scholarly journals The institution of gift exchange among the Ob Ugrians in the anthropological discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 546-555
Author(s):  
E. Р Martynova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The Past ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Global World ◽  
Trade Deals ◽  
Theoretical Developments

Introduction: the work is written in the discourse of economic anthropology. The relevance of the institute of gift-giving among the Ob-Ugric peoples is determined by the interest in the study of their traditional culture, as well as the desire to determine its role and functions in the modern global world. Objective: to consider and analyze different types of gift exchange and related communications among the Ob-Ugric people in the past and in modern practices. Research materials: the author’s field materials collected among different groups of Ob-Ugric people; works of authors of the second half of the XIX – beginning of the XX centuries, containing descriptions of trade deals with the participation of the indigenous population of the Ob North. Results and novelty of the research: on the materials about the Ob Ugrians the kinship and friendship gifts connected with the custom of guesting, exchange of gifts in the rites of transition, gift exchange with spirits, gift exchange with the authorities during the period of integration into the system of Russian statehood and elements of gift exchange relations in trade are studied. The essence of the institution of gift-exchange is revealed through the theoretical developments of the classics of economic anthropology, first of all, M. Moss. Gift-giving in Khanty and Mansi culture has both real and symbolic value. The first one is equivalent to the value of things or services, and the second is determined by the fact that gifts are perceived as a pledge of success and prosperity in the future. The gift was a peculiar mechanism of maintaining ties both between different collectives within the community and with the outside world, including otherworldly forces.

Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Dutch Golden Age ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift ◽  
New Perspective

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a love of art

Scott Cook. Understanding Commodity Cultures: Explorations in Economic Anthropology with Case Studies from Mexico. Lanham, Rowman & Littleford Publishers, Inc., 2004, xi, 349 pp.

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 892-893 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Central American ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Market Exchange ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
The People ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Impact

Economic anthropology has two ‘sacred' field sites—one in Melanesia, the other in Central America—and the empirical data gathered from these sites has set the theoretical agenda for the sub-discipline. Malinowski conducted seminal fieldwork in both of these areas and the respective subjects of his investigations tells us much about the socio-economic concerns of people in Melanesia and Central America. His classic ethnography on the Kula exchange system of the Milne Bay area of Papua New Guinea, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, established Melanesia as the classic home of gift exchange. The postwar ethnographies have only served to confirm the passion Melanesians have for creating intricate forms of gift exchange: Andrew Strathern's The Rope of Moka, introduced us to the ties that bind the ‘big men' in the Highlands; Michael Young's Fighting with Food: Leadership, Values and Social Control in a Massim Society, challenged us to rethink the social role of food, and so on. These ethnographies, and many others like them, have provided the ethnographic base on which general theories of the gift have risen, Marilyn Strathern's The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia, being the best-known recent synthesis. The product of Malinowski's Central American fieldwork, Malinowski in Mexico: The Economics of a Mexican Market System (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), which he wrote with J. de la Fuente, has not had the impact of Argonauts, for a number of reasons, including the fact that an English translation of the 1957 Spanish edition took some twenty-five years to appear, and that his research, carried out in 1940, was not pioneering in the same ethnographic and theoretical way that Argonauts was. His Mexican work was part of a long tradition of American scholarship on the peasant-artisan commodity producers of this area. Commodity production and exchange is to the people of Central America what gift exchange is to Melanesians. However, the exchange of commodities in Central America is a not ceremonial ritual, but rather everyday reality that the people must undertake in order to survive. It has been this way for centuries, which is why Central American ethnographers have devoted so much time to describing and analyzing petty commodity reproduction. This is not to say that market exchange is unimportant for the people of Melanesia, but what sets Melanesia apart is that gift exchange has flourished under the impact of capitalism, and it is this question that commentators have tried to describe and explain. What then are the peculiar social conditions found in Central America that account for the specificities of the economy found there? What conceptual frameworks have economic anthropologists developed to come to terms with these facts?

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.

Between Polite Economy and the Gift: Nineteenth-Century British Travelers and Persian Excess

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-160
Author(s):  
Niloofar Sarlati
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Ancien Régime

Abstract Nineteenth-century travelogues by British travelers to Persia commonly include warnings against “excessive” Persian politeness, casting it as flattery or deceit. While this pejorative representation of Persian cordiality is a token of British Orientalism, it also highlights the incompatible measures for pleasantries in Persia and Britain. This essay traces the competing economies of social courtesy in these two contexts: a desire for utmost calculability in the British market entailed a new conception of politeness, one more moderate and commercial; by contrast, Persian politeness operated through gift-giving and “extravagant” greetings and complimenting. While the former hinges on a “modern” conception of commerce, the latter pivots around the bargain entailed in gift-giving. (Mis)recognition and (mis)translation of Persian “excess” as the hypocrisy of the ancien régime in the travelogues, however, signpost a teleological fabrication of the past which urges a global circulation of the British notion of polite character.

