【(Preliminary)Draft】The Gift in Intimate Relationships - Alienation, Epistemic Injustice, and a Generative-Relational Theory of Justice

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ENGLISH

The Gift in Intimate Relationships: Alienation, Epistemic Injustice, and a Generative–Relational Theory of Justice

Wanhong[^aff]

June 5, 2026

Working draft — please do not cite without permission

[^aff]: Serendipitech Inc. / Serendip Commons Society. Correspondence: [email]. Draft for SSRN working-paper series. Comments welcome.

Abstract

The gift is often described as the native language of love: a form of expression whose meaning resides in the relation it enacts rather than in the object exchanged. Yet once the gift is read through the standard grammar of economics—reciprocity, valuation, implicit debt—its expressive content is at risk of being displaced by instrumental rationality. This paper develops that risk as a problem of alienation: the conversion of love’s language into a calculable transaction. I argue that two further harms compound the first. The first is epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007): certain forms of giving, especially the unpaid affective labor characteristic of intimate relationships, are systematically under-recognized as contributions at all. The second is a distributive harm: linear models of exchange misdescribe how value actually circulates within sustained relationships. Building on Ron Eglash’s account of generative justice, and on a relational-ontological reading of the gift, I propose that the circulation of gifts in intimate relationships is better modeled as the recirculation of generatively produced value through the network that creates it, rather than as bilateral exchange terminating in settled debt. I close by sketching the implications for evidence-informed decision-making about intimate-relationship data and for the design of relational infrastructures.

Contents

  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 The gift between expression and exchange
  • 3 Alienation: when love’s language is re-coded as transaction
    • 3.1 The mechanism
    • 3.2 Why “alienation” and not merely “commodification”
  • 4 Epistemic injustice and the illegibility of care
  • 5 From exchange to generative justice
    • 5.1 Eglash’s generative justice
    • 5.2 A relational-ontological reading of gift circulation
    • 5.3 What this dissolves
  • 6 Implications: relational data and evidence-informed decisions
  • 7 Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

This paper begins from an ordinary observation and an uncomfortable one. The ordinary observation is that, within intimate relationships, gifts are not primarily transfers of resources; they are utterances. A gift says something—attention, recognition, care, commitment—that is not reducible to the market value of the thing given. The uncomfortable observation is that the moment we try to account for gifts—to value them, to track who owes whom, to ask whether an exchange was fair—we recruit the vocabulary of economics, and that vocabulary tends to overwrite the expressive content it was meant to describe.

I call this overwriting alienation, in a sense adapted from but not identical to its classical use: the estrangement of an expressive act from its own meaning once that act is re-encoded in an instrumental register. The central claim of the paper is that the alienation of the gift is not a single harm but a braid of three:

(i) Expressive alienation. The gift as the language of love is displaced by the gift as transaction (Section 3).

(ii) Epistemic injustice. Some forms of giving are not merely mis-valued but rendered illegible as contributions, producing a systematic credibility and recognition deficit (Section 4).

(iii) Distributive misdescription. Linear exchange models mis-represent how value circulates in sustained relations, motivating an alternative built on generative justice (Section 5).

Sections 2–5 develop the argument; Section 6 draws out implications for the responsible use of relational data and for evidence-informed decision-making; Section 7 concludes.

2. The gift between expression and exchange

The anthropological literature on the gift (Mauss, 1925; Godelier, 1999) has long resisted the assimilation of giving to barter. A gift carries something of the giver; it institutes a relation rather than discharging one. The economist’s instinct, by contrast, is to recover an underlying exchange: every gift is read as one leg of a reciprocal transaction, with an implicit price and an implicit schedule of return (Becker, 1981). The two readings are not simply rival descriptions; they are rival ontologies of what a gift is.

Two grammars. Let us name them. Under the exchange grammar, a gift $g$ is a transfer with a value $v(g)$ that enters a ledger; fairness is a property of the ledger’s balance over time. Under the expressive grammar, a gift is a sign whose significance is constituted by the relation it addresses; “value” is not a scalar carried by the object but a property of the relational act. The problem is that the two grammars are not symmetric in power. The exchange grammar is calculable, auditable, and institutionally supported; the expressive grammar is not. When the two meet, the calculable one tends to win—not because it is truer, but because it is operational.

