Gift Economies are one of my favourite anthropological concepts.
Society-wide systems of exchange not based around markets, but instead generalised gifts between hundreds of people
Compiling loose notes and exploring illustrated explanations on it: maggieappleton.com/gift-economy
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Have you seen anything on gift economies for non tangible goods, like mentorship?
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Has anyone seen a good example of a design / system for mentor-mentee and peer-peer matching of community members? Please share in the replies!
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No specific examples jump to mind, but the general notion of mentorship is certainly a gift economy!
You are gifted guidance, and indirectly gift it back when you’re more experienced. Key element being a finite, bounded community which creates high motivation to gift back
Mentorship as its framed in “the online world” feels flawed because the whole of Twitter is not a community. Smaller communities of practice with well established longevity/survival should theorietically have more effective mentorship practices.
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Might you say that smaller, more specific communities would also have stronger social norms around reciprocity? Why are you saying smaller communities would have more effective mentorship practices?