The influence of Marcel Mauss'
study The Gift has largely been
confined to the study of the circulation
of goods and the social
relations in which their transfer is
embedded. One of Mauss' principal
aims, however, was to show
the political importance of gift-giving
in averting the recourse to
violence. In this paper, his
approach to the offering, receiving
and reciprocating of gifts is
used to analyse the phenomenon
of pentimento – the exchange of
confessions for reduced sentences
by terrorists and mafiosi
which has become a central feature
of the effort to combat
organised violence in Italy since
1980.