3. Alienation: when love’s language is re-coded as transaction

3.1 The mechanism

Alienation here is a translation failure with directional bias. To make a gift legible to institutions—tax authorities, courts in matrimonial disputes, even the partners’ own retrospective accounting—it must be rendered in the exchange grammar. But the translation is lossy and the loss is not random: what survives is the calculable residue (who gave what, worth how much), and what is lost is precisely the expressive content that made the act a gift rather than a payment. Over repeated cycles, partners may begin to experience their own giving through the surviving register, a feedback loop in which the description reshapes the practice it claims only to record.

3.2 Why “alienation” and not merely “commodification”

Commodification names the entry of an object into market circulation. Alienation, as used here, is more specific: it is the estrangement of an expressive act from its author’s intended meaning. A gift can be fully de-commodified (handmade, priceless, never to be sold) and still be alienated, if it comes to be experienced primarily as a move in a game of reciprocal obligation. The harm is to meaning, not to market boundaries.

4. Epistemic injustice and the illegibility of care

Fricker (2007) distinguishes testimonial injustice—a deflated credibility judgment owing to prejudice—from hermeneutical injustice—a gap in shared interpretive resources that leaves some experiences unintelligible even to those who undergo them. Both bear on the gift.

Testimonial. When a partner reports that some sustained, unglamorous form of giving (emotional availability, anticipatory care, the management of a shared life) is a contribution, that report may be discounted because the contribution does not fit the recognized template of “productive” input. The credibility deficit attaches not to the speaker’s honesty but to the category of thing they are trying to assert.

Hermeneutical. More deeply, the interpretive resources available—heavily shaped by the exchange grammar—may lack the concepts needed to register affective labor as a generative contribution at all. The giver then suffers a double harm: the contribution is unrecognized, and the giver lacks the vocabulary to name the wrong. This is hermeneutical injustice located in the intimate sphere, and it is tightly coupled to the expressive alienation of Section 3: the same impoverished grammar that re-codes the gift as transaction also makes care illegible as contribution.

5. From exchange to generative justice

5.1 Eglash’s generative justice

Eglash’s account of generative justice (Eglash, 2016) reframes the central justice question. Distributive justice asks how an already-produced surplus should be split; generative justice asks whether value is allowed to circulate back to, and remain within, the network of relations that generated it, rather than being extracted and alienated from it. The emphasis on recursive depth—value re-entering the loop that produced it, and compounding there—offers a model of circulation that is neither linear exchange nor charity.

5.2 A relational-ontological reading of gift circulation

I propose to read intimate-relationship gifting through this lens. On a relational ontology, the relevant unit is not the isolated individual maximizing utility but the relation itself as a value-generating system. Gifts, on this view, are not transfers between pre-formed parties but moments in the self-production of the relation. Justice then concerns whether generated value (including affective and recognitional value) recirculates within the relation and to its contributors, or whether it is extracted, unrecognized, and lost—the very pattern diagnosed in Sections 3–4.

A minimal formalization (sketch). Let a relation be a directed graph in which nodes are participants and a gift event contributes value along an edge. The exchange grammar evaluates edge balance: justice as $\sum_{\text{in}} v \approx \sum_{\text{out}} v$ per node. A generative reading instead evaluates recirculation depth: the fraction of generated value that re-enters and remains within the relational network across cycles, with recognition treated as a value flow in its own right rather than as a residual. I leave a fuller formal treatment to future work and flag it here only to mark the contrast precisely: balance versus recirculation, settlement versus generation.

5.3 What this dissolves

Read generatively, the three harms align. Expressive alienation is the extraction of meaning from the relation; epistemic injustice is the failure to recognize a class of contributions as value flows; distributive misdescription is the use of an edge-balance metric where a recirculation metric is appropriate. They are three faces of treating a generative system as an exchange ledger.

6. Implications: relational data and evidence-informed decisions

If the foregoing is right, it bears directly on the responsible utilization of intimate-relationship data and on evidence-informed decision-making about relationships. Two cautions follow.

