Historical Anthropology of Gift Exchange - YBLH002

• Title: Historical Anthropology of Gift Exchange
• Guaranteed by: Programme Liberal Arts and Humanities (24-SHVAJ)
• Faculty: Faculty of Humanities
• Actual: from 2025
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 4
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:0/2, MC [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (15)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Is provided by: YMHA44
• Old code: YBAJ160
• Note: course for students of another faculty; course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: doc. Veronika Čapská, Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): doc. Veronika Čapská, Ph.D.
• Class: Courses available to incoming students
• Incompatibility : YBAJ160, YMHA44
• Is incompatible with: YMHA44

Annotation

This course invites students to analyse modes of gift exchange in pre-modern Europe. It seeks to de-romanticise our contemporary idealised understanding of gift-giving as a purely altruistic practice. Thus, it will make use of concepts from social and cultural anthropology and show how gift exchange functioned in societies in which individuals were more vulnerable and more dependent on each other than today. It will draw studentsʼattention to the so-called ego-documents as useful sources for tracing economic behaviour, including the practices and ideas of gift exchange. We will ask, for example, how people communicated through gifts in the past, what steps they took to forge fair exchange deals and cultivate more balanced relationships. We will explore what people donated most and how their life stages and religious affiliations shaped their perceptions and practices of giving. We will also look at past representations of greed and generosity (as concepts connected with gift exchange). This course is also an invitation to learn more about underestimated gift-exchange-related phenomena, such as bribery or hospitality.

Last update: Čapská Veronika, doc., Ph.D. (25.02.2026)

Course completion requirements

Course Requirements:

• Class Attendance (15%)
• Activity in Class (10%)
• Reading of Assigned Texts for Each Class (There will be a short mid-term test on the assigned readings) (30%)
• An In-Class Presentation of Assigned Reading (article/chapter interpretation and contextualisation)

 Students with 4 credits (BA level course) will give an in-class presentation. (45%)

Students with 5 credits (MA level course) will give an in-class presentation and elaborate it in the written form (relate it to another text read during the course; 4 pages). Submission deadline: May 15^th 2026 (45%)

Reading material is available in the SIS (Student Information System).

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools by students in this course:

- The course focuses on the creative development of students´ own analytical and interpretive skills, and thus, the use of AI tools is not allowed, unless the teacher specifies otherwise.

Last update: Čapská Veronika, doc., Ph.D. (02.02.2026)