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EXCHANGE AND RECIPROCITY

C.A.Gregory

The concepts of ‘exchange’ and ‘reciprocity’ are closely related. This much is

clear from the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines exchange as ‘the action,

or act of, reciprocal giving and receiving’, and reciprocity as ‘mutual action,

influence, giving and taking’. Indeed the words are often used as synonyms.

However, in the anthropological literature over the past century the term

‘reciprocity’ has acquired a special meaning, and a distinction between

exchange and reciprocity of great theoretical importance has arisen. The

distinction turns on fine differences in meaning between the words ‘mutuality’,‘giving’, ‘receiving’ and ‘taking’, and to understand these nuances it is

necessary to situate the anthropological theory of exchange in the broader

historical and theoretical context from which it has emerged.

The general theory of exchange is concerned with analysing acts of

exchanging things, people, blows, words, etc. Exchange is a ‘total social

phenomenon’, to use Mauss’s (1990 [1925]:3) famous expression, and, as such,

its study involves the fields not only of economics but also of law, linguistics,

kinship and politics, among others. Most anthropological theorizing about

exchange, however, has been restricted to exchanges of wealth. But what is‘wealth’? The answers to this question fall into three broad categories. For

economists of the nineteenth century wealth consisted in commodities, whereas

for those of the twentieth, it consists in goods. Either way, it is stuff which is

valued by the market. For anthropologists, on the other hand, wealth consists

above all in gifts, products that are valued according to the non-market

principle of reciprocity. The notion of reciprocity, then, is at the heart of

theoretical debates concerning the distinction between market and non-market

forms of valuation. But ethnographers have also found the principle of

reciprocity operating in tribal trading systems and peasant markets, and thesefindings have led to a revision of the theory of commodity exchange itself.

To understand the anthropological concept of reciprocity, it is necessary to

compare and contrast economic and anthropological theories of the exchange



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of wealth. I propose to do this under the following five headings. Under the

first, ‘Commodities as wealth’, I briefly discuss the nineteenth-century political

economy approach to exchange. This is followed, under the heading, ‘Goods as

wealth’, by a discussion of twentieth-century economic theories of exchange. In

the third section, ‘Gifts as wealth’, I provide an overview of the anthropologicalnotion of reciprocity. This is followed by a discussion of ‘Barter and other

forms of counter-trade’, in which I introduce some anthropological revisions to

the theory of the commodity. In the final section, on ‘Market-place trade’, I

show how anthropological work also requires certain revisions to the theory of

market exchange.

COMMODITIES AS WEALTH

‘The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of productionprevails’, Marx (1954 [1867]:43) declares in the first sentence of Capital,‘presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities.’ This notion of

wealth was part of the conventional orthodoxy of eighteenth- and early

nineteenth-century European thought, and all the leading theorists of the

time—Quesnay, Smith, Ricardo—developed their particular conceptions of

the principles regulating the market within this general paradigm. The truly

radical break came in the 1870s with the development of the theory of goodsand, with it, a new set of answers to the fundamental questions of market

exchange: What is profit? What determines relative prices? What determinesthe level of wages? In this section I present, in very general terms, the answers

developed within the commodity-theory paradigm; in the next section these

will be set in contrast to the answers given by the goods-theory paradigm.

The notion of a commodity has its origins in the Aristotelian idea that a

product has two distinct values: a value in use and a value in exchange. Shoes,

for example, are useful because they protect one’s feet when walking over rough

ground. This value is called ‘use-value’ and is quite distinct from the value

shown on the price-tag of a pair of shoes displayed in a shop window. The

price-tag value is called ‘exchange-value’, and it was value in this sense thatpre-twentieth-century commodity theorists sought to explain; the study of the

useful properties of objects, and that of the manner in which they satisfy

human wants, were regarded as falling outside the scope of political economy

(Marx 1954 [1867]:43). Within the overall commodity-theory paradigm many

different theories of exchange-value were formulated. Quesnay, the eighteenth-

century French physiocrat, found the answer in the natural productivity of

land; Adam Smith, the so-called father of economics, opposed this theory and

developed a labour theory of value in its place; this theory was developed, in

turn, by Ricardo and Marx, among others.Marx’s contribution to the theory of the commodity, though it hinged upon

the labour theory of value, gave it a new twist. Marx (1954 [1867]:53) claimed that

he was the first to point out that labour, too, possesses a use-value and an



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exchange-value. To make shoes, for example, requires a certain quality of effort, a