First, instrumentation tends to import the exchange grammar by default: to measure is, often, to ledger. A relational data system that counts gifts, chores, or messages as balanced inputs risks operationalizing the very alienation this paper diagnoses—reshaping the practice in the image of its metric. Second, and constructively, a generative design would treat recognition as a first-class flow, surface under-recognized contributions (addressing the testimonial deficit), and supply shared vocabulary for naming affective labor (addressing the hermeneutical gap), measuring recirculation rather than balance. Whether such systems help or harm is therefore an empirical and ethical question about which grammar they encode, not a question about data per se.

7. Conclusion

The gift in intimate relationships sits at the seam between two grammars of value. Where the exchange grammar dominates, the gift is alienated from its expressive meaning, care is rendered epistemically illegible, and the circulation of relational value is mis-described as bilateral settlement. A generative–relational account, building on Eglash’s generative justice and a relational ontology of the gift, reframes all three: justice in intimate giving is a matter of whether generated value—material, affective, and recognitional—recirculates within and back to the relation that produces it. The task ahead is to formalize recirculation precisely and to design relational infrastructures that encode the generative grammar rather than the extractive one.

Acknowledgments

I thank Ron Eglash for correspondence on generative justice and recursive depth, on which Section 5 builds.

References

  • Becker, G. S. (1981). A Treatise on the Family. Harvard University Press.
  • Eglash, R. (2016). An introduction to generative justice. Teknokultura, 13(2), 369–404.
  • Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press.
  • Godelier, M. (1999). The Enigma of the Gift. University of Chicago Press.
  • Mauss, M. (1925/1990). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. (W. D. Halls, Trans.). W. W. Norton.

中文

亲密关系中的馈赠：异化、认知不正义，以及一种生成—关系性的正义理论

Wanhong[^aff-zh]

2026年6月5日

工作草稿 —— 未经许可请勿引用

[^aff-zh]: Serendipitech Inc. / Serendip Commons Society。通讯：[email]。供 SSRN 工作论文系列之草稿。欢迎评论。

摘要

馈赠常被描述为爱的母语：一种表达形式，其意义存在于它所展演的关系之中，而非所交换之物本身。然而，一旦馈赠被透过经济学的标准语法——互惠、估值、隐性债务——来解读，它的表达性内容便有被工具理性所取代的风险。本文将这一风险展开为一个异化（alienation）的问题：即把爱的语言转换为一桩可计算的交易。我主张，还有另外两重伤害叠加于第一重之上。其一是认知不正义（epistemic injustice, Fricker, 2007）：某些给予的形式，尤其是亲密关系中典型的无偿情感劳动，在系统层面上根本就未被承认为”贡献”。其二是一种分配性伤害：线性的交换模型错误地描述了价值在持续关系中实际循环的方式。借助 Ron Eglash 的生成正义（generative justice）论述，以及对馈赠的一种关系本体论解读，我提出：亲密关系中馈赠的循环，更适合被建模为”生成性地产出的价值在创造它的网络中的再循环”，而非”以债务清结为终点的双边交换”。文末，我将勾勒其对于亲密关系数据的循证决策、以及对于关系性基础设施设计的若干启示。

目录

  • 1 引言
  • 2 馈赠：在表达与交换之间
  • 3 异化：当爱的语言被重新编码为交易
    • 3.1 机制
    • 3.2 为何是”异化”而非仅仅”商品化”
  • 4 认知不正义与关怀的不可读性
  • 5 从交换走向生成正义
    • 5.1 Eglash 的生成正义
    • 5.2 对馈赠循环的一种关系本体论解读
    • 5.3 这一视角消解了什么
  • 6 启示：关系性数据与循证决策
  • 7 结论
  • 致谢

1. 引言

本文从一个平常的观察与一个令人不安的观察出发。平常的观察是：在亲密关系之中，馈赠主要并不是资源的转移；它们是言说。一份馈赠诉说着某种东西——关注、承认、关怀、承诺——这种东西无法被还原为所赠之物的市场价值。令人不安的观察则是：一旦我们试图去核算馈赠——为之估值、追踪谁欠谁、追问某次交换是否公平——我们便会动用经济学的词汇，而这套词汇往往会覆写它本应描述的那种表达性内容。

