Lewis Hyde has made extensive studies of gift economies. He ...

Lewis Hyde has made extensive studies of gift economies. He finds that “objects will remain plentiful because they are treated as gifts.” A gift relationship with nature is a “formal give-and-take that acknowledges our participation in, and dependence upon, natural increase. We tend to respond to nature as a part of ourselves, not a stranger or alien available for exploitation. Gift exchange is the commerce of choice, for it is commerce that harmonizes with, or participates in, the process of [nature’s] increase.”

Giving as a gift ensures that more is returned to the environment of the giver.

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www.joshbeckman.org/notes/565803533