Moving ACRoss the Gift Economy and the Market

This paper explores the micro dynamics through which consumption may liberate people from the gift economy, as well as how it may constrain them. It unveils how people negotiate the social expectations of the gift economy and the relational obligations (like social indebtedness) that such a context of exchange entails by subverting the gift, by using the market, and by moving from the gift economy to the market. In other words, it examines how people turn to the market as a means of asserting their agency