Master 2024/2025

Gifts of Empire

Type: Compulsory course (Culture Studies)

Area of studies: Cultural Studies

Delivered by: Department of History

Where: Faculty of Humanities

When: 1 year, 2 module

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of all HSE University campuses

Instructors: Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov

Master’s programme: Culture Studies

Language: English

ECTS credits: 3

Contact hours: 30

Course Syllabus

Abstract

What is gift? What does it mean to give a gift and receive one? What social relations are created by gift giving? Do gifts play a similar role in all societies? Is ‘pure’ or ‘free’ gift possible? These are the questions of the classical gift theory which appeared in anthropology in the early twentieth century as a way to understand traditional or stateless societies. These are the questions that scholars ask today too, but in a new research context. What is the place of gift in societies that are dominated by market exchange? How did gift giving work in assembling tributary and trade empires? How does modernity take gift form — in ‘civilising mission’, ‘development’, ‘modernisation’, aid and humanitarianism? What is imperial on these modalities of governance? What are gifts of this empire? This course focuses on some of the key work in this field of anthropology and history.