我把这种覆写称为异化（alienation），其含义改造自但并不等同于它的经典用法：当一个表达性行为被重新编码进工具性的语域之后，它便与自身的意义相疏离。本文的核心主张是：馈赠的异化并非单一的伤害，而是三股交织的伤害：

(i) 表达性异化。 作为爱之语言的馈赠，被作为交易的馈赠所取代（第 3 节）。

(ii) 认知不正义。 某些给予的形式不仅被错误估值，更是作为贡献而被变得不可读，由此产生系统性的可信度与承认赤字（第 4 节）。

(iii) 分配性的错误描述。 线性交换模型错误地再现了价值在持续关系中的循环方式，这促使我们转向一种建立在生成正义之上的替代方案（第 5 节）。

第 2—5 节展开论证；第 6 节引出对关系性数据之负责任使用以及循证决策的启示；第 7 节作结。

2. 馈赠：在表达与交换之间

关于馈赠的人类学文献（Mauss, 1925; Godelier, 1999）长期以来一直抗拒把给予同化为以物易物。一份馈赠承载着给予者的某种东西；它设立一种关系，而非了结一种关系。与之相反，经济学家的本能则是去还原出一桩潜在的交换：每一份馈赠都被解读为一笔互惠交易的一条腿，附带一个隐性的价格与一份隐性的回报时间表（Becker, 1981）。这两种解读并不只是彼此对立的描述；它们是关于”馈赠究竟是什么”的彼此对立的本体论。

两种语法。 让我们为它们命名。在交换语法之下，一份馈赠 $g$ 是一笔带有价值 $v(g)$ 的转移，并进入一本账簿；公平是账簿在时间上是否平衡的属性。在表达语法之下，一份馈赠则是一个符号，其意义由它所指向的关系所构成；”价值”不是承载于物之上的标量，而是关系性行为的属性。问题在于，这两种语法在权力上并不对称。交换语法是可计算的、可审计的、并得到制度支持的；表达语法则不然。当两者相遇时，可计算的那一方往往会胜出——并非因为它更真，而是因为它更可操作。

3. 异化：当爱的语言被重新编码为交易

3.1 机制

这里所说的异化，是一种带有方向性偏倚的翻译失败。要让一份馈赠对各类机构变得可读——税务机关、婚姻纠纷中的法院，乃至伴侣自己事后的回溯性核算——它就必须被译入交换语法。但这种翻译是有损的，而且损失并非随机：留存下来的是可计算的残渣（谁给了什么、值多少钱），而丧失掉的，恰恰是那使该行为成为馈赠而非支付的表达性内容。在反复的循环之中，伴侣们可能开始透过这套幸存的语域来体验自己的给予，形成一个反馈回路：那本应只是记录实践的描述，反过来重塑了它所记录的实践。

3.2 为何是”异化”而非仅仅”商品化”

商品化指的是一个物品进入市场流通。而此处所用的异化更为具体：它是一个表达性行为与其作者所意图的意义之间的疏离。一份馈赠可以是完全去商品化的（手工制作、无价、永不出售），却依然是被异化的——只要它最终主要被体验为一场互惠义务游戏中的一步棋。其所伤害的是意义，而非市场的边界。

4. 认知不正义与关怀的不可读性

Fricker（2007）区分了证言性（testimonial）不正义——由于偏见而被压低的可信度判断——与诠释性（hermeneutical）不正义——共享的诠释资源中的某种空缺，使得某些经验即便对亲历者自身也变得不可理解。两者都关乎馈赠。

证言性。 当一方报告说，某种持续的、并不光鲜的给予形式（情感上的随时在场、未雨绸缪的关怀、对共同生活的经营）是一种贡献时，这一报告可能会被打折扣，因为该贡献并不符合被公认的”生产性”投入的范本。这一可信度赤字所附着的，不是说话者的诚实，而是他们试图主张的那一类事物。

诠释性。 更深一层，可资利用的诠释资源——深受交换语法的塑造——可能根本就缺乏把情感劳动登记为一种生成性贡献所需的概念。给予者于是遭受双重伤害：贡献未被承认，而且给予者也缺乏用以命名这一不公的词汇。这便是发生在亲密领域之中的诠释性不正义，并且它与第 3 节的表达性异化紧密耦合：那同一套贫乏的语法，既把馈赠重新编码为交易，也使关怀作为贡献而变得不可读。

