Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Martin Walsh on November 25, 2009 at 8:10pm

Keith - your general question about reciprocity aside, I'm sure that your characterisation of hunter-gatherers can be challenged, e.g.

Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia: Long-Term Histories
Edited by Kathleen D. Morrison & Laura L. Junker (2002)
"In both South and Southeast Asia, many upland groups make a living - in whole or part - through gathering and hunting, producing not only subsistence goods but commodities destined for regional and even world markets. These forager-traders have had an ambiguous position in ethnographic analysis, variously represented as relics, degraded hunter-gatherers, or recent upstarts. Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia adopts a multidisciplinary approach to these groups, presenting a series of comparative case-studies that analyse the long-term histories of hunting, gathering, trading, power relations, and regional social and biological interactions in this critical region. This book is a fascinating and important addition to the current ‘revisionist’ debate, and a unique attempt to re-conceptualize our knowledge of forager-traders within the surrounding context of complex polities, populations and economies in South and Southeast Asia."

Permalink Reply by Huon Wardle on November 26, 2009 at 3:49pm

Yes it all depends on what we mean by sharing and reciprocating (he said in ponderous tone of voice)...

It seems to me that Kant is a pretty good candidate for the idea that reciprocity is a universal mode of thought. In the Critique of Pure Reason he states that reciprocity is the logical twin of the concept of community. Hence the third of his 'primary analogies' without which we couldn't think the way we think is the principle of 'Community': 'All substances, in so far as they are coexistent, stand in complete community, that is , reciprocity one to another'. Unless we were able to organise knowledge of the world according to the idea of community (at least some of the time and in principle) we would not be able to think at all. For instance the idea that something is a substance depends on its existing reciprocally with other substances in some overall shared state. But that still leaves the problem of what sharing means or whether it can really be distinguished from reciprocity.

I hope I will be quoted by those people who realise they have been talking Kant all their lives...

Permalink Reply by Keith Hart on November 26, 2009 at 5:46pm

Huon, As you know, I am all for going back to big IK, but the word reciprocal and reciprocity has a very wide set of meanings. For example:

1. Concerning each of two or more persons or things.
2. Interchanged, given, or owed to each other: reciprocal agreements to abolish customs duties; a reciprocal invitation to lunch.
3. Performed, experienced, or felt by both sides: reciprocal respect.
4. Interchangeable; complementary: reciprocal electric outlets.
5. Grammar Expressing mutual action or relationship. Used of some verbs and compound pronouns.
6. Mathematics Of or relating to the reciprocal of a quantity.

The same online dictionary lists separately the meaning of reciprocity in at least eight disciplines, including Canadian politics. Fortunately for us, cultural anthropology is one of them: "In cultural anthropology and sociology, reciprocity is a way of defining people's informal exchange of goods and labour; that is, people's informal economic systems. It is the basis of most non-market economies. Since virtually all humans live in some kind of society and have at least a few possessions, reciprocity is common to every culture." It goes on to summarize the three types of reciprocity identified by Marshall Sahlins in his "Sociology of primitive exchange".

So, by listing Thurnwald, Malinowski, Mauss and Levi-Strauss in the invitation to this thread, I was hoping for a discussion that might pay some lip service to the modern anthropological tradition. But by booting it into the 18th century, you forced me to think more carefully about the definition. I went back to Alvin Gouldner's The norm of reciprocity, a major influence on Sahlins's essay. I recommend it; it's very thorough.

Gouldner situates his inquiry in the tradition of functionalism. He finds that several people who claimed reciprocity is very important either didn't define it (Hobhouse, Thurnwald) or mixed it up with other concepts like complementarity (Parsons). He gives pride of place to Malinowski's Crime and Custom, which is indeed a fine source. Malinowski asked why people do what is expected of them and was not satisfied with answers like the conscience collective. He give primacy to the obligation to return a favour. I would suggest that this is still its common meaning in English: reciprocity refers first to an exchange of favours.

