a contest of beneficence 107
Patterns of gift exchange are a good example of the social signals at-
tached to receiving or giving. Studies show that recipients try to match the
value of gifts they receive. Consequently we tend to give more expensive
presents to rich relatives than to poor ones, even though the poorer rela-
tions may have a greater need for presents and may use and value them
more (Zahavi and Zahavi 1997 , 226 – 29 ). Cross- national comparisons of
tipping patterns find that tipping, a form of nonreciprocal giving, is more
prevalent in more hierarchical societies (Lynn 1997 ). Keohane ( 1986 , 7 )
notes that true reciprocity can only exist among equals. Accordingly, any
prosocial offering across status differentials cannot be truly reciprocal
because it involves power exchange. Mauss makes similar observations
in his classic anthropological study of gift- giving practices around the
world.
The unreciprocated gift still makes the person who has accepted it inferior, par-
ticularly when it has been accepted with no thought of returning it.... Charity
is still wounding for him who accepted it, and the whole tendency of our moral-
ity is to strive to do away with the unconscious and injurious patronage of the
rich almsgiver. (Mauss 1990 , 63 )^14
Peterson ( 1993 , 860 ) notes that in certain cultures “giving can be con-
strued as both rude and dominating — even as an aggressive act.” Power
exchanges that occur through acts of giving and receiving led Derrida to
conclude that a pure gift is an impossibility. Once a gift is recognized as such
by either the giver or the recipient, it is no longer pure and free because it
entails an exchange of power (Derrida 1991 ; Laidlaw 2000 ).^15 Maimonides
endeavored to minimize such power exchange by prescribing anonymous
and inconspicuous giving as the preferable and most righteous forms of
charity (Bremner 1996 , 18 ). An expectation of perfect reciprocity — a gift
for a gift, an eye for an eye — commodifies the gift and pushes it back into
the familiar realm of market exchange (Hyde 2007 , 90 ). In many examples
of gift economy there is a conscious effort to decouple reciprocity, either
through an institutionalized delay in reciprocation or in the establishment
of indirect reciprocity, in an effort to prevent such commodification (Hage,
Harary, and James 1986 , 109 ). Perfect reciprocity thus depoliticizes pro-
sociality. International prosociality, far from being reciprocal, is therefore
highly political.
International actors often prefer to incur high costs rather than be seen
on the receiving end of prosociality. Strong actors rarely accept charity even