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.

Bellow's “Indian Givers”: Humboldt's Gift

1981 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-238
Author(s):  
Judie Newman
Keyword(s):  
American Indians ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Loss Of Face ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Central Activity ◽  
The Gift

Emerson's essay on “Gifts” perceptively highlights the ambivalence felt in gift-giving or receiving, an ambivalence which lies at the heart of Saul Bellow's most recent novel, Humboldt's Gift. The importance of literal gift-giving has been insufficiently recognised as a factor which governs the action of the novel, our understanding of which is enhanced by an examination and application of the sociological analysis of gift-exchange.Gift-exchange has been most extensively studied in relation to the North-West Coast American Indians, notably the Kwakiutl, in whose culture the “potlatch” is a central activity. The term “potlatch” is applied to a variety of gift-giving ceremonies, involving both the giving away of quantities of possessions and their wilful destruction. The whole of a man's worldly goods may be dispersed or destroyed in this fashion, in an attempt to maintain status. To eclipse a rival chief, for example, a man may destroy all his own accumulated wealth. While in theory the “gift” is spontaneous and disinterested, in practice it is based on political or economic self-interest.The gift of property implies an obligation in the recipient which, if not fulfilled, results in his loss of face.

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.

scholarly journals CLOTHING AS A PART OF THE MARI WEDDING GIFT EXCHANGE (THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20th CENTURIES)

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-324
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Pesetskaya
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Important Place ◽  
The Public ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Wedding Ceremony ◽  
Different Types Of Clothing ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Written Sources

The article considers using clothing items during the traditional Mari wedding gift exchange ceremony. In addition to its emblematic function represented by a dress as a whole, the Mari wedding clothing has always been a part of the wedding gift exchange ritual. Though, it rarely was an object of research in this respect. The rite of exchange of the clothing items takes an important place in the Mari wedding procedure, because it pinpoints social relations of different levels, of both individual and group levels. Items of exchange serve as communication mediators and form a pattern of the rite. The research is based on the archival exhibits and written sources of the Russian museum of ethnography. Apart from that, the author’s field materials for the period from 2009 to 2018 obtained through own expeditionary work in various regions of the Mari El were used. Based on the sources, the article analyses information on the extent of the clothing’s significance and usage as an object of the gift exchange ceremony, considers different types of clothing items used for the exchange as well as their possible equivalents, discloses relevant features of these items. The paper specifies levels of the wedding ceremony with an exchange of the clothing items fixed. In particular, a primary secret agreement, marriage proposal, gifting guests with a bride are crucial components of the rite with a public agreement present. The study of the Mari wedding gift exchange seems to be promising, as, despite a transformed wedding ceremony, the procedure itself remains unchanged, being one of the most sustainable mechanisms of the public regulation.

Gift Giving at the Court of Henry VIII: the 1539 New Year's Gift Roll in Context

2005 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 126-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Other ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The Gift

The exchange of gifts at the New Year was a very significant social, political and financial event at the court of Henry VIII, just as it would have been at the courts of his English predecessors and European contemporaries. The process of gift exchange, including who made, received and gave gifts, was recorded each year in the gift roll. This article presents a detailed analysis of the 1539 gift roll, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, in the context of the other extant rolls for 1528, 1532 and 1534. Areas for discussion include a consideration of the range and significance of the gifts given and received by Henry and the role of the goldsmiths who made the king's gifts, including the weight, style and shape of the pieces commissioned. The article is supported by a full transcript of the 1539 gift roll, which is accompanied by extensive references comparing this gift roll to the other surviving gift rolls.

The Gift and Art in Early Modernity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift

This chapter examines the centrality of gift giving to the developing commercial cultures of early modern Europe and the rise to prominence of works of art, especially paintings, in circuits of gift exchange. Contrary to common assumption, gift giving in the early modern period acquired renewed importance as a mode of negotiating professional, social, and personal ties in a rapidly changing, increasingly commercialized environment. Art also emerged as an essential gift currency for negotiating relationships of patronage and clientage, and highly selfconscious artists increasingly turned to the gift’s symbolic economy to negotiate with patrons and set their transactions apart from ordinary forms of exchange. I probe the interconnections between gifts and art in various overlapping contexts of early modernity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document