4. Exchange (Gifts & Commodities)

Question 1

What is Exchange?

Answer 1

• ‘…the study of exchange is the study of anthropology itself…’ (Seymour-Smith)
• the creation and maintenance of relationships between persons
  
  • these exchanges may be equal or unequal - words, childcare, gifts, favours, formal, informal
  • may heighen/create/diminish equality
• studying exchange ‘leads us straight to the heart of social and cultural organisation’

Question 2

What does Karl Polanyi (1944) tell us about Exchange in his book: The Great Transformation?

Answer 2

The development of the ‘free market’ system in 19th Century Britain

• Lots of societies have markets, but only some are market societies
• Three types of exchange:

1. Reciprocity*
   
   • Generalised - give ‘freely’ (e.g. within a family)
   • Balanced - something equivalent (e.g. rounds in a pub) -
   • Negative - someone harms you, you harm them back (‘getting even’)
2. Redistribution* (e.g. chiefdom-ship, more limited that 1 & 3 so often ignored)
3. Market Exchange - Buying and Selling

*Nonmarket (or pre-market) exchange

Question 3

What is a Commodity?

Answer 3

Economic Definition:

• a product cannot be differentiated from any of product or type e.g. gold, petrol, corn, pork belly, coffee AND
• their price in the world market fluctuates due to consumption:
  
  • people purchase to consume/hoard/trade OR
  • speculate (place bets) on commodities

Anthropological Defintion:

• Something produced in order to be sold
• Commodities can be acquired without the need for a personal relationship with purveyor
• The value of a commodity (‘commodity value’) is realised through exchange (i.e the market)

Question 4

What are the characteristics of Commodity Exchange?

Answer 4

• Impersonal exchange - no need for social relationships within purveyor despite interaction
• Impersonal markets - markets do not discriminate
• Alienable objects (do not contain ‘aura’ of producer - although not strictly true)
• Driven by need (for art, status, beauty - not to sustain a relationship)
• Rationality (most satisfaction with least money)

Question 5

What does Appadurai (1988) tell us about Commodities in his book: Social Life of Things?

Answer 5

• Things have status and may have several lives - they become a commodity once a price tag can be attached.
• Looking at the social life of an object helps us understand where value comes from - this moves us beyond a Marxist concept of value.
• Anything can be/become a ‘commodity’

Question 6

Where does Value originate?

Answer 6

• How much are people willing to pay?
• How scare or finite an item is?
• What is the demand?
• How do you value ‘sentimental value’?
• What is fashionable?
• The environment in which a product is sold?
• How it is displayed?
• What is the market value?

Question 7

What does Marx say about Value?

Answer 7

Two kinds of value:

1. Use value - instrinsic to an object: its value from the human labour put into it
2. Commodity value - in a market economy its value is the price it will fetch - “mystification’ because we ignore the labour power that gives objects value

Market Fetishism - Object created by people but then given power over them e.g. does the car have the power to make you a particular kind of person?

ERGO: Value comes from different things. And all things have a commodity potential.

Question 8

What does Carrier (1995) say about Gifts in his book Gifts & Commodities?

Answer 8

• Our ideas about gift-giving reflect the seperate of two spheres of life that are central to market society: work and home

1. Work: self-interest, impersonal ,impermenta relations
2. Home: idealised automonomous space, gifts selflessly given -

• Appropriate relationship between giver and recipient
• Freely given; selfless (no expectation of return) / reciprocating too quickly would be unseemly
• Thoughtful: presented in a careful way; wrapped

Question 9

What does Mauss (1924) say about Gifts in his book The Gift?

Answer 9

• Exchange in ‘archaic’ societies - motivated by need and social obligation whereas in ‘modern’ societies needs are satisfied by market exchange and social obligations are satisfied by gift exchange.
  
  • Archaic - part of social relations
  • Modern - seperated economic and social relations
• Three types of exchange:
  
  1. Commodity - basic needs / wants / desires
  2. Gift in modern society
  3. Gift in archaic e.g. potlatch, kula ring (Trobriand Islands)
• To bind communities, to give power/reinforces status, symbolic & ritual value (no particular monetary value)
• The Hau of the Gift - Idea of a spirit within gift - people feel uncomfortable if they haven’t reciprocated.

Question 10

What do Gifts do?

Answer 10

• A gift sets up an obligation to reciprocate (what about bribery?)
• A gift elevates giver over recipient i.e. the recipient is indebted
• A gift binds people together in a relationship
• A gift contains the spirit of the giver?

Question 11

What apparent distinctions between Gifts and Commodities?

Answer 11

• Gifts - Building relations - selfless - inalienable
• Commodities - Trading equivalents - self-interest - alienable

Question 12

What 2 ethnographies are associated with Commodities?

Answer 12

1. Smart, A. (1993). ‘Gifts, Bribes, and Guaxni: A Reconsideration of Bourdieu’s Social Capital’ (China)
2. Miller, D. (2001). ‘Alienable Gifts and Inalienable Commodities,’ in F.R. Myers (ed.), The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture. (North London)

Question 13

What does Smart’s (1993) ethnography say about Commodities?

Answer 13

• Foreign investment in PRC
• Contrasts ‘the gift’ with other forms of exchange, i.e. bribes (=instrumental gift)
• Gifts are not radically different or distinct from other forms of exchange, and are used as a tool in capitalist relations

Question 14

What does Miller’s (2001) ethnography say about Commodities?

Answer 14

• Study of shopping of North London
• A polemic: he reverses commodity conception in gift/commodity dichotomy
• When we buy, we ‘calculate’
• Buying commodities create moral relations