Self-gifting and the metro-rural idyll: An illusio of ideal reflexive individualism.

Abstract

Self-gifting is a performative process in which commodities purchased by an individual are 'gifted' to themselves. In negating the assumed necessity of transacting (but not necessarily witnessing) others, self-gifts challenge notions that gifting is minimally dyadic and characteristically results in enduring relationships of mutual reciprocity and obligation. Self-gifting shadows the post-industrial regimes of commodity economics and interpersonal gifting, casting the individual as an exemplary free agent and thus functioning as an illusio of ideal reflexive individuality. Tourists holidaying in Martinborough, a popular 'wine village', also indulged in self-gifting. Within the metro-rural idyll of a Martinborough holiday the tourists' self-gifting was doubly idealised and expressed a nexus of middle class distinction, dialogic selfhood, and ideal reflexive individuality.