The Gift Paradigm: A Short Introduction to the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences

Authors : Kazım Tolga GÜREL

Pages : 427-432

Doi:10.46250/kulturder.1335112

View : 36 | Download : 26

Publication Date : 2023-09-10

Article Type : Other Papers

Abstract :At the end of 1980, a group of social scientists founded a journal called Bulletin du Mauss. The social scientists gathered around this journal tried to criticise the utilitarian mind with anti-utilitarian publications and to show that this mindset was not universal. Alain Caille stated that at the beginning, this movement set out with criticisms only on economism. Later on, he further developed the intellectual platform and aimed to show that some of the patterns of modern and post-modern society are structures established over time: \`Reversing them, learning to look at them differently”. The minimum condition for these is to realise that societies, groups and individuals constitute a self-generating process. Although Caille seemed to be approaching the anarchist tradition, he could not escape the sterility of liberalism because he could not see that the fundamental phenomenon that could weaken the totalitarian state and erode the central government dictatorship was through labour.
Keywords : rasyonalite, iktidar, modernite, insan, toplum