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.
145ff)?
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?
McDonaldization?
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)?