particular kind of skilled technical practice. The use-value of the shoemaker’s

labour lies in these qualitative aspects of his performance. As such, it differs from

the use-value of the labour of the farmer in growing wheat. If, however, we

‘abstract out’ the particular, technical qualities of the shoemaker’s and thefarmer’s labour, reducing both to their lowest common denominator, then they

may both be regarded as representing certain quantities of labour, which may be

measured and compared in terms of identical units of (chronological) time. As a

commodity measured in these terms, and exchangeable for other things, labour

has exchange-value. Now suppose that the shoemaker exchanges one pair of shoes

for, say, ten kilograms of wheat. In quality and hence in their respective use-

values, shoes and wheat are quite different. How come, then, that they are

equated in exchange? Marx’s answer was that they are equated because an

identical amount of ‘abstract human labour’ was expended in the production,respectively, of the pair of shoes and the ten kilos of wheat. Or more generally, the

equation in exchange of heterogeneous commodities comes about by virtue of the

equality in the amounts of homogeneous, abstract labour which they embody.

Marx distinguished between a number of different historical forms of the

commodity. Following Aristotle, he speculated that commodities emerged on

the boundaries of tribal communities where people would enter into

transactions with strangers and exchange products for which they had no use in

return for those which they desired. Following its birth in these marginal

regions the commodity form, Marx argued, began to grow like a cell,developing ever more complex manifestations as it divided and multiplied.

Initially, on the boundaries of the community, exchange took the form of the

barter of one commodity (C) directly for another (C-C). With the

development of peasant markets, and the need for a generalized medium of

exchange—namely money (M) —to facilitate trade, barter gave way to selling

(C-M) in order to buy (M-C), and the tribal community disappeared under

the corrosive influence of the new commodity form. The subsequent

development of mercantile capitalism—buying (M-C) in order to sell at a

profit (C-M’) —and of moneylending at interest (M-M’), further eroded theagrarian pre-capitalist society. Following a series of bloody struggles involving

the emerging capitalist class and the pre-capitalist peasants and landlords, a

new class of propertyless wage-labourers was born and the commodity

assumed its most generalized form, C=c+v+s, where c is constant capital, vvariable capital, and s surplus value, these values corresponding to the

quantities of abstract labour embodied in raw materials, wages and profit

respectively.

The historical prerequisite for the emergence of capitalism, and of the

C=c+v+s form of the commodity, was, according to Marx, the emergence of aproletariat. With this, labour-power became a commodity with an exchange-

value like any other. But this historical development gave rise to a new problem:

What determines the exchange-value of labour-power?



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Marx’s answer is long and involved but is based on a simple idea. He

observed that under feudalism the rate of exploitation, i.e. the ratio of surplus

labour to necessary labour, is expressed in a simple and direct form. Suppose,

for example, that a serf farms three days per week for his own benefit and that

he gives his landlord three days of labour per week as rent for the land he uses.The former is called ‘necessary labour’ and the latter ‘surplus labour’. This

relation, Marx argues, did not disappear with the development of capitalism; it

merely changed its form as rent was transformed, firstly, into a share of the

physical output (e.g. half the harvest) and then into money (e.g. half the money

profits or a fixed rent per acre of land used). With the emergence of labour-

power as a commodity, necessary labour assumed the abstract form of variable

capital (v), corresponding to the amount of money paid as wages, while the

profit over and above this amount—corresponding to the product of surplus

labour—was shared between the capitalist and the landlord.Marx’s immediate concern was to analyse the principles governing the

production, consumption, distribution and exchange of this most generalized

form of the commodity; pre-capitalist forms of commodity exchange were of

interest to him only to the extent that they illuminated the social preconditions

of the capitalist form. In any case, his understanding of the pre-capitalist and

non-commodity forms of exchange was severely constrained by the absence, at

the time, of reliable ethnographic and historical data.

Apart from the distinction between use-value and exchange-value, two other

defining characteristics of the commodity-theory paradigm deserve mention.One of these concerns the prominence given to the notion of reproduction.

Exchange was not seen as an isolated act but as a phase in a reproductive cycle

consisting of successive acts of production, exchange and distribution. This

conception of the economy was first developed in 1759 by Quesnay, in his

Tableau Économique (1962 [1759]), and it has provided the conceptual

framework for all discussions of commodity-value theory ever since. The

notion has been refined over the years, the most recent and logically

sophisticated being the version found in Sraffa’s (1960) Production of

Commodities by Means of Commodities. As the title of this book suggests, acommodity is both an output and an input, and Sraffa argues that these input-

output ratios, combined with a given distribution of income, determine the

exchange-values of commodities.

