A gift economy can "formally" be described as, "an economy that relies on relationships, giving something, whether it be goods or services, in the name of these relationships rather than for profit or personal gain." Now, we can all agree that it's considered proper ettiequte to return the favor when receiving a gift; unless you're told that you don't need to pay them back. I know everyone remembers elementary school when it was someone's birthday and their parent would come in during lunch and bring the class desserts like: cake, cookies, cupcakes, etc, even though we all had that one kid we despised who we didn't want to gift a dessert to but you just HAD to. During my elementary school days, this happened every time it was someone's birthday. Another form of that is the famous elementary school Valentine's Day exchange. Everyone decorated a shoe box all pretty with red's and pink's just to parade it around their classroom and basically demand candy from each of their classmates. My kindergarten year, one of my classmates brought me a card with a big (and I mean BIG) Hershey's Kiss. I got home and opened the card to see that he had asked me to be his Valentine, to which I very rudely wrote "NO" all over. Don't worry, he never found out, but cmon, kindergarten me thought cooties were real, and I was NOT going to catch them.
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| LadyDragonflyCC |
The gift economy is very much prevalent in everyday life; just like with eating. Yesterday, I went out to dinner with my boyfriend who paid for my burrito at Freebirds. Today, after shopping all day, I paid for his meal at Zaxby's. This is pretty much how it goes whenever we get food. If one of us pays one time, the other will pay the next time. We also do the same with driving. He usually drives most of the time, but I'll drive him about every other time we go out so he doesn't do all the driving. It's a gift without the monetary gain. Even when eating out, it's appreciated by wait staff that we tip a good amount at the end of the bill. Some establishments take the tip out of the waiter's pay if it's tipped on the receipt and not with cash, and some establishments even take tips left on the table for the waiter. Walking the tip up to the waiter physically is probably better, but point being, tipping is a gift to the wait staff for the service they provided to you. Some times people are not very nice and don't tip a waiter if they think that they did a poor job. But even if you think they did poorly, a small tip would probably be appreciated because their only way of making money is probably off those tips.
Another way the gift economy is prevalent is, duh, social media. I don't think most people realize that our posting on social media's almost every day is utilizing the gift economy. I mean some people might just post for the hell of it, but most of us (I'm assuming) post to get some interaction with all of our followers. Like when we go on cool vacations and post heavily edited pictures of ourselves and others, are we expecting all of our closest friends to like AND comment? Do we expect this in hopes of boosting our self-esteem? Personally, between me and my best friends, we return the gift to each other. We hype each other up in the comment section of any and all pictures we post. In a way, you could say I feel obligated to, but also, they're my best friends and they deserve all the love. Another way over social media that I find to be very interesting is the gift of sharing from person to person. A great example of this is GoFundMe fundraisers. These fundraisers can be shared far and wide to anyone and everyone. The act of gift giving here is obviously through monetary gain but it doesn't necessarily require the act of giving back. A recent example would be of a 9-year-old boy from Australia with a disability who was being bullied and wanted to commit suicide. A former comedian, Brad Williams, started a GoFundMe to send this little boy to Disneyland. This fundraiser raised $400,000+ all from people who felt generous enough to donate without expecting anything in return.
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| Nan Palmero |
So What?
In a way, gifting to me has always felt like a learned trait. I've always been taught to give back when others give to me. It may not always be needed, but it makes relationships grow stronger I feel when there's that act of return. Though the idea of gifting online through likes, comments, and sharing differs from the act of gifting in person through monetary gain, the same principles and ideals are shared.
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