Some Key Terms
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Commodity

Any object which has value in relation to other goods, and as such can be exchange for them. In some cases commodities are seen as the binary opposite of the gift.

Gift

An object whose value lies in the social relations created between giver and receiver, rather than in the exchange value of the good.

Fetishism of Commodities

Following Marx, the mistaken way in which people treat commodites as persons, and hold them to have power and agency, whilst treating people as things, as respositories of labour power that can be sold in the free market

Other Notes in this Category

1. Malinowski and the Kula
2. Marcel Mauss - The Gift
3. Marilyn Strathern's Relational Approach to Exchange
4. Some Key Terms

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