Reading Guide, Mauss, The Gift

Anthropology 125A/Econ 152A
Economic Anthropology

Reading Guide for Mauss, The Gift

NOTE: use this guide to the extent that you find it helpful. You will hopefully have already read through the reading once. The guide is long because I often include quotations from the book. You can use this to reexamine points that I think important. I ask many questions. I do not expect you to be able to answer them. Ponder over the quotations and questions for a second. That pondering, even for a second, will help you focus better on sections in the coming week as we figure out the answers together.

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Consider this quote. Don’t worry if you don’t know everything he is referring to. Be sure to think about the sentence in bold:

Note: “Utilitarianism” in Mauss refers to “liberalism,” (or economics as you are taught it and ‘market society’ as we have studied it in this course: focused on the individual as homo economicus, who puts individual self-interest first, and in where society is organize through and via the free market)

“{In The Gift] Mauss summarily eliminates the two utilitarian ideologies that purport to account for the evolution of contracts: “natural economy,” Smith’s idea that individual barter was aboriginal; and the notion that primitive communities were altruistic, giving way eventually to our own regrettably selfish, but more efficient individualism. Against the contemporary move [i.e. at the time that Mauss was writing ] to replace markets with communist states, he insists that the complex interplay between individual freedom and social obligation is synonymous with the human condition and that markets and money are universal, if not in their current impersonal form. In this way he fleshes out his uncle’s [that is, Emile Durkheim] social agenda, but also questions the accuracy of his model of mechanical solidarity for stateless societies. . (Keith Hart, on Mauss, the Memory Bank)
Feel free to consult this website for background on Mauss.

http://www.thememorybank.co.uk/2007/03/20/marcel-mauss-our-guide-to-the-future/

Note this point by Keith Hart:

“Against the contemporary move to replace markets with communist states, he insists that the complex interplay between individual freedom and social obligation is synonymous with the human condition and that markets and money are universal, if not in their current impersonal form. In this way he fleshes out his uncle’s social agenda, but also questions the accuracy of his model of mechanical solidarity for stateless societies.”

Foreward, by Mary Douglas.

Think about this forward in regard to the links we have for today regarding gifts and gift cards and presents.

According to Mauss, there is no ‘free gift”, and “a gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction.” Why? Think about this as you read.

Note that Mauss’s The Gift is written in reply, in part, to Malinowski’s book, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (which you read parts of) on the kula in Melanesia. You can see again here, how Malinowski set up the frames of reference for debates about markets versus non-market exchange for the entire generation to come (we talked about this last week with the formalists and substantivists as well).

Mary Douglas gives us a critique of Malinowski’s assumptions:
Malinowski, she says, “took with him to his fieldwork the idea that commerce and gift are two separate kinds of activity, the first based on exact recompense, the second spontaneous, pure of ulterior motive.” vii

But Douglas says, following Mauss, that “right across the globe and as far back as we can go in the history of human civilization, the major transfer of goods has been by cycles of obligatory returns of gifts.” (viii)

Douglas sites a very famous sentence from Mauss. This is one of the most famous of the whole book. It is a statement of social theory, asking, in other work: how do you analyze society? This was the project of Mauss’s uncle, Emile Durkheim, it was the project of Smith in many ways, and it was the project of Marx and all of sociology and much of anthropology.

Mauss thought he had the answer for non-market societies. Note that his answer is a different answer than the answer of the substantivists. It is also a different answer than that of the formalists (who are not really interested in the category of society, but rather focus on individuals):

“The whole society can be described by the catalogue of transfers that map all the obligations between its members. This cycling gift system is the society” ix

p. viii. Douglas warns you to read slowly on the potlatch. Please consider: How is the potlatch a total system?

“It [the potlatch] is a total system in that every item of status or of spiritual or material possession is implicated for everyone in the whole community….Read through the rest of this paragraph. Stop on the sentence

“The cycling gift system is the society.”

What does this mean?

