Editing Gift economy (section)

== Principles of gift exchange ==
According to anthropologist Jonathan Parry, discussion on the nature of gifts, and of a separate sphere of gift exchange that would constitute an economic system, has been plagued by the [[Ethnocentrism|ethnocentric]] use of a modern, western, market society-based conception of the gift applied as if it were a universal across culture and time. However, he argues that anthropologists, through analysis of a variety of cultural and historical forms of exchange, have established that no universal practice exists.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Parry |first=Jonathan |title=The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift' |journal=Man |year=1986 |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=453–473 |doi=10.2307/2803096|jstor=2803096 |s2cid=152071807 }}</ref> Similarly, the idea of a ''pure gift'' is "most likely to arise in highly differentiated societies with an advanced division of labour and a significant commercial sector" and need to be distinguished from non-market "prestations".<ref name="Parry 1986 467">{{cite journal |last=Parry |first=Jonathan |title=The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift' |journal=Man |year=1986 |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=467 |doi=10.2307/2803096|jstor=2803096 |s2cid=152071807 }}</ref> According to Weiner, to speak of a gift economy in a non-market society is to ignore the distinctive features of their exchange relationships, as the early classic debate between [[Bronislaw Malinowski]] and [[Marcel Mauss]] demonstrated.<ref name="Mauss">{{cite book |last=Mauss |first=Marcel |title=The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies |year=1970 |publisher=Cohen & West |location=London}}</ref><ref name="Weiner">{{cite book |last=Weiner |first=Annette |title=Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-while-Giving |year=1992 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley}}</ref> Gift exchange is frequently "[[Embeddedness|embedded]]" in political, kin, or religious institutions, and therefore does not constitute an ''economic'' system per se.<ref name="gregory">{{cite book |last=Gregory |first=Chris |title=Gifts and Commodities |year=1982 |publisher=Academic Press |location=London |pages=6–9}}</ref>

===Property and alienability===
Gift-giving is a form of transfer of property rights over particular objects. The nature of those property rights varies from society to society, from culture to culture. They are not universal. The nature of gift-giving is thus altered by the type of property regime in place.<ref name="hann">{{cite book |last=Hann |first=C.M. |title=Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition |year=1998 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |pages=4}}</ref>

Property is not a thing, but a relationship amongst people about things.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Sider |first=Gerald M. |title=The Ties That Bind: Culture and Agriculture, Property and Propriety in the Newfoundland Village Fishery |journal=Social History |year=1980 |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=2–3, 17 |doi=10.1080/03071028008567469|doi-access=free }}</ref> It is a social relationship that governs the conduct of people with respect to the use and disposition of things. Anthropologists analyze these relationships in terms of a variety of actors' (individual or corporate) [[bundle of rights]] over objects.<ref name="hann" /> An example is the current debates around [[intellectual property right]]s.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Levitt |first=Leon |title=On property, Intellectual Property, the Culture of Property, and Software Pirating |journal=Anthropology of Work Review |year=1987 |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=7–9 |doi=10.1525/awr.1987.8.1.7}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Friedman |first=Jonathan |journal=American Ethnologist |year=1999 |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=1001–1002 |doi=10.1525/ae.1999.26.4.1001 |title=The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Aragon |first=Lorraine |author2=James Leach |title=Arts and Owners: Intellectual property law and the politics of scale in Indonesian Arts |journal=American Ethnologist |year=2008 |volume=35 |issue=4 |pages=607–631 |doi=10.1111/j.1548-1425.2008.00101.x}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Coombe |first=Rosemary J. |title=Cultural and Intellectual Properties: Occupying the Colonial Imagination |journal=PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review |year=1993 |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=8–15 |doi=10.1525/pol.1993.16.1.8}}</ref> Take a purchased book over which the author retains a copyright. Although the book is a commodity, bought and sold, it has not been completely alienated from its creator, who maintains a hold over it; the owner of the book is limited in what he can do with the book by the rights of the creator.<ref>{{cite book |last=Chris Hann |first=Keith Hart |title=Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique |year=2011 |publisher=Polity Press |location=Cambridge |page=158}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Strangelove |first=Michael |title=The Empire of Mind: Digital Piracy and the Anti-Capitalist Movement |year=2005 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |location=Toronto |pages=92–96}}</ref> Weiner has argued that the ability to give while retaining a right to the gift/commodity is a critical feature of the gifting cultures described by Malinowski and Mauss, and explains, for example, why some gifts such as Kula valuables return to their original owners after an incredible journey around the Trobriand islands. The gifts given in Kula exchange still remain, in some respects, the property of the giver.<ref name="Weiner" />

