Gift and counterpresent

The Don wants to be not involved and timeless, however, to make honor with the gift, the person while profiting will make a gift in return, which one calls the counterpresent .

The gift creates or maintains a social link

The gift is not an act of exchange of values since the receiver is not held to return the gift or his counterpart in value. The value of the gifts does not return directly in account. Historically, one can differentiate three kinds of gift/counterpresent:

the ritual exchange: it is then a question of honouring with the powers with the hope to obtain terrestrial favors or the leniency of the gods.
the intercommunity exchange: it is then a question of guaranteeing the positive ratios between two communities by the means of privileged relations.
the mark of a social distinction: it is a question of making recognize its primacy by the means of a competition of the gift, the values given sometimes being able to be destroyed (Potlatch).

These three forms of gift are generally intermingled in reality.

The gift is to be compared with other more current forms of exchange:

the Barter: if it can approach the gift/counterpresent by the fact that it is about an exchange without guarantee of a third party, it remotely by the fixing of a commercial value of exchange like by a temporality of the exchange and thus of the bond.
the sale: this exchange is governed by fixed laws dependant on the capacity or market, it is carried out under a standard value (money) and is thus temporal. It can however imply a bond between the salesman and the customer, but in a limited way (guaranteed).

If the gift creates a social link, it can also be a form of social contract (people of the Iks in Africa or one is indebted by the gift/counterpresent of friends, very important compared to the other forms of bonds: family, Community).

The Christian gift can be an act of charity (gift to the poor without possibility of counterpresent).

The gift as a corporate measure supposes that personal happiness passes by the happiness of the others, it under hears the rules: to give, receive and return.

the founding document is a gift, therefore the recognition of the alter ego (what belonged to me belongs to you now).
the second act includes/understands the acceptance of the gift, the receiver thus recognizing the value of the gift for its own use (unifying force of yes).
the third act eliminates a difference in value between that which grants to him the giver and that the receiver perceives what amounts cancelling the material value of the exchange to propose the statutory value of the exchange.

The gift is thus based on a primary value of Sociabilité: reciprocity.

More than any other economic theory, regulates social, law, principle moral or religious, the gift is pacificatory since the exchange of values is carried out within the framework of freely accepted social reports/ratios.

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