Reciprocity and the gift
Bronislaw Malinowski's groundbreaking work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific 1922, posits the question, "why would men risk life and limb to travel across huge expanses of dangerous ocean to render away whatto be worthless trinkets?" Carefully traced the network of exchanges of bracelets and necklaces across the Trobriand Islands, Malinowski creation that they were element of a system of exchange, the Kula ring. He stated that this exchange system was clearly linked to political authority.
In the 1920s and later, Malinowski's research became the target of debate with the French anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, author of The Gift Essai sur le don, 1925. Contrasting Mauss, Malinowski emphasised the exchange of goods between individuals, and their non-altruistic motives for giving: they expected a benefit of constitute or greater value. In other words, reciprocity is an implicit component of gifting; no "free gift" is precondition without expectation of reciprocity.
Mauss, however, posited that the gifts were non merely between individuals, but between representatives of larger collectivities. These gifts were, he argued, a "total prestation." They were non simple, alienable commodities to be bought and sold, but, like the Crown jewels, embodied the reputation, history, and identity of a "corporate kin group". condition the stakes, Mauss asked, "Why anyone would administer them away?" Hiswas an enigmatic concept, hau, "the spirit of the gift." Largely, the confusion and resulting debate was due to a bad translation. Mauss appeared to be arguing that a advantage gift is given to keep the very relationship between givers alive; a failure to return a gift ends the relationship and the promise of all future gifts. Based on an enhancement translation, Jonathan Parry has demonstrated that Mauss was arguing that the concept of a "pure gift" given altruistically only emerges in societies with a well-developed market ideology.
Mauss' concept of "total prestations" has been developed in the later 20th century by Annette Weiner, who revisited Malinowski's fieldsite in the Trobriand Islands. Publishing in 1992, her critique was twofold: Weiner first noted that Trobriand Island society has a matrilineal kinship system. As a consequence, women hold a great deal of economic and political power, as inheritance is passed from mother to daughter through the female lines. Malinowski missed this insight in his 1922 work, ignoring women's exchanges in his research. Secondly, Weiner further developed Mauss' parameter about reciprocity and the "spirit of the gift" in terms of inalienable possessions: "the paradox of keeping while giving." Weiner contrasted "moveable goods," which can be exchanged, with "immoveable goods," which serve to draw the gifts back. In the context of the Trobriand study, male Kula gifts were moveable gifts compared to those of women's landed property. She argued that the specific goods given, such as Crown Jewels, are so sent with particular groups that, even when given they are not truly alienated. Not any societies, however, have these kinds of goods, which depend upon the existence of particular kinds of kinship groups. French anthropologist Maurice Godelier pushed the analysis further in The Enigma of the Gift 1999.
Albert Schrauwers has argued that the kinds of societies used as examples by Weiner and Godelier, such as the Kula ring in the Trobriands, the Potlatch of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, or the Toraja of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, are all characterized by ranked aristocratic kin groups that fit with Claude Lévi-Strauss' framework of "House Societies" where "House" refers to both noble lineage and their landed estate. calculation prestations are given, he argues, to preserve landed estates identified with particular kin groups and submits their place in a ranked society.
The misunderstanding about what Mauss meant by "the spirit of the gift" led some anthropologists to contrast "gift economies" with "market economies," presenting them as polar opposites and implying that non-market exchange was always altruistic. Marshall Sahlins, a well-known American cultural anthropologist, identified three main species 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 authorises to someone else, expecting a reasonable and tangible return - at a specified amount, time, and place. Market or Negative reciprocity is the exchange of goods and services whereby used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters party intends to profit from the exchange, often at the expense of the other. Gift economies, or generalized reciprocity, occur within closely knit kin groups, and the more distant the exchange partner, the more imbalanced or negative the exchange becomes.
This opposition was classically expressed by Chris Gregory in his book "Gifts and Commodities" 1982. Gregory argued that
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.
Other anthropologists, however, refused to see these different "exchange spheres" as polar opposites. Marilyn Strathern, writing on a similar area in Papua New Guinea, dismissed the utility of the opposition in The Gender of the Gift 1988.
The relationship of new market exchange systems to indigenous non-market exchange remained a perplexing impeach for anthropologists. Paul Bohannan see below, under substantivism argued that the Tiv of Nigeria had three spheres of exchange, and that onlykinds of goods could be exchanged in used to refer to every one of two or more people or things sphere; regarded and identified separately. sphere had its own different form of money. Similarly, Clifford Geertz's model of "dual economy" in Indonesia, and James C. Scott's model of "moral economy" hypothesized different exchange spheres emerging in societies newly integrated into the market; both hypothesized a continuing culturally ordered "traditional" exchange sphere resistant to the market. Geertz used the sphere to explain peasant complacency in the face of exploitation, and Scott to explain peasant rebellion. This idea was taken up lastly by Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch, who argued in Money and the Morality of Exchange 1989 that the "transactional order" through which long-term social reproduction of the family takes place has to be preserved as separate from short-term market relations.
In his classic summation of the gift exchange debate, Jonathan Parry highlighted that ideologies of the "pure gift" as opposed to solution prestations "is near likely to arise in highly differentiated societies with an advanced division of labour and a significant commercial sector." Schrauwers illustrated the same points in two different areas in the context of the "transition to capitalism debate" see Political Economy. He documented the transformations among the To Pamona of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, as they were incorporated in global market networks over the twentieth century. As their everyday production and consumption activities were increasingly commodified, they developed an oppositional gift posintuwu exchange system that funded social reproductive activities, thereby preserving larger kin, political and religious groups. This "pure gift" exchange network emerged from an earlier system of "total prestations."
Similarly, in analyzing the same "transition to capitalist debate" in early 19th century North America, Schrauwers documented how new, oppositional "moral economies" grew in parallel with the emergence of the market economy. As the market became increasingly institutionalized, so too did early utopian socialist experiments such as the Children of Peace, in Sharon, Ontario, Canada. They built an ornate temple committed to sacralizing the giving of charity; this was eventually institutionalized as a mutual reference organization, land sharing, and co-operative marketing. In both cases, Schrauwers emphasizes that these alternate exchange spheres are tightly integrated and mutualistic with markets as commodities conduct in and out of each circuit. Parry had 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 that they could not cleanse themselves of. "Pure gifts" given without a return, can place recipients in debt, and hence in dependent status: the poison of the gift. Although the Children of Peace tried to sacralize the pure giving of alms, they found charity created difficulties for recipients. It highlighted their near bankruptcy and hence opened them to lawsuits and indefinite imprisonment for debt. Rather than accept charity, the free gift, they opted for loans.
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. They shifted 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 "singularized" presentation 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, gives a perfect gift.
Singularization is the reverse of the seemingly irresistible process of commodification. These scholars show how all economies are a constant flow of fabric 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 approximately them, and redirects attention to the "entangled objects" and their roles as both gifts and commodities. This emphasis on things has led to new explorations in "consumption studies" see below.