Dealing with gifts, dealing with goods. Ethnography of economic and moral transactions

Abstract

This article points out results of a series of economic ethnographies that shows how social agents uses the gift-goods distinction as a scheme of perception and appraisal, that become significant to link them to other persons and objects, to transfer them and get in touch with those who get contacted. Our ethnographies illuminate the practical use of these terms whit particular emphasis in the contests that are established when the distinction between them is invoked to mark and to classify the transfers and interpersonal links. In this article we notice the significant role of money as a revealer of the
dynamics of this distinction.