It has long seemed to me that this discourse shades imperceptibly into utilitarianism, quite clearly so in the case of Gouldner and Sahlins, but also less obviously in Levi-Strauss. So that was the terrain I was hoping to open up for discussion. It doesn't have to be grounded in intellectual history. Anything goes in the OAC after all.

Permalink Reply by Keith Hart on November 26, 2009 at 6:01pm

Martin,

As you know, hunter-gatherers such as Australian Aborigines, Inuit and !Kung San have long been used as a prop for speculation about human society before agriculture. Tim Ingold has put a lot of admirable effort into distinguishing between HGs and herders in the Arctic. I had in mind the kind of distinctions he makes about their economy and ritual. I would say that people who collect stuff in the forests of South and Southeast Asia and trade it for a living probably have quite a modern attitude to money and markets, not unlike the Native American fur traders who served as Adam Smith's prototype for primitive barter. Either you find this sort of speculation interesting or you don't, but clearly any claim to it's being empirical anthropology just won't wash.

Martin Walsh said:

Keith - your general question about reciprocity aside, I'm sure that your characterisation of hunter-gatherers can be challenged, e.g.
Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia: Long-Term Histories Edited by Kathleen D. Morrison & Laura L. Junker (2002) "In both South and Southeast Asia, many upland groups make a living - in whole or part - through gathering and hunting, producing not only subsistence goods but commodities destined for regional and even world markets. These forager-traders have had an ambiguous position in ethnographic analysis, variously represented as relics, degraded hunter-gatherers, or recent upstarts. Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia adopts a multidisciplinary approach to these groups, presenting a series of comparative case-studies that analyse the long-term histories of hunting, gathering, trading, power relations, and regional social and biological interactions in this critical region. This book is a fascinating and important addition to the current ‘revisionist’ debate, and a unique attempt to re-conceptualize our knowledge of forager-traders within the surrounding context of complex polities, populations and economies in South and Southeast Asia."

Permalink Reply by Geoff Chesshire on November 26, 2009 at 10:49pm

Keith, you ask whether reciprocity is a human universal. I think the operative universal is information overload and our constant search for ways to cope with it. We exist within extremely complex networks of community relationships, as Huon points out from Kant. I think of these relationships as built upon shared principles or values, of which reciprocity is just one of many. Reciprocity is the underlying principle of relationships that we build through either fair exchange or perhaps quid pro quo. Some principles and values, such as empathy and sympathy, require far more sensitivity and constant attention to subtle cues, while other principles at the opposite extreme, such as "might makes right," require much less attention to detail. As our connectivity and bandwidth of information about events and relationships with people and diverse cultures around the world becomes more and more overwhelming, we search for simple principles with which to filter this deluge of information. I think reciprocity sooner or later replaces empathy as part of this coping mechanism, as empathy requires more attention than we can muster. We use the principle of reciprocity in order to simplify most of our relationships to where they become manageable, except for our relationships with those very few who are closest to us; we avoid trying to maintain too many connections that depend on complex systems of values and unpredictable emotions. This simplification is however a form of externalization, in which we minimize the complexity of caring, thinking about and taking responsibility for the effects of our actions upon others. Tuning this reciprocity filter takes many years of practice, partly in order to hide from ourselves the inescapable conclusion that we receive far more than we could ever give, not only from other people but from all of nature. There is of course the risk that we may fail even to learn and practice reciprocity, in which case we fall back on such baser principles as "might makes right." So I see reciprocity serving as a compromise between overwhelming complexity and manageable practicality in our relationships.

Permalink Reply by Benedicte Brøgger on November 27, 2009 at 12:02am

Keith - Reciprosity neccesarily implies difference, which is paradoxical given its connective role (between people, or humans and spirits or nature etc. ). It may possibly be regarded as confirming a difference that makes a difference, which I believe was Levi-Strauss' point with the idea of the alliance. In that respect the term reciprocity functions as device for logical ordering, I guess.

