Reciprocity Gift Exchange and the Market Questions by

Reciprocity, Gift Exchange, and the Market Questions by Casimir Jean Francois and Zachary Valentino

Kinds of Exchanges: Who Owes What to Whom?

Generalized Reciprocity • Studies of hunter-gatherers: • Sharing enforced and boasting severely punished, example of Ju/’hoansi “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari”

Expected Reciprocity: Kula Ring in Trobriand Islands, by Malinowski • Each trading partner is linked to two others: one to whom he gives a cowry shell necklace (soulava) in exchange for an armband (mwali) and the other to whom he gives an armband in exchange for a necklace • The path of the gifts are remembered • “To possess is great, but to possess is to give” = the value of the object is in its circulation

Kula Ring • The necklaces and armbands are not functional as objects • However, this kind of exchange allowed for trust between strangers: it was accompanied by the trading of items that are useful, such as canoes, axe blades, pottery, pigs, and other items • The Kula trade allows for friendly relations to be established and for the interisland exchange of goods that are not locally available

Kinds of Exchanges

Redistribution • Goods are collected from all members of the group and then redistributed in a different way • The center where the goods are collected and redistributed reveals political power • Example in our society: taxation

Potlatch of the Northwest Coast • A feast and gift-giving ceremony in a chief distributed many kinds of wealth (blankets, cooking pots, wooden boxes, boats, fish oil, flour) to his people and those of other villages as a sign of prestige and wealth • The more elaborate the gift giving, the more status and rank the chief gained • Note: wealth did not create status, but one’s capacity for generosity • Linked local groups into a regional alliance • Allowed key community resources of food and clothing to be broadly distributed Items lined up for a potlatch British Columbia, 1865

Potlatch of the Northwest Coast • The boasting became inflated when Native Americans began to participate in the cash economy of the Canadians (trading fur for blankets, for instance), after 1849 • Population declined substantially because of diseases Europeans brought so many of the traditional sponsors (chiefs and their families) were dead • Everyone could now give a potlatch • Very intense competition for prestige • Wealth converted into prestige through the destruction of wealth items like blankets, pieces of copper, houses, sewing machines (burned or buried at sea) Kwakiutl copper shield

Kinds of Exchanges

The Market Economy • Goods and services are bought and sold at a determined price • Impersonal exchange; no social bonding • Occurs without regard to the social position of participants • Participants are assumed to be interested in maximizing material gain • At the same time, the market economy never fully dominates • Forms of reciprocity continue to underlie the market economy

Kinds of Exchanges

What kinds of exchanges exist among the Maisin? Examples?

Question by Annie Huynh

How does reciprocity affect conflict and its resolution, (pp. 145 ff)?

How does reciprocity affect who and how one becomes a big man (p. 154)?

How does reciprocity affect the figure of the sorcerer (p. 128)? • Question by Violeta Daninska

How does reciprocity affect relations with outsiders (p. 200)?

Gifts instead of War • To make friends with strangers • To resolve interpersonal conflicts (gifts to suspected sorcerers, p. 128) • But lack of gifting can create enemies, or at least suspicion

Tapa as the central symbol of the Maisin and of gifts among the Maisin • used in the significant rituals of marriage and death • Is there a central symbol in the US?

“Kuo Hina E Hiapo: The Mulberry is White and Ready for Harvest” (2001) Note: Tonga, not PNG

What happens when tapa cloth, an object of gift exchange, becomes sold in a global market?

Forms of globalization in Ancestral Lines

Is this an example of: • • Clash of civilizations? Mc. Donaldization? Localization? Hybridization?

Survival of the Maisin?

An Update • Many questions about today • Question by Anon https: //ramumine. wordpress. com/2014/12/ 22/collingwood-bay-communities-take-onthreat-of-mining-after-sabl-land-grabvictory/

What can the Maisin teach us (if anything)?