The other defining characteristic of the commodity-theory paradigm is the

focus on class relations. Even though some of the early commodity theorists

espoused naturalistic theories of wealth, they all addressed the problem of the

principles governing the distribution of surplus among competing classes.

Quesnay’s theory, for example, distinguished three classes—the landlords, the

peasant farmers and the artisans—a division that captured the essence of thesocial organization of the eighteenth-century French countryside; Ricardo

based his theory of value on the opposition between landlords and capitalists, a

key social conflict in the England of his time; and Marx, as is well known, based



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his theory on the opposition between wage-labour and capital. These class

relations of production were seen to be crucial because they gave exchange

relations their particular form and content. In other words, the classical

political economists conceptualized exchange as an expression of underlying

power relations.

GOODS AS WEALTH

Following the marginalist revolution of the 1870s, which saw the fall of the

theory of commodities and the rise to dominance of the theory of goods,

exchange came to be seen as an expression of the subjective preferences of

individuals rather than of underlying power relations. This change in thinking

was reflected in a new concept of wealth. The marginalists, or ‘neoclassicals’, as

they are sometimes called, no longer saw the unit of wealth as a commodity butas a good whose magnitude was measured by its subjectively attributed ‘utility’.

In other words, the concept of a commodity, with its distinction between use-

value and exchange-value, was replaced by the concept of a good with an

undifferentiated utility value.

This new concept of wealth quite literally affected the way people viewed

the world. Emphasis was placed on consumption and scarcity rather than on

reproduction, and on choice and subjective preferences rather than on

objective class relations of production. The new paradigm also provided a novel

conceptual framework for posing, and answering, the old questions concerningwages, prices and profit. This can be seen by examining, in a little more detail,

the notion of a good.

Despite appearances to the contrary, the word ‘utility’ does not mean the

same as use-value. Use-values refer to the objective properties of things and are

a function of the technological and scientific knowledge available to a society at

a given point in its history. For example, the discovery of photography in the

nineteenth century meant that silver acquired a new use-value to complement

its other uses as a store of value, as jewellery, as cutlery, and so on. Utility, on

the other hand, refers back to the subjective preferences of an individualconsumer. A cup of tea, for example, has positive utility to a thirsty person, but

that utility will be less for each additional cup consumed. Thus the marginal

utility of the tea declines, until the point is reached when the consumer’s thirst

is quenched and she desires no more; at this point the tea ceases to be a ‘good’

and, logically speaking, becomes a ‘bad’—although this term is rarely used.

The utility of a good, then, derives from its ability to yield subjective

satisfaction. It refers to individual psychological feelings about scarce objects

and not to the objective properties of different things. As Robbins (1932:47) has

noted, ‘Wealth is not wealth because of its substantial qualities. It is wealthbecause it is scarce.’ This conception of wealth is obviously very different from

its classical precursor. Among other things it contains the paradoxical



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implication that wealth, because it is the subjective sum of enjoyments, might

increase as material abundance declines (Heilbroner 1987:882).

This new theory of wealth opened up a new angle on ancient problems.

Consider the water-diamond paradox which was concerned with the following

question: Why does water have a high use-value and negligible exchange-valuewhile diamonds have a high exchange-value and negligible use-value? The

classical economists regarded this problem as peripheral and answered it in

terms of a highly technical theory of rent. The neoclassical theorists, on the

other hand, regarded it as central and made it the basis for an alternative theory

of price. Their answer, in a word, was scarcity. The marginal utility of water is

low because of its great abundance, the marginal utility of diamonds is high

because of their scarcity, and the ratio of the marginal utility of water to that of

diamonds determines their relative prices.

This proposition applies to the prices of all goods, according to an argumentthat runs as follows. Suppose water became scarce because of a drought. In this

case its marginal utility would rise relative to the marginal utility of diamonds

and a price for water would emerge; if the drought was particularly severe the

price of water would rise even further and it may even become more valuable

than diamonds. Thus all exchanges, and hence prices, are expressions of

relative scarcity as manifested in the ratios of marginal utility.

The great appeal of this theory of exchange and price lies in its generality.

