 gift economy, the gift economy, gift culture. Your gift exchange is a motive exchange where valuables are not traded or sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. This exchange contrasts with a barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily exchanged for value received. Social norms and custom-governed gift exchange gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money or some other commodity. The nature of gift economies forms the subject of a foundational debate in anthropology. Anthropological research into gift economies began with Brunas law Malinowski's description of the Kula Ring in the Trollbrie and islands during World War I. The Kula trade appeared to be gift-like since Trabriandus would travel great distances over dangerous seas to give what were considered valuable objects without any guarantee of aid. Return Malinowski's debate with the French anthropologist Marcel Moss quickly established the complexity of gift exchange and introduced a series of technical terms such as reciprocity, inalienable possessions, and prestation to distinguish between the different forms of exchange. According to anthropologists Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Perry, it is the unsettled relationship between market and non-market exchange that attracts the most attention. Gift economies are said, by some, to build communities, with the market serving as an asset on those relationships. Gift exchange is distinguished from other forms of exchange by a number of principles, such as the form of property rights governing the articles exchanged, whether gifting forms the distinct sphere of exchange that can be characterized as an economic system and the character of the social relationship that the gift exchange establishes. Gift ideology in highly commercialized societies differs from the prestations typical of non-market societies. Gift economies must also be differentiated from several closely related phenomena, such as common property regimes and the exchange of non-commodified labor.