Dear all, 

The BK21 Education Research Group in the Department of Anthropology invites you to a distinguished lecture featuring Professor Myung-Seok Oh. This event will be conducted in a symposium format, including a lecture by Professor Oh and a discussion with three anthropologists. We look forward to your participation and engagement.

• Date & Time: Friday, April 11, 2025, 4:00–6:00 PM

• Venue: Room 504, Woosuk Economics Hall (Bldg. 223), Seoul National University

• Inquiries: anthrobk21plus@snu.ac.kr

• No prior registration required

"How Should We Read Marcel Mauss’ The Gift?"

Lecture Overview

Claude Lévi-Strauss hailed Marcel Mauss’ The Gift as a revolutionary work that introduced a novel perspective on society, viewing it through the lens of exchange. Mauss identified reciprocity, the spiritual power of objects, and the notion of total social phenomena as key principles underlying gift exchange in early societies. He argued that the ethics of the gift, emphasizing reciprocity and social solidarity, form the foundation of human society and should serve as an alternative to the individualistic utilitarianism of modern Western thought.

As a socialist and a labor movement advocate, Mauss used The Gift to convey a political message: the ethics of reciprocity should inspire new social ethics. This lecture aims to reconstruct the research questions and methodology that Mauss left somewhat ambiguous, while reflecting on the core concepts of his theory of the gift to propose a structured approach to reading The Gift.

Professor Myung-Seok Oh

Professor Myung-Seok Oh served as a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Seoul National University from 1994 to 2020. He has held various leadership roles, including Chair of the Department of Anthropology, Director of the Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies at SNU, and President of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies. Professor Oh has published extensively, including: Chinese Communities in Southeast Asia (2000), Malaysia’s Financial Crisis and Islamic Policy (2003), Regionalism and Ethnic Conflict in Southeast Asia (2004),  Foreign Cultures Within Us (2006), Half a Century of Cultural Anthropology (2008), Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries (2011), Korean Companies in the Malay World (2014)

Discussants

• Kyung-Mook Lee (Professor, Jeonbuk National University, Department of Anthropology)

• Se-Jin Park (Professor, Jeonbuk National University, Department of Anthropology)

• Yoo-Na Hwang (Ph.D. Candidate, Seoul National University, Department of Anthropology)

We look forward to your participation!