Reciprocity and Recognition: Mauss and Hegel in Structural Dialogue
Gift and Counter-gift. AI image “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35) Introduction: From Exchange to Recognition Theories of exchange and accounts of recognition have largely developed along separate trajectories. In anthropology, Marcel Mauss is read as providing a foundational analysis of gift practices, centered on obligations that organize circulation beyond market logic. In philosophy, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is taken to elaborate a theory of subject formation grounded in recognition. Each tradition has produced its own conceptual vocabulary and interpretive framework, leaving their proximity insufficiently explored. This separation obscures a shared concern. Both approaches address the conditions under which relations between individuals become either reciprocal or asymmetrical. What appears in Mauss as a cycle of giving and returning, and in Hegel as a movement of recognition between self-conscious beings, can be read as distinct formulations ...