I began this book with an interest in writing about civility in politics – about the habits and conventions that can acknowledge the humanity of one's opponent, however bitterly contested the relationship may be. It was a subject that did not fit into any of the ready-made areas of study within my native ground of European intellectual history. As I looked around for a way to give past shape to my present preoccupations, I found myself gradually drawn to Marcel Mauss's famous essay, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (1925). His essay was my point of entry into the larger history of gift exchange as it disappeared from and returned to the conversation of modern Europe.

Mauss turned to the practices of “archaic” or indigenous societies with an eye to the conflicts of his own time, when four years of total war had gone far toward destroying elementary civilities. What he found in premodern societies was a different principle of social organization. In Oceania and the Pacific Northwest, the central sites of his essay, gift giving was a system of mutual obligations. His famous definition asserted that it was always reciprocal, contrary to the modern assumption that a gift implies something given without expectation of a return. Mauss's analysis wove individuals and groups into ongoing patterns of giving, accepting, and returning that involved all aspects of the society in a network of shared responsibilities.