Jennifer Guzman
ANTH-1010
Dr. Daymon Smith
May 3, 2015
e-Portfolio Project
For this paper, I have chosen to summarize chapter 6 in Graeber’s book Debt, which is
titled, Games with Sex and Death. Graeber begins this chapter by talking about the examination
of conventional economic history. This being, how one person’s life, human life, can be reduced
to that in a type of exchange. In this world, a world of gangster or financiers, deals are made in
ways that are in fact no different than those of the Gunwinggu or Nambikwara, both
indigenous/aboriginal tribes, and have certain aspects that play part in these deals (pertaining to
sex, drugs, music, festivities, displays of food, potential violence and so forth). A more recent
example used to explain this chapter would be in regards to the divorce process that George W.
Bush’s brother, Neil Bush, was undergoing with his wife. It during this divorce process that Bush
released the multiple amounts of infidelities he committed on his wife, of which women in
Thailand and Hong Kong would appear at his hotel room to have sexual relations with him,
especially after important meetings. He wife’s attorney states, “It’s pretty remarkable for a man
to go to a hotel-room and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her.” In
our histories that are told, there are blank spaces, and there a woman who appear almost is if out
of nowhere, without any form of explanation like the women who appeared at Bush’s door.
Graeber refers to these mysterious Thai women on Bush’s door as in debtor, or the
children of those in debt. Graeber regards this of how back in ancient Ireland, female slaves were
in a vast majority, and their importance came to as a function of currency. So during these times,
humans were in fact not only trading others, but also using them as units of accounts. Graeber
poses questions as to why this is. Who were these individuals? How did they get enslaved? Were
they captured in war, sold by parents, or reduced into slavery by debt? Graeber’s response? The
answer would be yes to all. These women during these times were described as “bondmaids”,
which some could interpret as another word for slave. Graeber uses the parable of the ungrateful
servant, where the servant cannot pay for a certain debt, the master of said servant demanded that
the servant sell his wife, children, and all his possessions to repay his debt. There are
cases of slaves owning *property (even other slaves), occupying important offices, and
selling their product. The question that left Graeber wondering was how the mother and children
came into this situation. Given the fact that the servant was the one in debt, not his family in any
certain way, how was his family taken away as if they were sheep or a form of crockery? This
form of practice was very specific in history. It would be easy in include the sex industry into the
equation, seeing as the women who are usually traded for debt go to the hands of the master to be
used or sold. But most women in debt bondage spent their time sewing, cooking, or just being a
servant all around.
Many times in human economics, money was used in the form of arranged marriages.
This isn’t to say the life of a women to be wed off to a strange man can be bought by some coins
or animals, but anthropologists objected this idea. Giving some form of payment to be wed to a
woman is, in anthropologists’ eyes, completely different than if the individual were to buy an ox.
Once the ox is bought, the buyer has no responsibilities to the ox, even though they bought it.
They individual themselves has actually bought the right to dispose of the ox in whatever way
they please. The same could not be said if trying to arrange a marriage between husband and
wife. The husband will have just as many responsibilities towards his wife as she does to him,
which is a way of rearranging relations between people. Graeber states that “the real significance
of the payment concerns the status of the woman’s children: if he’s buying anything, it’s the
right to call her offspring his own.” Another example would be when a Fijian suitor’s family
presents a whales tooth to ask for a woman’s hand in marriage. It could be seen as the man’s
advance payment for using the woman’s womb for fertility, or to seal a contract. But it is an
acknowledgment that one is asking for something so uniquely valuable that payment of any sort
would be impossible. The only way for this type of equal payment would be one woman for
another woman.
Considering that the only acceptable payment that would match one human is another,
this debt would be repaid in different ways. In the Tiv of Central Nigeria, it is insisted that proper
marriage is taken in the form of exchange of sisters. One man would give his sister to another
man for marriage, and the man marries the sister of his brother in law and so forth. Even if a
family were to have an equal number of siblings/sisters, it doesn’t always work out. Graeber
states, “Say I marry your sister but you don't want to marry mine (because, say, you don't like
her, or because she's only five years old) . In that case, you become her "guardian," which means
you can claim the right to dispose of her in marriage to someone else--for instance, someone
whose sister you actually do wish to marry. This system quickly grew into a complex system in
which most important men became guardians of numerous "wards," often scattered over wide
areas; they would swap and trade them and in the process accumulate numerous wives for
themselves, while less-fortunate men were only able to marry late in life, or not at all.” This type
of payment is also in used in the form of blood payments. If a murderer were to kill the member
of someone else’s family and offer them a sum of money for killing that human, the family
would not take it. This is due to the fact that there is no currency amount that can take the place
of a human life, except for another life, particularly of the person who killed the human.
Commercial economies treat humans as forms of something exchangeable and measure
their worth, which becomes an option and can only happen if the humans themselves are ripped
from their social relationships and are bargained by the use of violence.