Gifts of Empire

2023/2024

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

3

ECTS credits

Delivered by:

Department of History

Type:

Elective course

When:

1 year, 2 module

Instructor

Ssorin-Chaikov, Nikolai

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.

Learning Objectives

• Able to learn and demonstrate skills in the field, other than the major field
• Work with information: find, define and use the information from different sources which required for solving of research and professional problems (including the system approach)
• Able to efficiently communicate based on the goals and communication situations
• Able to efficiently communicate based on the goals and communication situations

Expected Learning Outcomes

• analysing advanced approaches in gift theory
• analysing basic approaches in gift theory
• analysing basic themes of the course
• analysing concepts of expenditure and voluntarism in the context of gift theory
• analysing the concepts of contract, free will and force in gift relations
• analysing the relationships of gifts and warfare

Course Contents

• A little kingdom in the old regime
• Gift theory: introduction
• Indian wars: gifts and poison
• Expenditure and humanitarian reason
• Gift and contract (i & ii)
• Imperial order and diplomacy (i and ii)

Assessment Elements

• final essay exam
• review essay

Interim Assessment

• 2023/2024 2nd module
  0.5 * final essay exam + 0.5 * review essay

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Bornstein, Erica. Disquieting Gifts: Humanitarianism in New Delhi. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012
• Grant, Bruce. The Captive and the Gift: Cultural Histories of Sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus. Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 2009

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Fassin, Didier. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Authors

• LYUBAVINA SVETLANA VYACHESLAVOVNA
• SSORINCHAYKOV NIKOLAY VLADIMIROVICH