Everything is ok as long as we deal with reciprosity and exchange. But what about use? Does reciprocity enter into the picture at all? I have been toying with the idea lately the Norway has more of a use economy than an exchange economy (something different again from a gift economy), that the land and it resources have use value first and foremost, and that the exchange value is secondary (in emic terms). Let me explain by way of a detour by Adorno: Der Ausdruck des Geschichtlichen an Dingen ist nichts anderes als der vergangener Qual (Minima Moralia, 29). It may be that Norwegians conceptualize our economic system in somewhat similar terms. Its value is derived not from exchange, but from joy of its use, and the sunk cost of the work that produced it. I have come no further than this, and am in grave doubt if it is at all possible to account for an economic system in terms of use value?

Keith Hart said:

Huon, As you know, I am all for going back to big IK, but the word reciprocal and reciprocity has a very wide set of meanings. For example:

1. Concerning each of two or more persons or things.
2. Interchanged, given, or owed to each other: reciprocal agreements to abolish customs duties; a reciprocal invitation to lunch.
3. Performed, experienced, or felt by both sides: reciprocal respect.
4. Interchangeable; complementary: reciprocal electric outlets.
5. Grammar Expressing mutual action or relationship. Used of some verbs and compound pronouns.
6. Mathematics Of or relating to the reciprocal of a quantity.

The same online dictionary lists separately the meaning of reciprocity in at least eight disciplines, including Canadian politics. Fortunately for us, cultural anthropology is one of them: "In cultural anthropology and sociology, reciprocity is a way of defining people's informal exchange of goods and labour; that is, people's informal economic systems. It is the basis of most non-market economies. Since virtually all humans live in some kind of society and have at least a few possessions, reciprocity is common to every culture." It goes on to summarize the three types of reciprocity identified by Marshall Sahlins in his "Sociology of primitive exchange".

So, by listing Thurnwald, Malinowski, Mauss and Levi-Strauss in the invitation to this thread, I was hoping for a discussion that might pay some lip service to the modern anthropological tradition. But by booting it into the 18th century, you forced me to think more carefully about the definition. I went back to Alvin Gouldner's The norm of reciprocity, a major influence on Sahlins's essay. I recommend it; it's very thorough.

Gouldner situates his inquiry in the tradition of functionalism. He finds that several people who claimed reciprocity is very important either didn't define it (Hobhouse, Thurnwald) or mixed it up with other concepts like complementarity (Parsons). He gives pride of place to Malinowski's Crime and Custom, which is indeed a fine source. Malinowski asked why people do what is expected of them and was not satisfied with answers like the conscience collective. He give primacy to the obligation to return a favour. I would suggest that this is still its common meaning in English: reciprocity refers first to an exchange of favours.

It has long seemed to me that this discourse shades imperceptibly into utilitarianism, quite clearly so in the case of Gouldner and Sahlins, but also less obviously in Levi-Strauss. So that was the terrain I was hoping to open up for discussion. It doesn't have to be grounded in intellectual history. Anything goes in the OAC after all.

Permalink Reply by Keith Hart on November 27, 2009 at 10:46am

Benedicte, This is a big one, the whole history of economic thought hangs on it: whether value is to be found in exchange or use (sometimes utility), whether it is objective or subjective. Both classical and neoclassical economics combined them in different ways. Daniel Miller has led a movement in anthropology over the last two decades to consider consumption and material culture as more important than production and exchange in shaping the economic lives of citizens of what some might call late capitalist societies.

I would ask of Norwegian society, how many people actually live from the land, as opposed to valuing it as a source of identity? Certainly, apart from oil which is an enclave where few participate, but many benefit, Norway does not sell much to the world. So one could understand why many people think exchange is less important. But I would push the analysis beyond subjectivity. Is Norway actually a rural economy? What are the main ways people gain their livelihood? If market exchange is secondary, what principles are dominant? I would suggest that redistribution by the state might be one.

I agree that reciprocity, considered abstractly as a principle of association, might be less compelling than collective identities rooted in the nation-state and particular bits of land. And that consumption is more salient than production and exchange for most Norwegian citizens. But I don't know. I hope to learn more from you about that.

