The author of this article is Zheng Yexin, Ph.D. candidate, School of Sociology and Population, Chinese Minmin University
Editor-in-Charge: Li Ting is a professor at the School of Sociology and Population Chinese Minmin University
It's Valentine's Day again! Are you a long-standing single champion or a favorite in love?
It does not matter! No matter who you are, no matter where you are, you can't escape the elaborate festive atmosphere of merchants (the trap of consumerism). Did those gifts that moved your boyfriend/girlfriend to cry make you fall into fear of choice?
Intimate Yan Ba has compiled this Valentine's Day gift giving guide 2023, inviting you to look at the essence through the phenomenon, and brush up on the emotions and strategies behind gift giving - what does a gift mean in an intimate relationship? Is it really just a demand created by capital? What information is behind the flow of gifts in intimate relationships?
#论狗粮中的学术讨论. The door is welded, everyone is going~
First, the dual nature of gifts
As an important concept in understanding the formation and maintenance of relationships in society, gifts have attracted widespread attention because of their inherent attributes of economic rationality and emotional concern.
On the one hand, gifts are considered to be interlinked by economic responsibilities, "maintaining the balance of interests of both parties in the long run"; On the other hand, gifts also condense affection and ritualize private emotions.
Gift-giving is more strategic. In the face of the "proposition essay" given to couples on the annual festival, a good answer may be able to defend love like business propaganda, and a bad answer may become a "proposition" to end love.
In fact, gifts should be given well, one must fit the emotional process of both parties, and the other must understand the needs of the other party. From another perspective, after all, gifts are still different from complete commodities, and the gifts of both parties are actually hoping to constantly record each other's feelings and promote each other's intimacy in the present of ritualization.
Think of it this way, the gift is difficult to pick precisely because of its different instrumental and emotional proportions in different scenes.
Second, understand gifts from the dimension of social relations and subject narrative
In existing discussions, instrumentality and expressiveness are summarized as different aspects of the gift. Among them, instrumental gifts follow a transaction norm, focusing on the value of gifts as things, while expressive gifts follow emotional norms and emphasize the symbolism behind gifts.
Viviana A. Zelizer bypasses the binary dispute between money and emotion behind gifts, and to the point that gifts can appease individual insecurities at the level of social relations. Gifts of different amounts mark the boundaries of different social relations with their complex and diverse symbolic meanings, thus distinguishing them from the purely instrumental calculation of gifts in amounts.
On the one hand, the proportion of money spent on gifts is gradually increasing. Under the interconstruction of consumerism and romantic culture, valuable gifts make romantic interactions more intense and formal, thus distinguishing romantic relationships from other relationships. On the other hand, the attitude of both parties towards the relationship or affirmation or hesitation is embodied through the flow of gifts. Gifts also mark the beginning, progress, and commitment of the relationship.
Viviana A. Zelizer, professor of sociology at Princeton University
On the other hand, as gender relations equalize, consumerism, romantic culture, and changing gender expectations intersect, resulting in differences in the understanding of gifts, the most classic example being the annual social media debate about gifts.
Research shows that in traditional societies, gift-giving is a gendered ritual. Men pay for gifts and dates, expecting women to provide corresponding sexual remuneration.
In modern society, women do not rely on the size of the ceremony and the amount of money to determine their value, and prefer to understand the money in the gift as an emotional expression of men. Women's sensitivity to gifts and the messages they convey is largely related to their emotional evaluation of relative disadvantage. Society has a more harsh evaluation of women's emotional experience, including the number of relationships, the relatively narrow marriageable range, and premarital sex.
Therefore, women will subconsciously use the symbolic meaning of gifts in romantic relationships to constantly reflect and self-verify to reduce the cost of trial and error.
The following findings are based on interviews with cited literature.
Third, attack, gift!
1. The practical logic of gifts under different emotional processes
The strategy of couples exchanging gifts revolves expediently around the development of intimacy. As relationships develop, so does the relative ratio of economic rationality and intimacy in gift exchange.
On the one hand, in the strategy of gift-giving, in the early stage of love, couples will pay more attention to the economic rationality of material equivalence. Due to the uncertainty of the relationship, both parties want to avoid "human debt" that includes both financial and emotional aspects; When the relationship enters a stable period, the two parties gradually establish trust and attachment in long-term communication, and the consideration of economic rationality begins to transition from a single "me" to "we".
