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The social norm of reciprocity is the expectation that people will respond to each other in similar ways—responding to gifts and kindnesses from others with similar benevolence of their own, and responding to harmful, hurtful acts from others with either indifference or some form of retaliation.
Gift-giving, he argued, was not altruistic (as it supposedly is in our society) but politically motivated for individual gain. Marcel Mauss theorized the impetus for a return as "the spirit of the gift," an idea that has provoked a long debate in economic anthropology on what motivated the reciprocal exchange. [ 1 ]
One example of positive reciprocity is that waitresses who smile broadly or give small gifts to their patrons receive more tips than waitresses who present a minimal smile. [26] [27] Also, free samples are not merely opportunities to taste a product but rather invitations to engage in the rule of reciprocity. Many people find it difficult to ...
Visual sociology attempts to study visual images produced as part of culture. Art , photographs , film , video , fonts , advertisements , computer icons , landscape , architecture , machines , fashion , makeup , hair style , facial expressions , tattoos , and so on are parts of the complex visual communication system produced by members of ...
An elaborate example of this in a non-market society is the potlatch, where large amounts of personal resources are ceremonially given away to others in the community according to social status, with the tacit expectation that other members of the community would themselves give away large amounts of their own property in the future.
Sociological Images is a blog that offers image-based sociological commentary and is one of the most widely read social science blogs. [1] Updated daily, it covers a wide range of social phenomena. The aim of the blog is to encourage readers to develop a "sociological imagination" and to learn to see how social institutions, interactions, and ...
The Gift has been very influential in anthropology, [3] where there is a large field of study devoted to reciprocity and exchange. [4] It has also influenced philosophers, artists, and political activists, including Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and more recently the work of David Graeber and the theologians John Milbank and Jean-Luc Marion.
Social institution – Any persistent structure or mechanism of social order governing the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community. The term "institution" is commonly applied to customs and behavior patterns important to a society, as well as to particular formal organizations of government and public services.