Benedicte Brøgger said:

Everything is ok as long as we deal with reciprosity and exchange. But what about use? Does reciprocity enter into the picture at all? I have been toying with the idea lately the Norway has more of a use economy than an exchange economy (something different again from a gift economy), that the land and it resources have use value first and foremost, and that the exchange value is secondary (in emic terms). Let me explain by way of a detour by Adorno: Der Ausdruck des Geschichtlichen an Dingen ist nichts anderes als der vergangener Qual (Minima Moralia, 29). It may be that Norwegians conceptualize our economic system in somewhat similar terms. Its value is derived not from exchange, but from joy of its use, and the sunk cost of the work that produced it. I have come no further than this, and am in grave doubt if it is at all possible to account for an economic system in terms of use value?

Permalink Reply by Huon Wardle on November 27, 2009 at 4:35pm

'Use' (Bendedicte) and 'empathy' (Geoff) have some commonalities vis-a-vis reciprocity which has a formal logical quality to it ('if this then that' -- even if it is driven by a religious-immanent imperative - the hau of the thing). Intuitively, I think Geoff is right; reciprocity 'works' precisely because it is generative and extendable whereas empathy works because it is richly specific and immediate. Maybe sharing is more like empathy and empathy is more like the sense of participation. Use/empathy/sharing once generalised or broadened out as a principle has the potential of turning into a blood-and-soil type exclusivism of participatory sameness because there are no differences that make a difference. I am riffing...

Permalink Reply by Geoff Chesshire on November 27, 2009 at 8:50pm

I can hardly resist the temptation to add a contribution to Huon's riff, in order to allay Benedicte's "grave doubts."

As I see it, there are many forms of wealth, and these have in common that they are embodied in relationships within the context of one or more communities. I intend "community" in a broad sense that includes ecosystems, such as material/energetic, biological, social, cultural, and spiritual ecosystems. I think of communities also as perspectives of who we are (our identity) based on our participation and relationships. I identify any form of wealth with one or more principles or values that are shared within the community. For example, in the material/energetic realm, syntropy (emergent complexity; opposite of entropy) is a form of wealth governed by thermodynamic principles. The social realm includes values such as power, justice, fairness, charity, generosity, sympathy, and empathy, with corresponding principles such as might makes right, inviolability of contract, fairness of exchange, duty of mutual responsibility, etc. The spiritual realm includes values such as beauty, joy, awe, and corresponding principles such as universality of love. To summarize: values and principles make possible relationships that embody wealth in the context of community, including both rival and common wealth. We participate in processes (actions, flows, etc.) that build and maintain these relationships, which would otherwise dissipate over time. Examples of economic processes in the social realm include slavery, indenture, employment, trade and commerce, civic and voluntary service, sharing and gift. I suggest that "use" is such a process in several realms: material/energetic (production/extraction of resources, as Bendedicte mentions), biological (breeding, growing, herding, fishing -- the various nouns and intransitive verbs that we have reconstructed as transitive verbs), cultural (use of knowledge, language, etc.), and so on. My point is that through processes of participation in community, we build or deplete the relationships that embody wealth as recognized within the community through shared principles and values. When we consider whether the use of natural resources is economical, we can ask such questions as whether these were received as gifts of nature or rather were pillaged; whether the use contributed to the common wealth according to some ecological principle, or whether it reduced the wealth of nature; and whether, as Benedicte asks, "its value is derived from ... joy of its use." I frame this as the joy value of the use process, rather than as simply the use value. I think such an economic system is not only possible, but that economic anthropology can help us to rediscover how.

Permalink Reply by Huon Wardle on November 28, 2009 at 1:45pm

One point that is significant then is that use implies both depletion and active regeneration. Does it necessarily weigh on the idea of endurance of resource? That is, to say that, despite the knowledge that community is dependent on perspectives, that the established resource will endure? Reciprocity as a 'bourgeois' phenomenon is perhaps another way of talking about the suspicion people have under modern conditions that substances endure - 'all that that is solid melts into air'.

