Chapter 9: Reopening the gift.

The article discuses the issue of race and the critique of normative social policy. The orthodox approach suggests that it is possible to make interventions in the sphere of human well-being which, if not commanding universal agreement, can at least claim plausibly to be grounded in conventions of human interest which transcend the particular standpoints of given groups. In his book "The Gift Relationship" (1970), R. Titmuss contested proposals to introduce a system of paid blood donation into Great Britain, and in doing so provided one of the most eloquent defences of a social democratic commitment to welfare. Basing his arguments on M. Mauss's "Gift" (1922), the classic text of anthropological economics, Titmuss defined social policy as a field of altruism between strangers which against the self-interest of market transactions established the very possibility of the social. Perceptions of identity, experience, individuality and social location based upon race, gender, class and so on emerge from the way that people oscillate across such dualities in constructing themselves.