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a form of exchange to which it cannot be

applied. Take, for example, the well-known exchange of kula valuables— armbands and necklaces of polished shell—that are traded by the people of the

Trobriand Islands off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea (described by

Malinowski 1922). Traders obviously prefer the scarce, high-ranking shells to

the relatively abundant, low-ranking shells. Thus it is possible to conceptualize

kula exchange in terms of marginal utilities. Furthermore, it could be argued

that the paradoxical conception of wealth contained in the theory of goods is

just what is needed to explain the notorious destruction of wealth that occurs in

the potlatch ceremonies of the Kwakiutl and other indigenous peoples of the

Northwest Coast of North America (Codere 1950). In the face of a super-abundance of material goods, their worth is effectively eroded.

It is not without some justification, then, that Jevons, one of the founding

fathers of marginalism, could claim in 1871 that the science of economics is in

some degree peculiar, owing to the fact ‘that its ultimate laws are known to us

immediately by intuition’, and that from the notion of utility it is possible to

reason deductively to theories of value and exchange (Jevons 1970 [1871]: 18).

The leading figures in the theory-of-goods paradigm today—Nobel

prizewinners such as Samuelson (1947), Debreu (1959) and Friedman (1962)

—have all developed highly complicated theories of value by reasoningdeductively in this way.

Like the theory of commodities, the theory of goods has many internal

divisions. However, these are mere dialectal variations of the one language. The



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language of the theory of goods shares a common grammar and lexicon which

have nothing in common with those of the language of the theory of

commodities. The terms ‘good’ and ‘commodity’ epitomize this difference, the

etymology of the former suggesting a subjective approach to value, the latter an

objective approach.The new language in which economists began to talk around the 1870s can

be likened to Esperanto, and the old language of the commodity theorists to,

say, German. This is not to say that one is better than another. Indeed, there is

no meta-theory by which they can be compared and evaluated. The two

paradigms have different consequences for understanding human life which

can only be evaluated in specific contexts. This implies some notion of

adequacy in relation to practical aims. To pursue the language analogy, do we

try to overcome the communication problems of the world by teaching people

Esperanto or do we try to learn some particular languages in order to developour general ideas from a comparative analysis of them? Needless to say,

anthropologists have tended to find the latter path more attractive, and few

have embraced the Esperanto of the theory of goods.

In this sense, then, anthropologists took up the implicit questions left

unanswered by the commodity theorists: What, in positive terms, does non-

commodity exchange mean, and by what principles is it governed? What

principles govern the circulation of commodities on the periphery of tribal

communities? Is commodity exchange the end of an evolutionary sequence?

Does it have a corrosive influence on other forms of exchange? And are thesethe right questions to be asking anyway?

The fieldwork tradition pioneered by Malinowski, Boas and others has

provided us with the means to answer these questions. It is ironic that at the

very time that these means were becoming available—in the era of European

capitalist imperialism (1870–1914)—economists ceased to be interested in the

concrete problems posed by the theory of commodities and turned instead to

the abstract and formal problems posed by the new paradigm of goods. Many

of the theories formulated within the latter paradigm contained ill-considered

assumptions about the workings of tribal economies, and these providedethnographers such as Malinowski (1922) with easy targets to criticize in the

course of developing their own ideas. But fieldwork anthropologists, for the

most part, remained ignorant of the classical tradition of economic thought and

of the challenging questions that lay waiting to be answered. (It was not until

the 1970s, when neo-Marxist anthropology flourished, that anthropologists

took the theory of commodities seriously.) But it is now possible, with the

benefit of hindsight, to see that anthropologists have provided implicit answers

to the questions posed by the commodity theorists and, in the process, have laid

the foundations for a whole new approach to the theory of exchange of wealthby posing many new questions.



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GIFTS AS WEALTH

Though the terms ‘wealth’ and ‘valuables’ are often used in anthropological

literature in the common dictionary sense of ‘riches’ and ‘abundance’, they also

take a more precise and anthropologically specific meaning. The word ‘gift’captures this meaning in a very general way and, like the words ‘commodity’

and ‘goods’, it signifies a distinct paradigm (see Belshaw 1965, Sahlins 1972,

Gregory 1982, Strathern 1988 and Weiner 1992 for analytical overviews of the

literature).

