Summary

This chapter is the first of two that explore the more social aspects of the gift. Here Hyde discusses the very specific sort of emotive bond—a bond that has spiritual and psychological as well as social dimensions—that the gift establishes between giver and receiver. This is one of the chief differences between gift exchange, on the one hand, and commodity exchange in the marketplace, which cast no such bond whatsoever. Gift exchange facilitates connection and, for Hyde, when this takes place, “society has appeared where there was none before” (73). This appearance of society is beholden to the feeling-bond the gift produces.

In order to clarify his analysis, Hyde highlights a particularly salient case study that unmasks the tensions and antagonisms that inhere between market commodities and gift exchange. In the 1970s Ford Motor Company faced a public image...