5. 从交换走向生成正义

5.1 Eglash 的生成正义

Eglash 关于生成正义的论述（Eglash, 2016）重构了那个核心的正义问题。分配正义追问的是：一份已然被生产出来的剩余应当如何被分割；生成正义追问的则是：价值是否被允许循环回到、并保留于那个生成它的关系网络之中，而非被从中抽取并异化出去。它对递归深度的强调——价值重新进入生产它的回路，并在其中复利累积——提供了一种循环模型，它既非线性交换，亦非施舍。

5.2 对馈赠循环的一种关系本体论解读

我建议透过这一视角来解读亲密关系中的馈赠。在一种关系本体论之下，相关的单位不是那个使效用最大化的孤立个体，而是关系本身作为一个价值生成系统。在此视角下，馈赠并不是在预先成形的各方之间的转移，而是关系之自我生产中的一个个时刻。于是，正义所关切的便是：被生成的价值（包括情感性价值与承认性价值）是否在关系内部、并向其贡献者再循环，抑或被抽取、不被承认、并丧失殆尽——这正是第 3—4 节所诊断出的那一模式。

一个最简形式化（草图）。 设一段关系为一个有向图，其中节点是参与者，而一次馈赠事件沿一条边贡献价值。交换语法评估的是边平衡：把正义视为每个节点上的 $\sum_{\text{in}} v \approx \sum_{\text{out}} v$。而生成性的解读所评估的则是再循环深度：被生成的价值在多个周期之中重新进入并保留于关系网络内部的比例，其中承认被当作其自身意义上的一种价值流，而非一种残项。我把更完整的形式化处理留待未来工作，此处标举它，仅为精确地标出这一对照：平衡对再循环，清结对生成。

5.3 这一视角消解了什么

若以生成性的方式来读，三重伤害便彼此对齐了。表达性异化是对关系中意义的抽取；认知不正义是未能把一类贡献承认为价值流；分配性的错误描述则是在本应使用再循环度量之处，错用了边平衡度量。它们是把一个生成系统当作交换账簿来对待的三副面孔。

6. 启示：关系性数据与循证决策

如果以上所言不谬，它便直接关乎对亲密关系数据的负责任使用，以及关于关系的循证决策。由此可引出两点告诫。

其一，工具化（instrumentation）往往会默认地引入交换语法：去度量，往往就是去记账。一个把馈赠、家务或消息计为彼此平衡之投入的关系数据系统，便有把本文所诊断的那种异化付诸运作之虞——它会以其度量指标的形象去重塑实践本身。其二，从建设性的一面看，一种生成性的设计将会把承认当作一等的价值流来对待，会让那些未被充分承认的贡献浮现出来（以应对证言性赤字），并提供用以命名情感劳动的共享词汇（以应对诠释性空缺），所度量的是再循环而非平衡。因此，这类系统究竟是有益还是有害，乃是一个关于它们编码了哪一种语法的经验性与伦理性问题，而非一个关于数据本身的问题。

7. 结论

亲密关系中的馈赠，恰处于两种价值语法的接缝之上。在交换语法占据主导之处，馈赠便与其表达性意义相异化，关怀在认知上被变得不可读，关系性价值的循环也被错误地描述为双边的清结。一种生成—关系性的论述，建立在 Eglash 的生成正义与馈赠的关系本体论之上，重构了这全部三者：亲密给予中的正义，是一个关乎被生成的价值——物质性的、情感性的与承认性的——是否在那个生产它的关系内部、并向其再循环的问题。前方的任务，是精确地把再循环形式化，并去设计那些编码生成性语法、而非抽取性语法的关系性基础设施。

致谢

我感谢 Ron Eglash 就生成正义与递归深度所作的通信，第 5 节正是建立于其上。

参考文献

  • Becker, G. S. (1981). A Treatise on the Family. Harvard University Press.
  • Eglash, R. (2016). An introduction to generative justice. Teknokultura, 13(2), 369–404.
  • Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press.
  • Godelier, M. (1999). The Enigma of the Gift. University of Chicago Press.
  • Mauss, M. (1925/1990). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. (W. D. Halls, Trans.). W. W. Norton.