The notion of gifts as wealth has assumed a variety of concrete forms, most

of which are now very familiar: the celebrated coppers and blankets of the

Kwakiutl, the armshells and necklaces of the Trobriand Islanders, the brass

rods and cowrie shells of the Tiv of Nigeria, the pigs and pearlshells of the

peoples of the Papua New Guinea Highlands, and so on. Many of these objectsare nowadays valuable in conventional money terms. In the Trobriand Islands,

for example, a vigorous trade in real and counterfeit (plastic) necklaces goes on

outside the tourist centres. However, the most highly prized shells are quite

literally priceless, and have remained in circulation in the kula ring throughout

the colonial period despite the attempts of outsiders to buy them (Campbell

1983). The reasons for this are complex, but it would seem that they have as

much to do with the intricacies of local-level politics as with subjective

preferences. What is clear, though, is that these objects, when exchanged as

gifts, are valued by transactors according to a standard that has quality ratherthan quantity as its basis.

Consider Campbell’s (1983) discussion of the ranking criteria used for

Trobriand armshells (mwari). Five named categories are distinguished and

these are ordered according to their personal history, personal name, colour,

and size. Shells of the top category, mwarikau, have personal names and

histories; they have red striations and are the largest of all. Shells of the lowest

category, gibwagibwa, have neither names nor personal histories; they are white,

unpolished and small in size. Necklaces (vaiguwa) are ranked in a similar way.

The ranking system, then, is ordinal rather than cardinal.Ordinal ranking systems are ethnographically widespread and their

character is commonly captured in anthropological literature by the expression

‘spheres of exchange’. Bohannan (1959), for example, uses this expression to

describe the ranking system of the Nigerian Tiv. Among the Tiv objects are

classified as belonging to one of three spheres. The first, and lowest sphere, is

what the Tiv call yiagh. This includes locally produced foodstuffs, some tools,

and raw materials which are traded at the markets. The second sphere

comprises items of a kind that carry prestige (shagba) and whose transaction is

independent of the markets. Slaves, cattle, horses, white (tugudu) cloth, andbrass rods circulate within this sphere. The third sphere, considered ‘supreme’,

contains a single item: rights in human beings, especially women and children.

The theoretical significance of this distinction between quality and quantity



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Nevertheless, his comparative analysis of the ethnographic evidence, which

demonstrated the widespread importance of inalienable bonds between

persons and things, was an extremely valuable contribution to the theory of

exchange. Among other things, it replaced the vacuity of Marx’s theory of the

‘non-commodity’ with a positive theory of the gift. Mauss makes no referenceto Marx in his essay, but his ghost haunts its every page as a kind of invisible

antithesis. Mauss’s method was, like Marx’s, dialectical, evolutionary,

comparative and political. Dialectics enabled Mauss to see that even though

gifts appear voluntary they are, in reality, repaid under obligation; his

evolutionary approach led him to suggest the primacy of gift exchange over

barter; and his comparative method enabled him to see the significance of the

distinctions between stranger and relative and between the alienable and the

inalienable in terms that were the mirror-image of those employed by Marx.

Mauss’s essay on the gift is also very much a political tract. Indeed, it couldbe argued that the essay is primarily about early-twentieth-century France. In

the last chapter he discusses the implications of his survey of ‘archaic’

economies for the France of his day. Mauss, it must be remembered, was a

socialist but not a communist revolutionary, and his conclusion offers a gift

theory of capitalism to counter Marx’s surplus-value theory. He likens the

wage-labour contract to a gift exchange, notes that the worker is giving his time

and life, and that he wishes to be rewarded for this gift (1990 [1925]:77). He

favours a form of welfare capitalism because, as he put it (1990 [1925]:69),

‘Over-generosity, or communism, would be as harmful to himself [the worker]and to society as the egoism of our contemporaries and the individualism of our

laws.’

Mauss’s theory of the gift owed much to the ethnographic work of

Malinowski and a limited number of other scholars. Since Malinowski’s time

the number of high-quality ethnographic reports on exchange has been

increasing apace. These detailed first-hand accounts have been synthesized and

generalized by, among others, Polanyi (1944), Lévi-Strauss (1969 [1949]) and

Sahlins (1972). The significant logical and conceptual developments which

anthropologists have made to the theory of exchange can be identified bycomparing the approaches of these three authors.

Polanyi, an economic historian, first became interested in the theory of gift

exchange in order to understand the ‘extraordinary assumptions’ underlying

the market economy of Europe, the principal subject of his magnum opus, TheGreat Transformation (1944). For him the market economy was a system of self-

regulating markets in which the prices of commodities organized the whole of

economic life. The basis of this system was seen to lie in the profit motive and

in the existence of commodities in the form of land, labour and money. The

non-market economy, he noted, is the very opposite of this: the motive of gainis absent, there is no wage-labour, and no distinctively economic institutions.

