Mauss and Gift holism (on behalf of Mike H.)

Pritchard’s introduction of Mauss’s background in comparative religion is intriguing to consider when his analyses of different cultural conceptions are examined with aims of presenting separate holistically finite contexts of their factual objectivity. Sharing narrative space with Mauss for explanatory or deconstructing different cultural understanding of exchange is increasingly difficult to distinguishing reader’s 21^st century, Mauss 20^th century, subject group’s sense of time, and Ian Cunnison’s translational liberties to form some semblance of lucid holistic vision.

However, I speculate even understanding Mauss’s perception of each studied community as encapsulating all aspects of economic, moral, political, and social forms of transactions is still insufficient. Methodology founded on familiar western academic subjects displaces categorization and placement within indigenous society limiting under Mauss’s aesthetic reasoning of what is whole. Does presenting other societies under his perceived emic translation of other cultures still valid to dissolve barriers of separate trains of understanding? Depending readers on ethnographic work, elaborated by Mauss further philosophical meandering, and toppled on personal measurements of what is problematic enough; or does our translation suffice?