomedical discourse of altruistic donation that clinicians and others promote as "gifts of life." It brings together a wide variety of literatures from social anthropology, social theory, cultural studies of science and technology, and feminist bioethics to discuss the relationship between recent developments in biotechnology and changing conceptions of personal origins, genealogy, kinship, biological ownership and notions of bodily integrity.

This novel treatment of barter represents a topical addition to the literature on economic anthropology.

The most revered work composed in Old English, Beowulf is one of the landmarks of European literature. This handbook supplies a wealth of insights into all major aspects of this wondrous poem and its scholarly tradition. Each chapter provides a history of the scholarly interest in a particular topic, a synthesis of present knowledge and opinion, and an analysis of scholarly work that remains to be done. Written to accommodate the needs of a broad audience, A Beowulf Handbook will be of value to nonspecialists who wish simply to read and enjoy Beowulf and to scholars at work on their own research. In its clear and comprehensive treatment of the poem and its scholarship, this book will prove an indispensable guide to readers and specialists for many years to come.

Three hundred years ago people made most of what they used, or got it in trade from their neighbours. Now, no one seems to make anything, and we buy what we need from shops. Gifts and Commodities describes the cultural and historical process of these changes and looks at the rise of consumer society in Britain and the United States. It investigates the ways that people think about and relate to objects in twentieth-century culture, at how those relationships have developed, and the social meanings they have for relations with others. Using aspects of anthropology and sociology to describe the importance of shopping and gift-giving in our lives and in western economies, Gifts and Commodities: * traces the development of shopping and retailing practices, and the emergence of modern notions of objects and the self * brings together a wealth of information on the history of the retail trade * examines the reality of the distinctions we draw between the impersonal economic sphere and personal social sphere * offers a fully interdisciplinary study of the links we forge between ourselves, our social groups and the commodities we buy and give.

In short, readable essays, The Ecumenical Gift Exchange looks at what ecumenical dialogue can teach about mutual ground and also about where reform is needed in the Church.

This archaeological study reconstructs Pre-Columbian exchange networks in the Lesser Antilles based on lithic artefact distributions among the different islands.