The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy

Genevieve Vaughan has been working for many years on the idea of a gift economy founded on mothering and being mothered as the basis of an alternative worldview and way of life. She created the international all-women activist Foundation for a Compassionate Society based in Austin, Texas (1987- 2005), one of the continuing projects of which is the Temple of the Goddess Sekhmet in Cactus Springs, Nevada, founded in 1992. She also initiated a network: International Feminists for a Gift Economy (2001 to present) whose members give presentations on the gift economy at conferences worldwide. Her published books include For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange (1997); Homo Donans (2007); and The Gift in the Heart of Language (2015). She has edited two anthologies The Gift/ il Dono: A Feminist Analysis (2004) and WOMEN AND THE GIFT ECONOMY: A RADICALLY DIFFERENT WORLDVIEW IS POSSIBLE (2007).