Equivalence in gift exchange is gradually weakened, and flexibility increases, such as paying more attention to the practicality of gifts, and the timing of gift giving is more daily.
On the other hand, the meaning of gifts gradually tends from "instrumental" in the early stages of love to "expressive" in maturity. In the early stages of love, gifts may express the individual's importance to love through their economic value, and show the financial ability of the giver, thereby creating an idealized impression; As the relationship gradually stabilizes, the gift exchange of both couples is more attached to and characterizes each other's long-term feelings.
Figure The practical logic of gifts under different emotional journeys
2. Types and perceptions of gift flow
Gifts received on Valentine's Day can be divided into three types according to different gifts: "light gifts", "enough money is the heart", and "expensive gifts against the will".
1) "Gift is light and affectionate": The soul of a gift lies not in its pure price, but in the emotions it conveys. The gift of time and labor investment such as observation and preparation of daily life is a figurative expression of emotions. Hand-woven scarves, favorite flowers, handwritten postcards, snacks specially selected because you are worried about the health of your lover...
These are gifts that are full of emotions and do not need to use the symbolism of money to express love. These well-prepared gifts can quickly produce the judgment of "how much the other person loves me", so as to make the other person's feelings for themselves and their feelings for each other confirm each other.
It was the sheer emotion that made this Playing Love a classic
2) "Enough money is the heart": Through the penetration of market-oriented discourse, money as a symbol of emotion is widely practiced gift interaction fixed into a relatively common love principle. This tendency to mix money and love often occurs in life after entering the workplace.
If gifts count as some kind of investment, money is also an important form of self-expression when there are no good ideas. Valuable gifts are seen as a commitment to the relationship and serve as a "love marker" that distinguishes the relationship, highlighting the individual's attitude towards feelings.
3) "Expensive gifts against your will": It should be noted that the meaning of love constructed by money does not hang above the relationship, and if you lack insight into the intentions and needs of your lover, it may damage the relationship.
More typical negative cases include: lack of intention, gifts are too perfunctory; Although he is a little careful, he does not have insight into what the other person needs; The gift reflects the conflict between the giver's own will and the recipient's experience and preferences.
Money seems to be used to symbolize commitment only after feelings cannot be fully revealed, but if the recipient's preferences are completely ignored, the instrumentality brought by money will damage the uniqueness cherished by the other party. In a word, money is not omnipotent, and at the same time, gifting without feelings is impossible.
Fourth, more expression, more love
Gift-giving is a time-honored emotional ceremony. Men are given more obligatory responsibilities in this ceremony, and while bearing, it is easy to ignore women's emotional expectations of their gifts and their hearts, which is the focus of the current gender debate. Existing studies have found that there is currently a high degree of reciprocity between the sexes in the exchange of gifts.
This suggests that women's increased human capital and economic independence have led them to expect men's gifts to contain equal expressions of heart and emotion, as they strive to do when giving gifts. The latter is often disguised in the "careful" nature of women and is easily overlooked.
In fact, aside from the gimmick of business promotion, the essence of the gift is whether it can successfully convey my heart based on the current emotional process. As the foregoing exemplifies, "If friends create gifts, gifts also create friends."
As a symbol, the gift serves the feelings of both parties, and to some extent realizes the production of the love relationship through the interaction of both parties. The gift needs to convey sweet messages of "you are valued", "you are noticed" and "you are deeply loved" to prove the uniqueness of the relationship.
In modern life, the road to "a lover will eventually become a dependent" seems to be full of traps, and the anxiety of hurting for love and fear is constantly diffused. In romantic relationships, gifts help to establish more rules, rituals to be established, and more meaning to be given, thus providing some certainty along the way for young people who crave stable love.
In the face of insecurity and uncertainty in emotional life, it is difficult for individuals to rely on themselves and get out of this predicament alone, and need the thoughtfulness and insight of the other party.
If you are sometimes ashamed to express love, if you also like to be cared for, then on such a special day as today, should you try to start with a small gift containing your heart?
bibliography
[1] LIU Dawei, GUO Rui. The practical logic of gift exchange between college students[J].China Youth Research,2021,No.310(12):40-46.DOI:10.19633/j.cnki.11-2579/d.2021.0175.)
[2] Xiang Jiangnan. The gendered practice of gift-giving by urban young couples?—— Women's Research Series,2022,No.174(06):58-66.)