See also:

“The theory of the gift is a theory of human solidarity” (x)

If you Compare the GIFT ECONOMY with MARKET ECONOMY; We end up having The Gift as the other side of the INVISIBLE HAND

[Study question for you: make sure you can, in your mind, think of how these different writers or groups of theorists thought you should approach study of primitive society or, in other words, societies where the exchange of gifts, rather than the market and the invisible hand, held things together]

Malinowski assumed, Douglas says, that since economically valuable things in the Trobriands were not in commercial exchange, that they would be involved only in spontaneous exchanges free of ulterior motives, as were gifts in his own culture.

Why did Malinowski assume that? What does this say about the importance of studying the assumptions of market society before we study anthropology? (i.e., why did we bother with doing those weeks on the rise of market society? Because, in part, the assumptions of market society shaped much of the research done in anthropology in non-market societies).

The debate Douglas discusses on utilitarianism is of interest to any of you in economics or business, or who thinks about such things. You can think about these issues in terms of current debates about the budget in California (should everyone be included in health insurance? Should we pay for education even if there is a budget deficit? Should we rather give incentives for individuals to make their own way on the market? Will using “social programs” make individuals lazy? ).

This deals with an overall problem that echoes the moral dilemma faced by Smith: how can we balance the needs of the INDIVIDUAL with the NEEDS OF SOCIETY. Liberalism, or utilitarianism, overlooks the fact that humans are social beings; socialism overlooks the demands of the individual and individual freedom.

Not everything is merged in SOCIETY – there were also INDIVIDUALS in primitive society, not just robots following CULTURE.

(Just note in passing the reference to Mauss’s early work with Henri Hubert (who was killed in WWI), on Sacrifice. See what that is about.)

x. What is usually cited as the main difference between what Malinowski called the scientific method of ethnography, or modern ethnography, and old-fashioned folklore (or armchair anthropology)? Douglas says it has to do not with fieldwork, but with sound analysis. She says:

“The Gift was like an injunction to record the entire credit structure of a community.” (x) What does that mean?

“The theory of the gift is a theory of human solidarity.” (x) What does this mean?

[See the debate between Durkheim (on solidarity) and the English utilitarianists (and English liberalism). What was the criticism of Durkheim and his students of liberalism? What does an “impoverished concept of the person as an independent individual” mean? (x)]

[Why was individualism a bad word among French socialists? (xi)]

[What was Durkheim’s view on the relationship between individual self-awareness and the social whole? ]

xii. Durkheim’s work was part of an ongoing research project with close collaborators. Just note that. Mauss was part of this research group.

xiii. How did Durkheim want sociology to be a science?

Xiii, bottom of page. “Mauss manages to incorporate individuals acting in their own interests, even in the kinds of societies in which Durkheim had/ thought there was no scope for individual self-interest.” (xiv).

Xiv, top., “he also discovered a mechanism by which individual interests combine to make a social system, without engaging in market exchange.” What was that mechanism?

xiv. “Mauss’s fertile idea was to present the gift cycle as a theoretical counterpart to the invisible hand.” (xiv).

xiv. What does Douglas think is the best distinction between societies primitive and modern? Do you agree that “the idea of the gift economy comprises all the associations – symbolic, interpersonal, and economic—that we need for comparison with the market economy.”

xiv. How was Evans-Pritchard influenced by Mauss when he wrote about the Nuer? What did the marriage dues of the Nuer have to do with Mauss?

“he described the marriage dues of the Nuer as a strand in the total circulation of cattle, and wives, and children, and men: every single relationship had its substantiation in a gift.”

Xv According to Douglas, was Mauss’s application of this theory to his modern world successful? Do you agree? “more profound insights into the nature of solidarity and trust can be expected from applying the theory of the gift to ourselves.” Do you agree?

INTRODUCTION

Some exchanges are in theory voluntary, but “in reality they are given and reciprocated obligatorily.” Do you agree? (3) What would be an example in your life?

What is the meaning of “total social phenomena”? (3)

“TOTAL ECONOMIC SERVICES” in which everything intermingles. “In these ‘total’ social phenomena,...all kinds of institutions are given expression at one and the same time – religious, juridical, and moral...likewise economic” (3)

Study one aspect of this social fact: “the so to speak voluntary character of these total services, apparently free and distinterested but nevertheless constrained and self-interested.” (3)

Does this make sense to you? Are your gifts disinterested?

“What rule of legality and self-interest, in societies of a backward or archaic type, 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)

This is a VERY famous statement. Ponder it for a moment. How does this relate to Malinowski’s work on the kula?

