The gift of repentance: a Maussian perspective on twenty years of pentimento in Italy

The influence of Marcel Mauss' study The Gift has largely been confined to the study of the circulation of goods and the social relations in which the ir transfer is embedded. One of Mauss' principal aims, however, was to show the political importance of gift-giving in averting the recourse to violen ce. In this paper, his approach to the offering, receiving and reciprocatin g of gifts is used to analyse the phenomenon of Pentiniento - the exchange of confessions for reduced sentences by terrorists and mafiosi which has be come a central feature of the effort to combat organised violence in Italy since 1980.