Women's Worth and Wedding Gift Exchange in Maradi, Niger, 1907–89

1995 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara M. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Pastoral Economy

Wedding gift exchange from the turn of the century to the present has served as a medium through which women in the Maradi valley of Niger could assert their worth, create social ties and respond to a shifting political economy. Rather than exploring the implications of ‘bridewealth’ and ‘dowry’ in isolation, this paper sees wedding prestations as an ongoing and evolving dialogue in which women's roles and worth are contested, the nature of wealth is redefined and the terms of marriage are negotiated. The crisis in domestic labor which arose with the decline of slavery in the early decades of the century gave rise to informal unions through which the labor of junior women could be controlled. Women responded to these informal marriages by staging highly visible ceremonies which established the worth and standing of the bride. With the growth of an increasingly urban-centered commercial and bureaucratic economy, women have been drawn into a desperate ‘search for money’ to continue to meet their obligations in the gift economy. While the outward form of wedding gift exchange appears unchanged, the importance of cash to the acquisition of goods, services, and productive resources has radically altered both the content and the significance of gift exchange. Gifts no longer embody wealth in people derived from ability within an agro-pastoral economy. Instead they reveal the giver's access to the resources of the state and the market. Women's eroding position within the economy since 1950 has drawn them further and further into gift exchange, both in order to build a safety net in the form of exchange value stored in a woman's dowry and to secure the social ties which can ensure their continued access to increasingly contested resources.

The Gift Economy and State Power in China

1989 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Organization Of Production ◽  
China Today ◽  
And Control

The state apparatus in China today has taken upon itself almost total responsibility for administering the social and economic domain. The welfare and control of the population, the organization of production, planning all social activities, and the distribution of the means of subsistence have become primary concerns of organs of the state. The types of power relationships and their social and symbolic expressions, which have crystallized around the distribution and circulation of desirables in such a political economy, are the subject of the present study. The study will also examine how certain counter-techniques of power deviate from the larger strategy of power exercised through the state socialist political economy, forming pockets of intransigence from within.

‘Patches don’t have gender’: What is not open in open source software

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Nafus
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Software Development ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Everyday Practice ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
Software Production ◽  
The Social

While open source software development promises a fairer, more democratic model of software production often compared to a gift economy, it also is far more male dominated than other forms of software production. The specific ways F/LOSS instantiates notions of openness in everyday practice exacerbates the exclusion of women. ‘Openness’ is a complex construct that affects more than intellectual property arrangements. It weaves together ideas about authorship, agency, and the circumstances under which knowledge and code can and cannot be exchanged. While open source developers believe technology is orthogonal to the social, notions of openness tie the social to the technical by separating persons from one another and relieving them of obligations that might be created in the course of other forms of gift exchange. In doing so, men monopolize code authorship and simultaneously de-legitimize the kinds of social ties necessary to build mechanisms for women’s inclusion.

The Social Character of Value

2018 ◽  
pp. 19-20
Author(s):  
Rosa Luxemburg
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Use Value ◽  
Social Character ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Failure ◽  
Abstract Labor ◽  
Clear Conception ◽  
Rosa Luxemburg

In this excerpt from The Accumulation of Capital, Rosa Luxemburg explains how classical political economy lacks a clear conception of the commodity—both in the terms of the distinctions between use value and exchange value, as well as between concrete and abstract labor. This metaphysical, essentialist framework leads to a complete failure to understand the social character of labor's capacity to create value.

scholarly journals Capitalism and Metaphysics

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Lash
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Global Finance ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Global Information Society ◽  
Physical Causation ◽  
Time Information

Contemporary capitalism is becoming increasingly metaphysical. The article contrasts a ‘physical’ capitalism – of the national and manufacturing age – with a ‘metaphysical capitalism’ of the global information society. It describes physical capitalism in terms of (1) extensity, (2) equivalence, (3) equilibrium and (4) the phenomenal, which stands in contrast to metaphysical capitalism’s (1) intensity, (2) inequivalence (or difference), (3) disequilibrium and (4) the noumenal. Most centrally: if use-value or the gift in pre-capitalist society is grounded in concrete inequivalence, and exchange-value in physical capitalism presumes abstract equivalence, then value in contemporary society presumes abstract inequivalence. The article argues that the predominantly physical causation of the earlier epoch is being superseded by a more metaphysical causation. This is discussed in terms of the four Aristotelian causes. Thus there is a shift in efficient cause from abstract homogenous labour to abstract heterogeneous life. Material cause changes from the commodity’s units of equivalence to consist of informational units of inequivalence. Formal cause takes place through the preservation of form as a disequilibriate system through operations of closure. These operations are at the same time information interchanges with a form’s environment. Final (and first) cause becomes the deep-structural generation of information from a compressed virtual substrate. This may have implications for method in the social and human sciences. The article illustrates this shift with a brief discussion of global finance.

scholarly journals The Gift in Martin Luther’s Theology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Kristian Holm
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Justification By Faith ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Communicatio Idiomatum ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Late Renaissance