Is there such a thing as a “natural economy”? That was a kind of obsession at that time among many about the primitives.

In Mauss’s view, do obligations for exchanges arise in INDIVIDUALS, or in COLLECTIVITIES? (5)

Bottom of p. 5

What is the “system of total Services” ?

What is the rare system of total services called the “potlatch”? (6) What is unusual about rivalry in the potlatch? Principles of rivalry and hostility. “the whole clan contracts on behalf of all....through the person of the chief.” (6)
How is there “total service” with the potlatch.

CHAPTER ONE

Note that this is Polynesia, and thus responds in part to Malinowski.

What is mana? (8)
What does wealth have to do with prestige? (8) see the bottom of page.
HONOR, PRETIGE AND MANA ARE CONFERRED BY WEALTH; there is also an OBLIGATION TO RETURN THE GIFTS UNDER the PAIN OF LOSING “THAT MANA, THAT AUTHORITIY—THE TALISMAN AND SOURCE OF WEALTH THAT IS AUTHORITY ITSELF”

WITH THE POTLACH, A LOT OF WEALTH IS GATHERED AND SHOWN OFF AND SOMETIMES DESTROYED. AT THE OCCASION OF A BIRTH, FOR EXAMPLE, (from Turner):

“After the festivities at a birth, after having received and reciprocated the oloa and the tonga – in other words, masculine and feminine goods – husband and wife did not emerge any richer than before. But they had the satisfaction of having witnessed what they considered to be a great honour: The masses of property that had been assembled on the occasion of the birth of their son” (Mauss, p 9)

What is a tonga? Is a tonga a person, a thing, or a channel, or all of those? (9)

“In short, the child, belonging to the mother’s side, is the channel through which the goods of the maternal kin are exchanged…” Does this make sense?? (9)

What does tonga have to do with “possessions” as we think of them? (10) Is it true that tonga, like our possessions, make us rich and powerful? Can tonga be sold?

How are the tonga linked to the person, the clan, and the earth? (10)

“what imposes obligation in the present received and exchanged, is the fact that the thing/received is not inactive. Even when it has been abandoned by the giver, it still possesses something of him. Through it, the giver has a hold over the beneficiary just as, being its owner, through it he has a hold over the thief. This is because the tanga is animated by the hau of its forest, its native health and soil. It is truly ‘native’; the hau follows after anyone possessing the thing.” (12)

This is another greatest hit of anthropology quote. What does it mean? Does it make sense to you in your own life?

“the thing given is not inactive. Invested with life, often possessing individuality, it seeks to return to what Hertz called its ‘place of origin” (top 13). Does this make sense??

“To refuse to give, to fail to invite, just as to refuse to accept, is tantamount to declaring war; it is to reject the good of alliance and commonality.” (13)

Would this be true with gift-cards??

“All these institutions express one fact alone, one social system one precise state of mind: everything – food , women, children, property, talismans, land, labour services, priestly functions, and ranks – is there for passing on, and for balancing accounts.” (14) What does this mean? What kind of accounting system is this?

What do contracts and exchanges have to do with sacrifice? (bottom, p. 15)

“Indeed, it is they who are the true owners of the things and possessions of this world.” (16) Who is “they”?

CHAPTER 2

What are the mechanisms of obligation?
Note that he calls vaygu’a a kind of money.
There is a mixture of things, “values, contracts, and men” expressed in this (26)

The KULA merely gives concrete expression to many other institutions, bringing them together. (27)

Key quote on p. 29:

“At the bottom of this system of internal kula, the system of gift-through-exchange permeates all the economic, tribal and moral life of the Trobriand people. It is ‘impregnated’ with it...It is a constant ‘give and take’ The process is marked by a continuous flow in all directions of presents given, accepted, and reciprocated, obligatorily and out of self-interest, by reason of greatness and for services rendered, through challenges and pledges.” (29)

‘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)

In Mauss’s view, this IS a system of economics: “in which considerable wealth is constantly being expended and transferred. If one so wishes, one may term these transfers acts of exchange or even of trade and sale. Yet such trade is noble, replete with etiquette and generosity.” (37)

So, as you are studying, and thinking about this material: Go over, What are the different definitions of economic that we have in this course? Here is a new one, by Mauss.