In the example used above, copyright is one of those bundled rights that regulate the use and disposition of a book. Gift-giving in many societies is complicated because private property owned by an individual may be quite limited in scope (see {{format link|#The commons}} below).<ref name="hann" /> Productive resources, such as land, may be held by members of a corporate group (such as a lineage), but only some members of that group may have [[Use (law)|use rights]]. When many people hold rights over the same objects, gifting has very different implications than the gifting of private property; only some of the rights in that object may be transferred, leaving that object still tied to its corporate owners. As such, these types of objects are [[inalienable possessions]], simultaneously kept while given.<ref name="Weiner" />

===Gift versus prestation===
[[File:Kula bracelet.jpg|thumbnail|A Kula necklace, with its distinctive red shell-disc beads, from the Trobriand Islands]]
Malinowski's study of the [[Kula ring]]<ref>{{cite book |last=Malinowski |first=Bronislaw |title=Argonauts of the Western Pacific : an account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea |year=1984 |orig-year=1922 |publisher=Waveland Press |location=Prospect Heights, Ill.}}</ref> became the subject of debate with the French anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, author of "[[The Gift (Mauss book)|The Gift]]" ("Essai sur le don", 1925).<ref name="Mauss" /> Parry argued that Malinowski emphasized the exchange of goods between ''individuals'', and their selfish motives for gifting: they expected a return of equal or greater value. Malinowski argued that [[Reciprocity (cultural anthropology)|reciprocity]] is an implicit part of gifting, that there is no gift free of expectation.<ref name="parry">{{cite journal |last=Parry |first=Jonathan |title=The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift' |journal=Man |year=1986 |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=466–469 |doi=10.2307/2803096|jstor=2803096 |s2cid=152071807 }}</ref>

In contrast, Mauss emphasized that the gifts were not between individuals, but between representatives of larger collectives. These gifts were a ''total prestation,'' a service provided out of obligation, like community service.<ref name="Hann, Chris 2011 50">{{cite book |last=Hann, Chris |first=Hart, Keith |title=Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique |year=2011 |publisher=Polity Press |location=Cambridge |page=50}}</ref> They were not alienable commodities to be bought and sold, but, like [[Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom|crown jewels]], embodied the reputation, history and identity of a "corporate kin group", such as a line of kings. Given the stakes, Mauss asked "why anyone would give them away?" His answer was an enigmatic concept, ''the spirit of the gift.'' Parry believes that much of the confusion (and resulting debate) was due to a bad translation. Mauss appeared to be arguing that a return gift is given to maintain the relationship between givers; a failure to return a gift ends the relationship and the promise of any future gifts.

Both Malinowski and Mauss agreed that in non-market societies, where there was no clear institutionalized economic exchange system, gift/prestation exchange served economic, kinship, religious and political functions that could not be clearly distinguished from each other, and which mutually influenced the nature of the practice.<ref name="parry" />

===Inalienable possessions===
[[File:Klallam people at Port Townsend.jpg|thumb | right | Watercolor by [[James G. Swan]] depicting the [[Klallam]] people of chief [[Chetzemoka]] at [[Port Townsend]], with one of Chetzemoka's wives distributing [[potlatch]]]]
The concept of total prestations was further developed by Annette Weiner, who revisited Malinowski's fieldsite in the Trobriand Islands. Her critique was twofold. First, Trobriand Island society is matrilineal, and women hold much economic and political power, but their exchanges were ignored by Malinowski. Secondly, she developed Mauss' argument about reciprocity and the "spirit of the gift" in terms of "[[inalienable possessions]]: the paradox of keeping while giving".<ref name="Weiner" /> Weiner contrasted moveable goods, which can be exchanged, with immoveable goods that serve to draw the gifts back (in the Trobriand case, male Kula gifts with women's landed property). The goods given on the islands are so linked to particular groups that even when given away, they are not truly alienated. Such goods depend on the existence of particular kinds of kinship groups in society.

