I. Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) and The Gift (1925), continued

A. Review: Rules = give, receive, reciprocate
B. Hau: things as mediums for expressing relationships between people
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

 

II. Mauss' Critique of Capitalism

A. Capitalism: narrows exchange into a purely economic act (Taco Bell commercial example)
B. Capitalism has forsaken wisdom of ancestors

1. Assembly lines
2. Items don't bear traces of producers' identities
3. Workers not fairly compensated for their role

C. Mauss' political proposal

1. Social security
2. "The state itself, representing the community, owes him, as do his employers, together with some assistance from himself, a certain security in life, against unemployment, sickness, old age, and death" (67)
3. Return to group morality

D. Universal morality of the gift: "It is common to the most advanced societies, to those of the immediate future, and to the lowest imaginable forms of society" (70)
E. Capitalism isn't an advance, but a moral regression

 

III. Karl Marx: Value, Labor, and Commodities

A. Capital: Written in 1860s, published in 1867
B. Two types of value

1. Use value: an item's value comes from its function, how people use it
2. Exchange value: "the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind"

C. Barter: use value and exchange value are nearly identical
D. Capitalism: exchange value becomes much more important
E. Money as "radical leveller" which corrodes social relationships
F. Labor theory of value: value of an item stems from human labor
G. Capitalism, alienation of labor

1. Capitalist class invests in means of production
2. Workers create value
3. Capitalists seen as owning products of labor, sell them for profit
4. Labor not fully compensated for the value they produce, capitalists get enormous profit

H. Money makes alienation possible by allowing everything to be assigned a value
I. Commodity fetishism: value seems a quality of an inanimate object, when it actually comes from the human act of labor
J. Money becomes the dominant arbiter of value, invisibility of people who produce objects

 

IV. Comparing Mauss and Marx

A. Alienation

1. Mauss and Marx: capitalism destroys the ways in which exchanging things creates bonds between people
2. Mauss: psychological alienation. Social security as public thank you
3. Marx: concrete, material, economic alienation. Get rid of capitalist class which steals profits

B. Commodity Fetishism

1. Mauss and Marx: we endow objects with spirits
2. Mauss: hau is positive, unites people in social relations. Capitalism makes things lifeless, divorced from social relations
3. Marx: Commodities have become separated from human source of value. Capitalism makes things lifelike and omnipotent

 

V. Questions to consider about Mauss

A. Too much focus on rules of giving, receiving, reciprocating?
B. Are gifts and commodities so different?
C. Will the social security proposal work as he intended?

 

VI. Gender and Gifts

A. Assumptions about women = private sphere, men = public, economic sphere
B. What happens when we look at women's economic activities?
C. Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions, 1992
D. Women's banana leaf bundles in the Trobriand Islands

1. Used to establish influence of matriliny
2. Distribute bundles in a kind of potlatch at funerals
3. Competitive aspect: the more bundles given away, the more powerful the woman and her lineage

E. Connection between banana leaf bundles and kula

1. Husbands are obligated to support wives' matrilineages
2. Sometimes need to sell type of shell that could be in the kula, but doesn't need to circulate
3. Kula trade is possible because men have other forms of wealth with which to finance their wives' matrilineage
4. Connections between women and men's wealth: men must strike balance between one's personal kula network and obligations to wives' kin

F. Attention to gender suggests:

1. Kula isn't just about giving things away

a. Lots of accumulation
b. Challenges Mauss's gift/commodity distinction

2. Connections between men's kula and women's banana leaf bundles; kula isn't a self-contained sphere of exchange