In analyzing the role of gift and giving in Martin Luther’s theology, one almost inevitably has to deal with the contrast between Marcel Mauss’s description of archaic gift economy, where gifts and exchange are interconnected and gift exchange a total social fact, and Derrida’s critique of Mauss for talking of anything else but the gift, since only a gift uncontaminated by exchange deserves the proper name “gift.” Accordingly, any reading of Luther relating Luther’s theology to the reciprocity of giving seems, from the outset, to grasp anything but the cornerstone of his theology: the justification by faith alone apart from works of the law. Nevertheless, scholars in the early 21st century have been discussing Luther as a theologian of the gift. Some defend a position according to which Luther’s theology can only be rightly understood by maintaining that the divine gift is free and pure. Others argue that Luther’s mature theology allows for an integration of some kind of exchange as a vital part of the very doctrine of justification. In both cases, social anthropological gift studies can function as a lens for highlighting the heart of Luther’s theology, either negatively by presenting the absolute opposite of Luther’s understanding of divine giving in justification and creation or positively by revealing the very heart of the same. The young Luther vehemently criticized a piety regulated by economic principles and understood divine righteousness in contrast to human principles for righteousness. However, he soon began integrating reciprocal aspects from the traditional definition of righteousness into his doctrine of justification. This was possible due to an emphasis on the divine self-giving, revealed in Christ and slowly elaborated to cover Luther’s understanding of the whole Trinity. In this move, Luther seemed to have been influenced by Roman popular philosophy, which was widespread in the late renaissance, but biblical passages emphasizing reciprocal justice also played an important role. Advocators for understanding Luther’s theology from the perspective of inter-human gift exchange will argue that Luther’s theology of the gift is intimately related to his use of the figure of communicatio idiomatum, which allows the giver to share his attributes with the receiver.

Rembrandt’s Art as Gift

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Art World ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
The Gift

This chapter examines Rembrandt’s embrace of gift exchange over his career and analyzes the works he created to function as gifts among favored patrons, collectors, and intimates. Rembrandt’s gifts to important patrons and other figures in the 1630s largely conform to the conventions and courtesies expected of gift transactions. From the late 1640s through the 1660s, as Rembrandt’s primary supporters shifted to liefhebbers, gentlemen-dealers, and cultured members of the burgher class, however, he intensified his engagement and became more experimental with gift giving. Through highly distinctive prints designed to circulate as gifts, Rembrandt enlisted the gift economy to nurture ties with his inner sanctum, harnessing the ethics of gift giving to cultivate a unique position in the Dutch art world.

Religious Ethics, Gift Exchange and Capitalism

2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCEL HENAFF
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The Gift ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
Catholic Ethic

This study intends to reread Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with the following question in mind: where is the Catholic ethic with respect to “the spirit of capitalism”? The few short comments that Weber makes on this topic nevertheless suggest an interesting notion which he had developed in earlier texts, i.e., the “religious ethic of brotherhood”. I intend to show here that this notion could be further illuminated by the findings of the anthropology of gift giving since Marcel Mauss. This would enable us to understand how the problem of grace, so central to the debate between Protestants and Catholics, is linked to the history of the transformations in the gift giving practices; we will also discover that this problem was at the origin of the schism. While such a hypothesis leads to a different reading of Weber, it is confirmed by a work of the historian B. Clavero which brings out the complex links that existed in 16th century Catholic Spain between the order of business and that of charity. Besides the antagonism that has marked the two Christian traditions in the West, what seems to be at issue is the way in which economic practices weight on the social bond. These questions invite us to rethink the connections between them.

Gift-giving in the great traditions: the case of donations to monasteries in the medieval West

1995 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilana F. Silber
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Dynamics ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western World ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Religious Orientations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Impact

Focusing upon donations to monasteries in the medieval Western world, this paper expands upon extant discussions of religious gift-giving in the ‘great traditions’ , and of its relation to more archaic forms of gift-exchange, hitherto largely based on non-Western and mostly Asian anthropological material. While displaying many of the social functions familiarly associated with the gift in archaic or primitive societies, donations to monasteries are shown to have also entailed a process of immobilisation of wealth not extant in the gift circuit of ‘simpler’ societies. While donations to monasteries clearly attested to the impact of otber-wordly religious orientations, they also entailed a range of symbolic dynamics very different from, and even incompatible with, those analysed by Jonathan Parry with regard to the other-wordly ‘pure’ gift. The paper then brings into relief the precise constellation of ideological ‘gift-theory’, socio-economic ‘gift-circuit’, and macrosocietal context, which enabled this specific variant of the gift-mechanism to operate as a ‘total’ social phenomenon in the two senses of that term suggested, though not clearly distinguished and equally not developed, in Mauss’ pathbreaking essay on the gift.

The (anti-)social gift? Mauss’s paradox and the triad of the gift

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 631-648
Author(s):  
Seung Cheol Lee
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Gift

Marcel Mauss’s discussion of the gift relies on a paradox: although gift-giving is the foundational act of building a society, in order for a gift to be circulated, society must be always-already presupposed so that the gift can reach and be recognized by its destination. This article focuses on how this paradox has been addressed in anthropological and philosophical studies of the gift, by reviewing work by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Maurice Godelier and Jacques Derrida. By illuminating each position through the lens of the Lacanian triad of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real, I first show how Lévi-Strauss and Godelier, respectively, focus on the symbolic and imaginary economies of the gift and how their perspectives are still bound by Mauss’s paradox in assuming the totality of society as the ultimate basis of gift exchange. I then read Derrida’s critique of Mauss as an attempt to explore the space for the aneconomic that grounds but simultaneously threatens the symbolic and imaginary economies of society. In doing so, I argue that the gift always includes the effaceable negativity and uncertainty that serve as the condition of (im)possibility for the social.

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