Why do people volunteer? What makes people give their time for others? Is volunteering really for those who are in need or volunteers themselves? While the idea of the gift and gift exchange is often used by practitioners of volunteering, it is also one of the research areas to which anthropology has largely contributed over decades. Gift exchange is a significant social phenomenon which reflec...

In vast markets of developing economies, especially in South Asia, both seasonal rural migrants and threatened urban workers constitute a bulk of the new class of working poor and are truly marginal in terms of their socio-economic status. We argue that gift-giving and gift exchanges in labour markets can perpetuate both rural and urban poverty among the working poor. In the context of working ...

ing from the sentimental value of the gift: If you would not have received the gift, how much would you be willing to pay to obtain it? In two other versions of the survey, to obtain a measure of their WTA, we asked the students instead Abstracting the sentimental value of the gift: How much would somebody have to pay you to induce you giving the gift away?ing the sentimental value of the gift:...

Reflective of income and wealth distributions, philanthropic gifting appears to follow an approximate power-law size distribution as measured by the size of gifts received by individual institutions. We explore the ecology of gifting by analysing data sets of individual gifts for a diverse group of institutions dedicated to education, medicine, art, public support, and religion. We find that th...

that may influence search behavior for a Christmas gift. A survey was recognition of all gift-giving occasions featuring more than conducted soon after the Christmas season to explore the effects of the one giver and receiver; (2) more media attention than other identified moderators on the extent of search as pertaining to a clothing annual gift occasions; (3) more marketing effort than other ...

We use agent-based modeling to study osotua, a gift giving system used by the Maasai of East Africa. Osotua’s literal meaning is “umbilical cord,” but it is used metaphorically to refer to a specific type of gift-giving relationship. Osotua relationships are characterized by respect, responsibility and restraint. Osotua partners ask each other for help only if they are in need and provide help ...