The gift is partly my telling you, here's something nice for you. But it also binds us in some kind of relationship that says, down the line, you're going to do something nice for meDown the road. This obligation to reciprocate can be seen across human societies and across time. Yand the the early anthropologist, marcel mos wrote about this quite explicitly,. There's the obligation to receive, but then also the obligation to reciprocated.
What’s the point of money? The answer might seem obvious: we need it to get paid for our work and to buy the things we need. But there’s also a deeper way to look at the role of money in our lives. This week in our Money 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite 2020 episode for an anthropologist’s take on the origin story of money. What if the cash and coins we carry are not just tools for transactions, but manifestations of human relationships?
If you like this show, be sure to listen to last week's episode on how we can be better both at spending and at saving money.
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