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.

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

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.