French anthropologist Maurice Godelier<ref>{{cite book |last=Godelier |first=Maurice |title=The Enigma of the Gift |year=1999 |publisher=Polity Press |location=Cambridge}}</ref> continued this analysis in ''The Enigma of the Gift'' (1999). Albert Schrauwers argued that the kinds of societies used as examples by Weiner and Godelier (including the [[Kula ring]] in the Trobriands, the [[Potlatch]] of the [[indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast]], and the [[Toraja]] of [[South Sulawesi]], [[Indonesia]]) are all characterized by ranked aristocratic kin groups that fit [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]]' model of ''House Societies'' (where ''house'' refers to both noble lineage and their landed estate). Total prestations are given to preserve landed estates identified with particular kin groups and maintain their place in a ranked society.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Schrauwers |first=Albert |title=H(h)ouses, E(e)states and class: On the importance of capitals in central Sulawesi |journal=Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde |year=2004 |volume=160 |issue=1 |pages=72–94 |doi=10.1163/22134379-90003735|s2cid=128968473 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

===Reciprocity and the spirit of the gift===
[[Chris Gregory]] argued that [[Reciprocity (cultural anthropology)|reciprocity]] is a dyadic exchange relationship that we characterize, imprecisely, as gift-giving. Gregory argued that one gives gifts to friends and potential enemies in order to establish a relationship, by placing them in debt. He also claimed that in order for such a relationship to persist, there must be a time lag between the gift and counter-gift; one or the other partner must always be in debt. Marshall Sahlins gave birthday gifts as an example. They are separated in time so that one partner feels the obligation to make a return gift. To forget the return gift may be enough to end the relationship. Gregory stated that without a relationship of debt, there is no reciprocity, and that this is what distinguishes a gift economy from a ''true'' gift, given with no expectation of return (something Sahlins ''generalised reciprocity;'' see below).<ref>{{cite book |last=Gregory |first=Chris |title=Gifts and Commodities |year=1982 |publisher=Academic Press |location=London |pages=189–194}}</ref>

[[Marshall Sahlins]], an American cultural anthropologist, identified three main types of reciprocity in his book ''Stone Age Economics'' (1972). Gift or ''generalized reciprocity'' is the exchange of goods and services without keeping track of their exact value, but often with the expectation that their value will balance out over time. ''Balanced or Symmetrical reciprocity'' occurs when someone gives to someone else, expecting a fair and tangible return at a specified amount, time, and place. Market or ''negative reciprocity'' is the exchange of goods and services where each party intends to profit from the exchange, often at the expense of the other. Gift economies, or generalized reciprocity, occurred within closely knit kin groups, and the more distant the exchange partner, the more balanced or negative the exchange became.<ref name="Sahlins 1972">{{cite book |last=Sahlins |first=Marshall |author-link=Marshall Sahlins |title=Stone Age Economics |url=https://archive.org/details/stoneageeconomic0000sahl |url-access=registration |publisher=Aldine-Atherton |location=Chicago |year=1972 |isbn=0202010996}}</ref>