How then, he asked, is production, exchange and distribution organized? His

argument rests on the identification of three principles of economic



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behaviour—‘reciprocity’, ‘redistribution’, and ‘householding’—which are ‘a

mere function of social organization’ (1944:49) and which, in turn, are

associated with distinct institutional patterns. Polanyi’s argument is

summarized in Table 1.Reciprocity has family and kinship as its basis. The reciprocal obligations

that parents and children, brothers and sisters, and husbands and wives have

towards each other ‘help safeguard production and family sustenance’

(1944:48). Exchange between groups of kin is facilitated by the symmetry

inherent in the principle of duality upon which many tribal societies are based.

The subdivision of a tribe into moieties, the pairing of villages in different

ecological niches, alliances of individuals from different communities, and

other expressions of the duality principle lend themselves to the creation of

exchange partnerships which personalize the relation of reciprocity and makelong-term exchanges possible.

Redistribution refers to the process by which a substantial part of the annual

produce of a society is delivered to a central figure of authority, who keeps it in

storage for subsequent disposal on special occasions such as annual feasts, the

ceremonial visit of neighbouring tribes, and so on. The social basis of this form

of exchange is a political organization headed by village elders, a chief, king or

despot. It was practised, says Polanyi, in ancient China, the empire of the Incas,

the kingdoms of India, by Hammurabi of Babylonia, in the feudal society of

Europe and in the stratified societies of Africa and the Pacific.The third principle, householding or production-for-use, is based on the

closed, self-sufficient and territorial household group. The internal

organization and size of the group is a matter of indifference—Polanyi lists the

European peasant farming household and the Carolingian magnates as

examples—because the principle is always the same, namely, ‘that of producing

and storing for the satisfaction of the wants of the members of the group’

(1944:53).

For Polanyi, then, the comparative economic history of humanity is

characterized by a great divide: on one side is the self-regulating market; on theother, economies based on the principles of reciprocity, redistribution and

householding (or some combination of these three principles). This is just

another way of saying that the capitalist economy that emerged at the end of the

Table 1 Relations between principles of economic behaviour, forms of social organizationand institutional arrangements, according to Polanyi (1944).



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eighteenth century ushered in a radically new form of economic organization,

which was unique in world history.

This is a bold generalization, but it is still a great advance on the mistaken

idea that there was no divide at all—that all economies were commodity

economies. This fallacy, which lay at the base of the writings of Adam Smith,was uncritically accepted by many twentieth-century economists, and

Polanyi—like Malinowski—was concerned to challenge it. Like Marx, Polanyi

started with Aristotle’s distinction between householding and money-

making—‘probably the most prophetic pointer ever made in the realm of the

social sciences’ (1944:53)—but was able to develop the distinction much

further. Marx, we have seen, developed the category of production-for-

exchange by calling it ‘commodity exchange’ and distinguishing between its

various forms: barter (C-C); selling-in-order-to-buy in peasant markets (C-

M-C); buying-in-order-to-sell for mercantile profit (M-C-M’), usuriousmoney lending (M-M’), and industrial capitalism (M-C-M’) where labour-

power is the principal commodity. Polanyi’s ‘great divide’ is not between the

presence and absence of commodities but between industrial capitalist

exchange and all other forms. Thus Polanyi was not claiming, any more than

was Marx, that commodity exchange did not exist prior to the emergence of

capitalism. His claim was rather that prior to capitalism, commodity exchange

was subordinate to the principles of reciprocity and redistribution; in other

words that it was socially embedded and hence regulated rather than self-

regulating.Perhaps the most enduring legacy of Polanyi’s work was the equation of

