The Dangers of Gifts from Antiquity to the Digital Age

This is the first volume that examines dangerous gift-giving across centuries and disciplines. Bringing to the fore the subject that features as an aside in gift studies, it offers new insights into the ambivalent and troubled history of gift-giving.

Auteur

Alexandra Urakova is a Kone Foundation fellow at the Tampere University (2021-2024) and holds a title of docent in American Studies at the University of Helsinki. Tracey A. Sowerby is a Research Associate at St Benet's Hall, Oxford and the Director of the Europaeum Scholars Programme.

Tudor Sala has been awarded postdoctoral fellowships from the Leibniz Association/DAAD, the Dahlem Research School/COFUND, and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study at the Central European University.

Contenu

Introduction: Unpacking the Dangerous Gift * Tracey A. Sowerby and Alexandra Urakova

• Part 1: Gifts Divine, Demonic, and Devout

1. Demonic Gifts and Counter-gifts in Ancient Zoroastrianism Shervin Farridnejad

2. Blessings, Bribes and Bishops: Cyril of Alexandria, the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Making of Orthodoxy Volker Menze

3. 'The most precious of all gifts': Sentimentality, Consumption, and The Gift of Death in Warner, Phelps, and Twain * Alexandra Urakova

   • Part 2: The Precarious Politics of the Gift

4. The Dangerous Gift as Diplomatic Tool: Relics and Cross-confessional Gift-giving at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century Tracey A. Sowerby

5. A Pandora's Box of National Hostility?: The Széchényis and Aristocratic Donations in Nineteenth Century East-Central Europe Sándor Hites

6. The Dangerous Gift of Universal Income: The Problem of Rentier Dependency in Venezuela * Aaron Kappeler

   • Part 3: The Dark Side of the Gift Economy

7. Taking Aim at 'Exchange Gifts' and the 'Christmas Tax': Dangerous Gifts in the Progressive Era and the Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving Ellen Litwicki

8. The Dual Dangers of the Gift Russell Belk

9. The Birthday Cake: Commodity, Thing, Object, and Token Robert Appelbaum

Afterword: Gifts, Dangers and Their Performative Context Ilana F. Silber