I. From Production to Exchange

A. Engels: household production, gender inequality due to private property
B. Chayanov: household production governed by kinship, reciprocity and mutuality
C. Scott and Besky: households produce as part of communities based on interdependence, moral economy
D. Legacy of Morgan's evolution: simple ==> complex
E. Franz Boas: "genius of a people"
F. Bronislaw Malinowski: "native's point of view"
G. Switch from production to exchange as means to attack homo economicus and simplicity of non-capitalist societies

 

II. Boas and the potlatch

A. Franz Boas (1858-1942) personal background

1. One of main founders of American anthropology
2. Studied physics, mathematics, and geography in Germany
3. Taught at Clark U and Columbia U
4. Teacher of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead

B. Theory of anthropology

1. Universality of human capacity for logical thought
2. Everyday actions are habitual, reflexive, shaped by culture
3. Study economics to learn about overall values and goals of a society

C. Potlatch, from Chinook: "to feed, to consume"

1. Practiced in Pacific Northwest (US and Canada, Oregon to Alaska) among Kwakiutl, Haida, Tsimshian, and Nootka
2. Potlatches marked: weddings, funerals, house buildings, or a child's passage through certain stages of maturity
3. Involved speeches, dancing, distribution and destruction of property, particularly coppers
4. Intense preparations, sometimes lasting a decade or more
5. Potlatch was competitive, could get antagonistic, violent
6. Interpretations of potlatch

a. Boas: an interest bearing investment of property
b. Benedict: paranoid, megalomaniacal personality type.
c. means of distributing food
d. substitution for warfare
e. religious event
f. social security system

7. Banned in British Columbia in 1880s

a. wanton, immoral: "the parent of numerous vices which eat out the heart of the people. It produces indigence, thriftlessness, and habits of roaming about which prevent home association and is inconsistent with all progress.... [The potlatch is] directly opposed to the inculcation of industriousness or moral habits."
b. Boas defends potlatch

D. Two lessons from Boas' account of the potlatch

1. Challenges homo economicus, utility
2. Challenges subsistence ethos among non-capitalist societies

 

III. Malinowski and the Kula

A. Research in Trobriand Islands, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
B. Recap of kula features

1. Exchanges of necklaces and armshells
2. Permanent trading partners linked by reciprocity, mutuality
3. Objects are non-utilitarian, have histories
4. Trade circuit is complex, intricate
5. Kula is rational in its own context

C. Kula shows:

1. Not everyone is homo economicus
2. Non-capitalist societies aren't just focused on subsistence

D. Boas and Malinowski take cultural, moral approach to economics, inspire substantivists

 

IV. Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) and The Gift (1925)

A. Precursor to The Gift: Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function (1898), written by Mauss and Henri Hubert

1. Why do people give things to gods?
2. Sacrifice = a contract, compels a response from a god

B. Gifts bind people together

1. No such thing as a pure or free gift
2. 3 rules of gifts: give, receive, reciprocate
3. Key question: "What... compels the gift that has been received to be obligatorily reciprocated? What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?" (3)
4. The hau: the spirit of the gift

C. Mauss's vision of non-capitalist societies

1. Rational on own terms
2. Produce elaborate items
3. Organize complicated cycles of exchange
4. Unlike capitalists, recognize links between people, things, and other people: "Thus one section of humanity, comparatively rich, hard-working, and creating considerable surpluses, has known how to, and still does know how to, exchange things of great value, under different forms and for reasons different from those with which we are familiar" (33).

D. Gift as total social fact: "all kinds of institutions are given expression at one and the same time -- religious, juridical, and moral, which relate to both politics and the family" (3)
E. Mauss uses exchange, and motivations behind exchange, as key marker to distinguish between capitalist and non-capitalist societies