Some forms of reciprocity are thus closely related to redistribution, where goods and services are collected by a central figure for eventual distribution to followers.
[2] Marshall Sahlins, an American cultural anthropologist, identified three main types of reciprocity (generalized, balanced and negative) in the book Stone Age Economics (1972).
Annette Weiner argued that the "norm of reciprocity" is deeply implicated in the development of Western economic theory.
Both John Locke and Adam Smith used the idea of reciprocity to justify a free market without state intervention.
Reciprocity was used, on the one hand, to legitimize the idea of a self-regulating market; and to argue how individual vice was transformed into social good on the other.
These oppositions solidified by the late nineteenth century in the evolutionary idea of primitive communism marked by mechanical solidarity as the antithesis and alter ego of Western "Homo economicus".
[3]: 28–33 The concept was key to the debate between early anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and Marcel Mauss on the meaning of "Kula exchange" in the Trobriand Islands off Papua New Guinea during the First World War.
Marcel Mauss theorized the impetus for a return as "the spirit of the gift," an idea that has provoked a long debate in economic anthropology on what motivated the reciprocal exchange.
That is, exchange in non-market societies is less about acquiring the means of production (whether land or tools) and more about the redistribution of finished goods throughout a community.
Wealth objects – by their nature from outside – are competitively exchanged to acquire status, but no one is able to control their production and hence centralize power.
A general model of reciprocity must recognize that the closeness of the kin tie will vary according to the type of kinship system.
According to Levi-Strauss, the universal prohibition of incest pushes human groups towards exogamy where certain categories of kin are forbidden to marry.
The incest taboo is thus a negative prescription; without it, nothing would push men to go searching for women outside of their inner kinship circle, or vice versa.
Power dynamics are distributed amongst individuals of varying hierarchical degrees to convey the significance of the gifts exchanged.
Altruistic behavior is shaped by internal processes and situations that enable individuals to make decisions in a prosocial manner.
[10] Altruism may also be employed to manipulate situations, presenting deceptive behaviors where the giver's true intention is self-interest and hidden motives.