===Charity, debt, and the "poison of the gift"===
Jonathan Parry argued that ideologies of the "pure gift" are most likely to arise only in highly differentiated societies with an advanced division of labour and a significant commercial sector" and need to be distinguished from the non-market "prestations" discussed above.<ref name="Parry 1986 467" /> Parry also underscored, using the example of charitable giving of alms in India ([[Dāna]]), that the "pure gift" of alms given with no expectation of return could be "poisonous". That is, the gift of alms embodying the sins of the giver, when given to ritually pure priests, saddled these priests with impurities of which they could not cleanse themselves. "Pure gifts", given without a return, can place recipients in debt, and hence in dependent status: the poison of the gift.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Parry |first=Jonathan |title=The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift' |journal=Man |year=1986 |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=463–467 |doi=10.2307/2803096|jstor=2803096 |s2cid=152071807 }}</ref> [[David Graeber]] points out that no reciprocity is expected between unequals: if you make a gift of a dollar to a beggar, he will not give it back the next time you meet. More than likely, he will ask for more, to the detriment of his status.<ref>{{cite book |last=Graeber |first=David |title=Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The false coin of our own dreams |year=2001 |publisher=Palgrave |location=New York |page=225}}</ref> Many who are forced by circumstances to accept charity feel stigmatized. In the [[Moka exchange]] system of Papua New Guinea, where gift givers become political "big men", those who are in their debt and unable to repay with "interest" are referred to as "rubbish men".

The French writer [[Georges Bataille]], in ''La part Maudite'', uses Mauss's argument in order to construct a theory of economy: the structure of gift is the presupposition for all possible economy. Bataille is particularly interested in the potlatch as described by Mauss, and claims that its agonistic character obliges the receiver to confirm their own subjection. Thus gifting embodies the Hegelian dipole of master and slave within the act.

===Spheres of exchange and "economic systems"===
{{Economic systems sidebar |By coordination}}
The relationship of new market exchange systems to indigenous non-market exchange remained a perplexing question for anthropologists. [[Paul Bohannan]] argued that the Tiv of Nigeria had three [[spheres of exchange]], and that only certain kinds of goods could be exchanged in each sphere; each sphere had its own form of special-purpose money. However, the market and universal money allowed goods to be traded between spheres and thus damaged established social relationships.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Bohannan |first=Paul |s2cid=154892567 |title=The Impact of money on an African subsistence economy |journal=The Journal of Economic History |year=1959 |volume=19 |issue=4 |pages=491–503 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700085946}}</ref> Jonathan Parry and [[Maurice Bloch]] argued in "Money and the Morality of Exchange" (1989), that the "transactional order" through which long-term social reproduction of the family occurs has to be preserved as separate from short-term market relations.<ref>{{cite book |last=Parry |first=Jonathan |title=Money and the Morality of Exchange |year=1989 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |pages=28–30 |author-link=Introduction: Money and the Morality of Exchange |author2=Maurice Bloch}}</ref> It is the long-term social reproduction of the family that is sacralized by religious rituals such baptisms, weddings and funerals, and characterized by gifting.

In such situations where gift-giving and market exchange were intersecting for the first time, some anthropologists contrasted them as polar opposites. This opposition was classically expressed by Chris Gregory in his book "Gifts and Commodities" (1982). Gregory argued that:
{{Blockquote| Commodity exchange is an exchange of ''alienable'' objects between people who are in a state of reciprocal ''independence'' that establishes a ''quantitative'' relationship between the ''objects'' exchanged ... Gift exchange is an exchange of ''inalienable'' objects between people who are in a state of reciprocal ''dependence'' that establishes a ''qualitative'' relationship between the ''transactors'' (emphasis added).<ref>{{cite book |last=Gregory |first=Chris |title=Gifts and Commodities |year=1982 |publisher=Academic Press |location=London |pages=100–101}}</ref>}}
Gregory contrasts gift and commodity exchange according to five criteria:<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://haubooks.org/viewbook/gifts-and-commodities/10_ch03 |title=Gifts and Commodities {{!}} Chapter III: Gifts and commodities: Circulation|website=haubooks.org|access-date=2016-12-21}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto;"
|-
! Commodity exchange !! Gift exchange
|-
| immediate exchange || delayed exchange
|-
| alienable goods || inalienable goods
|-
| actors independent || actors dependent
|-
| quantitative relationship || qualitative relationship
|-
| between objects || between people
|}

