‘Showing Them You Love Them’: Gift Giving and the Dialectic of Intimacy

One of the tasks for a critical social psychology is to describe the contradictory social matrix of intimacy in capitalist societies. That is particularly necessary in order to understand the social experiences of women, since they continue to have the principal responsibility for expressive functions. The present paper is concerned with the structuration of intimacy through the giving of gifts. It is suggested that this is a useful vantage point from which to explore the extent of the autonomy of the private family. Gift giving is described as a means through which individuals communicate the values which they assign to their significant others. It is suggested that the intersubjective signs of value employed in gift transactions are affected by the characteristics of an industrial capitalist society. The symbolic process therefore demonstrates the limits to the autonomy of familial culture.