Grounded in a historical perspective, this essay draws upon 19th-century archival sources, oral histo- ries gathered from over 500 elderly villagers living in over 400 villages scattered throughout the Chiang Mai Valley, and 90 interviews conducted in a single village within the Chiang Mai Valley of northern Thailand. Rather than relegating gift giving to the "ritual construc- tion of small social worldsn (Cheal 1988:16), this essay argues that cross-class, unidirectional forms of giving such as charity may be important in mediating the pro- cesses of hegemony and resistance in the sociopolitical constitution of complex societies.