Indian Giving
I was browsing my Amazon store (the page where they put suggestions that their algorithm has decided I might like) to clear out the junk, when I came across this odd book: The Gift : Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. With such a strange title, I had no idea what to make of it or how it may have gotten there. Apparently it's connected
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As far as I know, the notion of resiprosity exists in nearly every cultural set in one from or another. In some cultures it tends to be more prominant, like in the Kwakiutl of the Northwest coast. Every so many years a leader of a particular group would amass a large amount of material wealth and then hold a potlatch, where he'd then distribute the wealth amoung the other members of the tribe. The idea is that the potlatch (aside from a display of wealth) would tighten the bonds of the group, as well as serve as an unspoken agreement of aliance and such and so forth, so that when another potlatch is held by another leader, the previous giver would also be included in the reciving of gifts ect.
As far as the use of "tribal" or even just "tribe" goes, it doesn't nessisarily mean a primitave group. The word is typically used in anthropology to signify a specific type of social structure, or you could even say "governmental" structure... that is how the cultural group is organized as far as leadership/membership ect.
Getting back to our own culture we most certainly practice resiprosity, if not in name then in action. But with our culture it really depends on the individual and their cultural subset. For instance, dinner parties. Behind most the idea is, one person/family throws a party, the guests are to arrive (on time) and bring some sort of small gift for the host/hostess, normally a bottle of wine or some other sort of beverage. The idea is, that when one of the guests in-turn hosts their own party, the original host would be invited and would be expected to also bring the host/hostess a gift as well. In this senerio it would be really bad taste to bring them the same bottle of wine as they brought you. Also, in contrast, if you bring a bottle of wine to a party, and the bottle is not drank, it's bad manners to ask for the bottle back.
And this idea spreads to so many other different aspects, not only gift giving for birthdays and christmas, btu also as far as offering to pay for gas if someone drives you somewhere... and such and soforth...
But I need to go and buy groceries now, so I'll leave you be. Hope my ramblings make sense and offer some answers.
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'Some anthropologists question if the idea of resiprosity isn't some sort of inborn human trait or if it's simply born from our culture.'
That's what I was thinking as well.
about the potlach
I wonder if maybe we're looking at kinds of reciprocal customs that we don't do mostly because they aren't practical on such a large scale. When people are organized into relatively small tribes, numbering in maybe the hundreds instead of thousands and millions, it's easier to distribute wealth and circulate gifts. We do similar things on small scales, but when wealthy people in our society say they want to "give something back", they usually invest in something that requires people to come to them (and produces profit). Then again, gifts are excellent political devices, which leaders have always used to secure alliances. I suspect the potlach and pipe examples are this kind of device more than just friendly gift giving.
'As far as the use of "tribal" or even just "tribe" goes, it doesn't nessisarily mean a primitave group.'
Of course, but it's easy to make the connection. I'm thinking of the Discovery Channel's kind of anthropology, which takes tribal people as primitave, even going so far as to use the organization of a social group as a proxy for time. That is to say that people who are "primitive" in the present are assumed to be representative of primitive people in the past. When studying our early hominid ancestors, it's silly to use as a reference some modern hunter-gatherer group, which has its very own distinct culture, except maybe to illustrate some points. This kind of thinking is what connects the two and makes it easy to group them under the category "not us".
on the bottle
The book also quotes social anthropologist Wendy James, "any wealth transferred from one subclan to another, whether animals, grain or money, is in nature a gift, and should be consumed, and not invested for growth". I guess it's similar for the bottle. You're supposed to use it rather than giving it back. The book talks about circulating goats, but it's also acceptable, apparently, to give another instead.
"And this idea spreads to so many other different aspects, not only gift giving for birthdays and christmas, btu also as far as offering to pay for gas if someone drives you somewhere... and such and soforth..."
But maybe we do it for different reasons. I can't speak for the cultures referred to here, but the emphasis always seems to be on giving (probably romanticization), while we often just want something in return, more like compensation than reciprocation. Even so, I can't believe that we're so different in this respect.
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As far as the anthropology of the book goes, alot of it seems to be a bit outdated, at least since most of the copywrite information is coming from the 70's, at that point it was still PC to equate "tribal" with "primitive." In recent years it's become popular to use "primitive" as a discription of a type of lifestyle, that is without the advantage of (and I'm taking liberty here, so I hope you see what I mean) "advanced" technology. That is using traditional methods over modern methods (blowgun vs. gun ect). Though it's hard to find any contemporary culture that would refuse to use advanced mechanical technology, because it seems to be in human nature to do things in the most efficiant way possible (even if it doesn't always work that way).
As far as using "primitive" cultures to observe and obstract the ways our ancestors would have acted isn't as failable as you might think. Human nature is at its core a very primitive thing, thusly it changes very slowly. In such a way, in some circumstances one can make a very sound and solid theory of how an ancient version of a modern culture would have gone about doing something. But it really only works well when you have a living population related (even if distantly) the the ancient culture. For example, archeaologists can make assumptions about how certain types of pottery were made by observing the methods used by contemporary artisans. It might not be an absolute corolation but it is close enough to backwards engineer specific methods. The same is/was also true for different hunting methods of some hunter gather groups in Africa.
Of course this is getting off the topic of gift giving. As far as the difference between reciprocation and compensation there is only a very thin veil of difference, normally one is the cause for the other. As far as smaller groups go (by the way "tribe" normaly refers to groups in their 1000's or so if I remember right I'll have to look) resiprocity seems to be used as a measure to form and reaffirm alliances as well as helping to keep the community together. There isn't normally a time limit on the reciprocation, just an understanding of eventuality. For instance, if a family in the group is struggling for what ever reason, the other members of the group will give things inorder to help the ones in need, with the unspoken understanding that the favor will be returned if/when the tables are turned. By doing so the entire community can maintain solidarity. It's really kind of similar to all the donations people made to the hurrican/earthquake victims. No one was saing "here have this money but you have to give it back again" it was more of a giving in the sense of "I hope someone will be willing to help me as well if I were in the same situation."
Basically it comes down to is how a person is brought up, as far as how important resiprosity is. I had a professor who always refused dinner invitations because he didn't want to feel obligated to return the invitation. But on the flip side, I had another linguistics prof (the one who looked like fin razel) who would invite anyone she ran into to stop by her house on friday evenings for an open door party, just because she liked having people around.
Now, as far as the goats go, I think the writer's view is a little bit simplistic. It really depends on the manner of the gift. If the goats were given to a newlywed couple, then one would understand that the goats would exist to help them establish capital of somesort (sillilary the way a dowary or bride price works), however again the understanding would be there that they would eventually give back to the community whenever possible. Of course the once the situation changes, the meaning of the gift can change as well, if one subclan were throwing an event, if they were given goats, the goats would in all likley hood be given to be included in the festivities.
So it really depends on the stuation and the meaning of the gift itself.
*shrug*
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