Gifts of the Free-Market
Mauss’s gift interpretations see gift-giving as an exchange of powers. Power and the
gifting alludes to overemphasized extensions of freedoms usually associated with giving as a
choice (MacCormack 1982). Thus gifting should imply obligation on the part of the recipient of
whatever gift. The power aspect is how pressure is applied and its reciprocation becomes another
gift unto itself; it is a counter-gifting (invoking Lévi-Strauss’ own interpretation of Mauss and
gifts). Relating to dumpster-diving as a form of sharing and (sometimes) the means of
distributing food (other materials too, of course but only in passing) within those interior and
outside of the freegan community. A ‘force’ of good, many of the freegans tend to distribute
their bounties via free distribution. Seen as a reappropriation of resources that undergo semantic
shifts; this is the obligation; it is that changing definition of garbage to edible food that is
important in situating the gift-giving. If this is so, is it an actor? An actor against neoliberal
redistributive welfares of self-governances over one’s own (intake into their body, as a health
concern but n