But other anthropologists refused to see these different "[[Spheres of exchange|exchange spheres]]" as such polar opposites. [[Marilyn Strathern]], writing on a similar area in Papua New Guinea, dismissed the utility of the contrasting setup in "The Gender of the Gift" (1988).<ref>{{cite book |last=Strathern |first=Marilyn |title=The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia |year=1988 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley |pages=143–147}}</ref>
[[File:Wedding rings.jpg|thumbnail|Wedding rings could be considered a commodity, pure gift, or both.]]
Rather than emphasize how particular kinds of objects are either gifts or commodities to be traded in '''restricted''' spheres of exchange, [[Arjun Appadurai]] and others began to look at how objects flowed between these spheres of exchange (i.e. how objects can be converted into gifts and then back into commodities). They refocussed attention away from the character of the human relationships formed through exchange, and placed it on "the social life of things" instead. They examined the strategies by which an object could be "[[commodity pathway diversion|singularized]]" (made unique, special, one-of-a-kind) and so withdrawn from the market. A marriage ceremony that transforms a purchased ring into an irreplaceable family heirloom is one example; the heirloom, in turn, makes a perfect gift. Singularization is the reverse of the seemingly irresistible process of commodification. They thus show how all economies are a constant flow of material objects that enter and leave specific exchange spheres. A similar approach is taken by Nicholas Thomas, who examines the same range of cultures and the anthropologists who write on them, and redirects attention to the "entangled objects" and their roles as both gifts and commodities.<ref>{{cite book |last=Thomas |first=Nicholas |title=Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific |year=1991 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA}}</ref>

===Proscriptions===
Many societies have strong prohibitions against turning gifts into trade or [[Capital (economics)|capital]] goods. Anthropologist Wendy James writes that among the [[Uduk people]] of northeast [[Africa]] there is a strong custom that any gift that crosses subclan boundaries must be consumed rather than invested.<ref name="Lewis Hyde">''Lewis Hyde: The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property'', pg. 18</ref>{{rp|4}} For example, an animal given as a gift must be eaten, not bred. However, as in the example of the Trobriand armbands and necklaces, this "perishing" may not consist of consumption as such, but of the gift moving on. In other societies, it is a matter of giving some other gift, either directly in return or to another party. To keep the gift and not give another in exchange is reprehensible. "In folk tales," [[Lewis Hyde]] remarks, "the person who tries to hold onto a gift usually dies."<ref name="Lewis Hyde" />{{rp|5}}

[[Daniel Everett]], a linguist who studied the small [[Pirahã people|Pirahã tribe]] of hunter-gatherers in Brazil,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Everett |first=Daniel L. |title=Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language |journal=Current Anthropology |date=Aug–Oct 2005 |volume=46 |issue=4 |doi=10.1086/431525 |pages=621–646|hdl=2066/41103 |s2cid=2223235 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> reported that, while they are aware of [[food preservation]] using drying, salting, and so forth, they reserve their use for items bartered outside the tribe. Within the group, when someone has a successful hunt they immediately share the abundance by inviting others to enjoy a feast. Asked about this practice, one hunter laughed and replied, "I store meat in the belly of my brother."<ref>{{cite web |last=Curren |first=Erik |title=Charles Eisenstein wants to devalue your money to save the economy |url=http://transitionvoice.com/2012/08/charles-eisenstein-wants-to-devalue-your-money-to-save-the-economy/ |publisher=Transition Voice |access-date=9 February 2013 |year=2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Eisenstein |first=Charles |title=The Ascent of Humanity |chapter-url=http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter2-7.php |access-date=9 February 2013 |author-link=Charles Eisenstein |chapter=2 |isbn=978-0977622207 |publisher=Pananthea Press |location=Harrisburg, PA |year=2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130207030351/http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter2-7.php |archive-date=2013-02-07 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Carol Stack's ''All Our Kin'' describes both the positive and negative sides of a network of obligation and gratitude effectively constituting a gift economy. Her narrative of [[The Flats, Chicago, Illinois|The Flats]], a poor [[Chicago]] neighborhood, tells in passing the story of two sisters who each came into a small inheritance. One sister hoarded the inheritance and prospered materially for some time, but was alienated from the community. Her marriage broke up, and she integrated herself back into the community largely by giving gifts. The other sister fulfilled the community's expectations, but within six weeks had nothing material to show for the inheritance but a coat and a pair of shoes.<ref name="Lewis Hyde" />{{rp|75–76}}