Permalink Reply by Keith Hart on November 28, 2009 at 7:20pm

Thanks to all of you for expanding the scope of this discussion in such a rich way. Benedicte added use to exchange, Huon introduced our greatest philosopher and Geoff has opened up a whole vision of where the idea of economy might go. I started from the premise that the economistic fallacy, for all the battering it has had lately, still needs to be killed off and that the notion of reciprocity is one way of exposing its limitations in a context linked to modern anthropology. But that may be too much baggage to start with for us still to get somewhere interesting, as all three of you pointed out in your own way.

David Graeber is near to finishing a book, Debt: the first 5,000 years (Melville House 2010), in which he claims that reciprocity is a human universal, but not the only one and often not the main one. He derives the idea of fair exchange from the need to repay debts. The spot contract is supposed to equalize by eliminating the temporary inequality that comes from receiving a gift or a loan or a service. Paying ones debts becomes a moral obligation that bourgeois society seeks to be emancipated from, since it is the false representation of a coercive hierarchy (I protect you from other thugs like me, so you pay my half of your crops). The difference is that the inequality in the second case is permanent and in the first presumptively temporary. So David makes that a second universal economic principle of hierarchy which is not far from Geoff’s ‘might is right’, but often disguised as a moral principle of fair exchange. As Weber said, power gets to be too expensive if you have to beat people up every time to get them to do something. David adds that the way the western middle classes train their kids to say please and thank you all the time can be understood as a symbolic attempt to cancel out the debt on the spot.

He adds as his third universal principle of economy what he teasingly calls ‘communism’, sharing or allocation according to need. All three principles are usually combined in actual economic arrangements, like families where parents sometimes take on the attributes of despots, while trying to establish a morality of fair exchange and accepting the notion that communities share. In this he chooses to follow Polanyi’s modes of integration argument (where reciprocity is voluntary relations of mutuality between equals, inequality is justified as redistribution or central pooling, and market exchange appears as quid pro quo), but with different terms and emphasis.

Geoff’s first post could be interpreted through this framework, even though his second went far beyond the artificial limits of such an argument. (Why 3, why not 4 or many?) Rousseau argued in the Discourse on Inequality that there are three human universals: self-presevation, compassion and the desire for self-improvement. The second is Latin English and it appears in the Greek and Germanic registers as sympathy or fellow-feeling. This clearly underpins what I called sharing , Graeber communism and perhaps Benedicte the joy of use. Although it is vague, community or belonging to others might be the most inclusive term. At the other extreme is ‘might is right’ or command economy or permanent coercive hierarchy, while the moral principle of fair exchange is a widespread way of talking about justice. The assimilation of this idea to market exchange is an object of the anthropological critique of economics, especially the claim that it is the only game in town, TINA (there is no alternative).

This leads directly into Geoff’s claim and Huon’s interesting glosses on it, that reciprocity is mainly a means of simplifying complexity, information overload and all that. But I have already outstayed my welcome.


Huon Wardle said:

One point that is significant then is that use implies both depletion and active regeneration. Does it necessarily weigh on the idea of endurance of resource? That is, to say that, despite the knowledge that community is dependent on perspectives, that the established resource will endure? Reciprocity as a 'bourgeois' phenomenon is perhaps another way of talking about the suspicion people have under modern conditions that substances endure - 'all that that is solid melts into air'.

Permalink Reply by Geoff Chesshire on November 28, 2009 at 7:25pm

These are good questions to ask ourselves, whenever we use resources. We might question also the endurance of a perspective of nature as other, as a collection of resources for our use. While reciprocity and fairness of exchange may be fine values and principles, in practice we are quite selective about whom to treat fairly, in order to maintain the bourgeois illusion that we give as much as we receive. As dubious as that illusion may be in relation to other people, it has become quite unsustainable as a perspective of the natural world.