‘reciprocity’ with ‘gift exchange’. However, this usage is something of a coded

shorthand because the adjective ‘positive’ is elided. Thus it is positivereciprocity which is being equated with gift exchange. The logical corollary of

this formulation was that negative reciprocity came to be synonymous with

commodity exchange. This much is clear from Sahlins’s well-known essay ‘On

the sociology of primitive exchange’ (first published in 1965 and reprinted in

Sahlins 1972: ch. 5), which revises Polanyi’s arguments in the light of new

ethnographic data.Sahlins does not use the term ‘positive reciprocity’, but it is implicit in his

notion of a kind of reciprocity that he called ‘generalized’ (as opposed to

‘negative’). Generalized reciprocity and negative reciprocity are defined,

respectively, as the ‘solidary’ and ‘unsociable’ extremes in a spectrum of

reciprocities. Negative reciprocity is ‘the attempt to get something for nothing

with impunity’ (Sahlins 1972:195): haggling, barter, gambling, chicanery, theft,

and other varieties of seizure are examples. Generalized reciprocity ‘refers to

transactions that are putatively altruistic, transactions on the line of assistance

given and, if possible and necessary, assistance returned’ (1972:194): examplesinclude food-sharing, the suckling of children, help and generosity.

The distinction between positive (generalized) and negative reciprocity that

Sahlins proposes here is really an application of Aristotelian logic to the



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oppositions giving-receiving and losing-taking. Giving, for example, is the

converse of receiving and the contradictory of taking; losing, the contrary of

giving, is the converse of taking and the contradictory of receiving. This logic

defines two modes of mutuality between the transactors, positive reciprocity(giving-receiving) and negative reciprocity (losing-taking), and two positions in

relation to the transmission of objects, remittance (giving-losing) and admittance

(receiving-taking). These logical relations are summarized in Table 2.

This table clarifies, at least in a formal sense, the distinction between

reciprocity and exchange. Exchange is the transmission of wealth from one

transactor to another, whereas reciprocity refers to the specific quality of the

relationship between the transactors. This relationship is characterized by

mutual friendship at one extreme (positive reciprocity) or mutual hostility at

the other (negative reciprocity). Thus specification of the qualitative form of reciprocity enables particular forms of exchange to be distinguished from

exchange in general. Where wealth is defined as either commodities or gifts this

specification of the quality of the relationship necessarily involves a concrete

investigation into the spatio-temporal forms of social and political organization

of the economy in question. This much is common to the approaches of Smith,

Ricardo, Marx, Mauss and Polanyi, notwithstanding the great differences

between them.

Sahlins places positive and negative reciprocity at two ends of a continuum

whose mid-point specifies a third type which he calls ‘balanced’ reciprocity.This form of reciprocity is ‘less personal’ than generalized reciprocity and

‘more economic’ (in the Western sense of the term). It expresses the need to

transcend hostility in favour of mutuality, to strike a balance in a relationship.

Examples include formal friendship or kinship involving compacts of solidarity

and pledges of brotherhood, and the affirmation of corporate alliances in the

form of feasts, peace-making ceremonies and marital exchanges.

Sahlins summarizes his argument in terms of a diagram (Figure 1) in which

kinship distance is correlated with reciprocity. Kinship distance, he argues, is

defined by the intersection of consanguinity and territoriality. This defines aset of ever-widening spheres of co-membership—household, lineage, village,

etc.—such that as one moves out through these spheres positive reciprocity is

Table 2



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Sahlins’s conceptual framework, which has Mauss’s theory as its basis

(Sahlins 1972: ch. 4), provides an answer to Mauss’s question about theobligation to return gifts. As Figure 1 illustrates, this answer is given in terms

of the social organization of kinship and rank typical of tribal societies. Like

Polanyi, Sahlins was more concerned to examine the implications of this

proposition than to investigate its philosophical basis. Furthermore, there is a

sense in which he considered such a task to lie beyond the scope of his analysis,

for it had already been undertaken by Lévi-Strauss in his great work, TheElementary Structures of Kinship (1969 [1949]).

One of the innovations of Lévi-Strauss’s book was to conceptualize

marriage as the gift exchange of sisters (daughters) by brothers (fathers). Thisnotion, as Sahlins (1972:181) observed, provoked a reaction from British and

American anthropologists who ‘recoiled at once from the idea, refusing for

their part to “treat women as commodities”’ (emphasis added). Such a reaction,

as Sahlins correctly noted, betrayed a misunderstanding of the comparative

theory of exchange and an inability to distinguish gifts from commodities.

Lévi-Strauss’s conceptualization of marriage as gift exchange enabled him

to develop a definition of reciprocity of great generality and rigour; this, in

turn, enabled him to synthesize a vast amount of data from Oceania and Asia

and to find patterns of exchange where others had found none. His primarydistinction is between elementary and complex structures of kinship; the

former, the focus of his analytical attention, are further subdivided into

structures of restricted and generalized exchange.

