Annotation
The course will analyse modes of gift exchange in pre-modern Europe. It strives to deromanticize our contemporary idealized understanding of gift-giving as a purely altruistic practice. Thus, it will make use of the concepts of social and cultural anthropology and show how gift exchange worked in the societies in which individuals were more vulnerable and more dependent on each other than today. It will draw students´attention to the so-called ego-documents as useful sources for tracing economic behaviour, including the practices and ideas of gift exchange. We will ask what steps historical actors made to forge fair exchange deals and to cultivate more balanced relationships. We will explore what people donated most and in what ways their life stages and religious affilitions shaped their perception and practices of giving.
Bibliography:
Natalie Z. Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth Century France, Madison, WI, 2000.
Natalie Z. Davis, Beyond the Market. Books as Gifts in Sixteenth-Century France, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 33 (1983), 69–88.
Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts. Gift Exchange in Early Modern England, Oxford 2014.
Engin Isin – Ebru Üstündağ, Wills, Deeds, Acts: Womenʼs Civic Gift Giving in Ottoman Istanbul, Gender, Place and Culture 15, 2008, 519–532.
Joshua Teplitsky, A “Prince of the Land of Israel” in Prague: Jewish Philathropy, Patronage, and Power in Early Modern Europe and Beyond, Jewish History 29, 2015, 245–271.
Irma Thoen, Strategic Affection? Gift Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Holland, Amsterdam, 2007.
Steven Ozment, The Burgermeisterʼs Daughter. Scandal in a Sixteenth Century German Town. 1996.
Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, The Culture of Giving. Informal Support and Gift Exchange in Early Modern England, Cambridge 2008.