A GAME-THEORETIC INTERPRETATION OF MAUSS,MARCEL THE GIFT

This article proposes that a game theoretic interpretation can be made of Marcel Mauss' The Gift. The results provide support for the claim that the institution of reciprocity is a socially stabilizing exchange mechanism. Suppose that the first interactions among different prehis toric tribes or bands were characterized, in the words of Hobbes, as b eing ''short, nasty, and brutish.'' In the absence of voluntary exchan ge institutions, such as reciprocity, through which these groups could interact in more cooperative ways, their initial external interaction s may have been characterized by plunder, pillage and war. It is from these conflictive relations that more cooperative institutions may hav e been chosen or have evolved. This paper shows how the gift, and reci procity in general, could have allowed for the evolution of more coope rative relations through credible threats of returning to conflict if the gift was not returned. It is argued that the original motivation f or the return of the gift may have:been to elicit cooperation. Only af ter this cooperation had been attained could the gift then evolve into the social norm that Mauss had observed. It further suggests that rec iprocity may have an origin of conflict.