Research project The Meanings and Workings of the Gift: From Modernity to the Era of New Technologies

Bringing together a transdisciplinary team of academics with a multimedia artist and curator, we aim to radically reconfigure existing theories to develop a novel understanding of the gift in relation to the changing social, technological, and ethical paradigms of the new millennium. Rather than seeing it as either alternative or complimentary to the market, we propose other ways of thinking about / through the gift in social sciences, philosophy, literature, and art. Are there social relations Finally, what is the meaning of the gift in more than human contexts?based on giving, receiving and sharing that fall outside of the traditional consumer economy? And, if exchange is not the basis of gift-giving, what is the place of the categories of givers and receivers? Does the term exchange itself also carry non-economic meanings that characterize some forms of gifts?