Plural gifting of singular importance: mass-gifts and sociality among precarious product promoters in eastern Germany

In this article I explore and investigate the concept of 'mass-gifts' (Bird-David and Darr), based on fieldwork in eastern Germany among product promoters in wholesale and retail environments. After introducing mass-gifts, I show how they are employed by promoters for the intended purpose (persuading customers to purchase). However, mass-gifts are also appropriated by these precarious workers to create social networks. In so doing, I argue that they simultaneously recreate the social aesthetic of work in the state socialist era, where factories were a nexus of sociality-in stark reality to the social and economic precariousness faced today by promoters.