Friday, October 26, 2001

The Gift Must Always Move

Barbara J. Pescan

Trobriand Islanders of the South Pacific have an elaborate ritual way of passing gifts of necklaces and arm bands made of shells. The shells themselves are nicely wrought into the items that become the gifts. But, it isn’t the intrinsic value of the item that gives the gift its importance. It is the ceremony attached to how the gifts move from island to island, and from person to person.

It is important how the next receiver is chosen to receive the gift. It should be someone who has not had the necklace or arm band for some time. Arm bands get passed one way around the islands, and necklaces move in a circle in the opposite direction. These objects are carried from island to island by canoe. And the journeys take much preparation and take several days and cover hundreds of miles.

The current owner carefully plans when and how he will give the object to someone else. The one who is to receive the object waits and wonders when it will come. The whole thing goes on with great decorum and with particular valences attached to how long one person keeps one of these necklaces before passing it on. People’s reputations are made by how they participate in the giving and receiving ritual. It may take two to ten years for the object to make the rounds of the islands.

The important thing with the Trobriand people is that to possess is to give—“someone who owns a thing is expected to share it, to distribute it, to be its trustee and dispenser.”

In the world of the gift, you not only can have your cake and eat it, too; you can’t have your cake unless you eat it, that is, unless you distribute it, consume it, use it up by giving it to someone else.

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The Gift - Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property

A book review by Eric Nehrlich 

After reading Trickster Makes This World, I went back and picked up this earlier book by Lewis Hyde. Again, his mastery of mythology amazes me. I used to read myths and think they were pretty stupid stories. Hyde makes them come alive, expressing the philosophies and beliefs of their tellers.

In this case, he follows the culture of the gift, which will have its value disappear if not passed on. However, if given away freely, it will come back to reward the giver many times over. He brings in many myths to support this, such as the several where a poor peasant gives away their last bit of bread to someone in need, only to have it turn out that the recipient was a god or a king in disguise, who then rewards the peasant for their generosity.

Hyde studies this culture from the viewpoint of an artist trying to find his niche in the modern world, where everything has a price. In a ultra-capitalist economy, how does one value art? By exploring the gift economy, Hyde demonstrates that there are areas where the market economy does not apply, where the gift economy must take precedence. Again, he supports his viewpoint with several myths where the greedy merchant tries to buy something that must be given away, and ends up with rocks instead of gold.

Eric Nehrlich's WWW home page / nehrlich@alum.mit.edu

 

 The Gift of Generalized Exchange

Ira Nayman

In times of hyper-capitalism, where everything is naturally seen as for sale, the idea that anybody does anything without expectation of financial compensation is considered absurd. Where examples exist, they are first explained away, then, if possible, brought into the market economy. To the extent that exchange happens outside the money economy, it detracts from economic efficiency (and the carefully calculated numbers of economists). The Internet is an example of this problem. Many writers, graphic artists, designers, programmers and others create things that are shared without money changing hands. What motivates them to do this?

Ego, say traditional economists: they can show off their intellectual abilities, or, perhaps, that they are good people who know how to share. Not so, say others: the Internet is an example of a gift economy. Howard Rheingold, in Virtual Communities, was one of the first writers to make the connection between digital communications and gift exchange; since then, it has been repeated in the popular press so often, the connection is taken for granted. We freely circulate information on the Internet in the expectation that we will benefit from the information freely circulated by others.

There's only one problem: gift economies don't work this way. In traditional anthropological studies, gifts are given on ceremonial occasions to members of one's tribe, or the tribe of somebody else to which one wants to affiliate. At weddings, to take one example, there can be a complex arrangement of gift giving between various members of the two families involved. Although somewhat altered, gift giving at occasions such as weddings and birthdays remains a common practice.

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