editors’ introduction for nano special issue 11: economies of the gift in an age of austerity

The guest editors of this NANO special issue claim that examining gift exchanges allows us to access and assess a broad range of cultural values. The contributors to this issue of NANO rely upon these and other understandings of the gift to explore how generosity functions in the face of scarcity—scarcity of time, resources, mutual tolerance—to strengthen, or weaken, communal bonds.