Preface to a new Chinese translation of Marcel Mauss’s Essai sur le don (Essay on giving)

How are social bonds formed and maintained? This question is central to political philosophy, economics, anthropology, and sociology. According to Marcel Mauss, the intellectual heir to Emile Durkheim, they are forged by giving. More precisely, they emerge from what Mauss calls the “triple obligation” to give, receive, and return ; the obligation to display his generosity. The article measures the decisive implications of this discovery, on the basis of enormous ethnological resources.