Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, The Gift and its Paradoxes explores the ambiguity of the gift: it is at once both a relation and a thing, alienable and inalienable, present and poison. Challenging the nature of giving as reciprocal, the book engages critically with the work of Mauss and develops a new theory of the gift according to which the gift cannot be reduced to a model of exchange, but must instead entail a loss or sacrifice. Ultimately, the gift is examined in the book as the impossible occurrence of gratuitous giving.

Contents: Genesis; The (im)possible gift; The generosity of the given; Parasites' paradise (aka like hopping on the beach); In/exclusions: the gift of blood and alms for the poor; Gendered economies of the gift; Making a gift of death; The gift is not one; Bibliography; Index.

Olli Pyyhtinen is is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Turku, Finland and author of Simmel and 'the Social'.