The OBLIGATION TO GIVE IS MATCHED BY THE OBLIGATION TO RECEIVE.’

A “gift is received ‘with a burden attached’”. A gift is a challenge.” (41)

To refuse to give, or to accept, is to lose rank.

THAT WHICH IS GIVEN HAS PRODUCTIVE POWER – “each one of these precious things possesses, moreover, productive power itself. It is not a mere sign and pledge; it is also a sign and a pledge of wealth, the magical and religious smbol of rank and plenty.” (44)

At the same time as Goods, it is WEALTH AND GOOD LUCK that are passed on (45)

Things possess a personality, and the personalities are in some way the permanent things of the clan” (46) “by giving one is giving oneself, and if one gives oneself, it is because one “owes’ oneself – one’s person and one’s goods – to others. “ (46)

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION

How relevant do you think all this on the gift is to our own society?

“The invitation must be given, and must be accepted. This is still the custom, even in our liberal society.” (See Douglas’s preface on “liberal society.”)

Do you feel such an obligation??

When Mauss writes about “social insurance legislation,” he is writing about the beginnings of what we call the “welfare state,” which was the rule in the United States in the period of the New Deal, until about the presidency of Ronald Reagan. What does Mauss say was the principle of social insurance? Does that make sense to you? How does this apply to debates today about social security or health insurance (66-67)

“we are returning to a group morality” (68) What does Mauss mean here?

“The themes of the gift, of the freedom and obligation inherent in the gift, of generosity and self-interest that are linked in giving, are reappearing in French society.” (68) If Mauss were right, would that be good?

“Thus we can and must return to archaic society and to elements in it” (69) What does Mauss mean here? Do you agree?

70: “The system that we propose to call the system of ‘total services’, from clan to clan – the system in which individuals and groups exchange everything with one another—constitutes the most ancient system of economy and law that we can find or of which we can conceive. It forms the base from which the morality of the exchange-through-gift has flowed. Now, that is exactly the kind of law, in due proportion, towards which we would like to see our own societies moving.” Is this how you would like to see society moving?

What do you think of the Maori proverb:
“give as much as you take, all shall be very well.” (71)

p. 72. Note his critique of utilitarianism. This is basically referring to liberal theory of politics, and to early economic theory, based on maximizing utility.

Mauss wants to argue that the “notion of value exists in these societies” even though utility theory does not apply.
He calls this kind of gift economy a “very rich economy”. Does that make sense to you? Even if those religious elements dominate? (72) [there is no right answer here]

p. 73. See Mauss’s critique of Malinowski.

Malinowski tried to classify the Trobrianders – he was surprised to see that they might have been interested in giving. This was a shock to him. He then makes careful gradations between pure gift and pure barter – but this is unnecessary and inapplicable.

According to Mauss: NO GIFT IS PURELY DISINTERESTED, NONE IS FREELY GIVEN.

These civilizations, too, have their own “interest” but it is different than ours. (75)

So is, or is not, the circulation of vaygu’a self-interested?

“To accept without giving in return, or without giving more back, is to become client and servant, to become small, to fall lower.” (74) Here, he refers to the Kula. Is this different than what Malinowski said?

“In those civilizations they are concerned with their own interest, but in a different way from our own age.” (p. 75, middle of page.) What does that mean, and do you agree? What is the self-interest in repaying with interest??

“It is our western societies who have recently made man an ‘economic animal.’ But we are not yet all creatures of this genus…Homo oeconomicus is not behind us, but lies ahead, as does the man of morality and duty….” (76) Think about what this might mean.

Mauss argues at the same time that we are not all calculating, or at least not all the time.

“the brutish pursuit of individual ends is harmful to the ends and the peace of all, to the rhythm of their work and joys – and rebounds on the individual himself.” (77). What do you think of this?

In the next paragraph, Mauss says:

“It is by opposing reason to feeling, by pitting the will to peace against sudden outburst of insanity of this kind that peoples succeed in substituting alliance, gifts, and trade for war, isolation and stagnation.” (82)

Does it make sense to you to draw on study of the Trobriands and the Nuer to make general statements about politics and economy in our own times?