In Chapter 5, we set out an eight-fold typology of blood donors ranging from the paid donor at one extreme, primarily motivated to donate by the prospect of a cash payment, to the voluntary community donor at the other. This classification told us something about the reasons why people in the aggregate give or supply blood. Subsequently, we applied this typology to the donor populations in the United States and Britain and, in a limited way, Japan.

What has emerged from the discussion of this material is that, looked at as a whole, different social and political structures and value systems strongly determine the typology distributions. We found, for example, very great differences in the proportions of donors of varying types in the United States, Japan and Britain. These differences cannot be explained simply in terms of administrative and organisational structures of blood supply systems and patterns of medical care services. The casual factors are more fundamental than that; ultimately, explanations – and, admittedly, explanations that can never be more than partial – have to be sought in the history, the values and the political ideas of each society. Differences in the roles played by social gift-relationships cannot be accounted for in technical, organisational or purely economic terms.

Yet some political scientists and sociologists have developed the thesis described as ‘the end of ideology’. It has been argued that large-scale industrialised societies, increasingly ruled by technocracy and the demands of a mass consumption market, are tending to become more and more alike – to converge – in terms of their dominant value systems and political ideologies. This study throws doubt on such theories. There is no indication of convergence in the pattern of blood donor gift-relationships when comparisons are made between the United States and Britain. It suggests that, not for the first time in the social sciences, these theories have been formulated on the basis of indicators that can be measured and quantified – as in the acquisition, possession and distribution of material goods. Social indicators embodying transactions and relationships in non-economic categories are therefore excluded. What counts is what is economically countable.