Figure 2 Modified model of reciprocity and residential sectors. (After Ingold 1986:232)



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SOCIAL LIFE

Restricted exchange, his theoretical starting point, takes the following

general dyadic form:

Lévi-Strauss shows that alliance relations based on the bilateral marriage rule,that a man should marry a woman in the combined kinship category of

mother’s brother’s daughter and father’s sister’s daughter, take this form. The

notion of ‘sister exchange’, which is often used to describe this form of

reciprocity, precisely captures the essence of restricted exchange. The

perspective is, of course, from the male point of view (compare Strathern 1988

and Weiner 1992), but this is as much the indigenous male’s point of view as it

is the ethnographer’s. In other words, Lévi-Strauss’s perspective on exchange

is that of the powerful men who do the exchanging, rather than that of the

women whose place of residence is usually changed as a result of marriage. Hedraws illustrative examples from ethnographic studies of the Australian

Aborigines, among whom dual organization is widespread. This conception of

restricted exchange corresponds exactly with Polanyi’s correlation of

reciprocity with a symmetrical kinship structure, the difference being only that

Polanyi was mainly concerned with the exchange of objects rather than the

exchange of persons (i.e. sisters or daughters).

By contrast to restricted exchange, generalized exchange takes the following

form:

This form of exchange

establishes a system of operations conducted on credit. A surrenders a daughter or a

sister to B, who surrenders one to C, who, in turn, will surrender one to A. This is

its simplest formula. Consequently, generalized exchange always contains an

element of trust…. There must be the confidence that the cycle will close again, and

that after a period of time a woman will eventually be received in compensation for

the woman initially surrendered.

(Lévi-Strauss 1969 [1949]:265)

Generalized exchange is another way of expressing the matrilateral marriage

rule that a man should marry a woman in the kinship category of mother’s

brother’s daughter, and it is associated with a long cycle of reciprocity.

These two systems of exchange are conceived of as extremes between which

lies a third form of exchange, delayed exchange, which establishes a short cycle

of reciprocity of the following form:



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SOCIAL LIFE

become clear in the course of the following discussion of barter and other forms

of counter-trade.

BARTER AND OTHER FORMS OF COUNTER-TRADE

Counter-trade is the general form of non-monetized commodity exchange.

Barter, the simultaneous exchange of commodities (C-C), is the best known

example of counter-trade, but there are many other non-simultaneous forms

(e.g. delayed barter exchange). The latter necessarily involve a time element

and, in consequence, some notion of credit. In formal terms they are analogous

to delayed exchanges of gifts, and in practice it is often impossible to

distinguish between gift and commodity components of a counter-trade

transaction.

The phenomenon of counter-trade poses two questions: What is theevolutionary status of barter? And what determines the rate of exchange?

For both classical and neoclassical economists barter is the origin of all

exchange. They believe that the original economy was a ‘natural’ one based on

an elementary division of labour and lacking any form of money. This

inefficient system gave way to money-based exchanges with the progressive

division of labour and the development of markets. Thus the invention of

money was the answer to the ‘problem’ of barter. This ‘origin myth’, as Hart

(1987) has aptly called it, is based on a priori logical reasoning about an

imagined past rather than on contemporary ethnographic evidence. The mythwas repeatedly attacked by early anthropologists as ethnographic evidence on

actual barter exchanges began to accumulate. The evidence shows that different

forms of exchange co-exist rather than following one another in a temporal

sequence. An object can participate in many different forms of exchange in the

course of a day. For example, a pig may begin the day by being sold in a market

for cash, then be bartered for another commodity, later resold at a profit, then

given away as a gift, and finally consumed as a good.

The first reliable evidence to point along these lines came from Malinowski’s

(1922) classic study of the tribal economics of the Trobriand Islanders. From acomprehensive list of gifts, payments and commercial transactions he

distinguished seven types of exchange, and showed how they were interrelated

in the concrete ecological and social context of the Trobriand Islands in the

early part of this century. His study showed that much geographically based

barter trade took place within the framework of the annual kula gift-exchange

ritual. Recent studies from the Milne Bay area show that these gift exchanges

continue to take place today under the umbrella of the world market economy.

This complexity poses few problems for indigenous transactors in the region,

who know exactly what type of transaction they are entering into, but it hasposed many theoretical problems for anthropologists who have tried to

comprehend what is going on.

Mauss was one of the early synthesizers. He recognized the implications of



929


Malinowski’s data for the economists’ theory of barter and developed the

alternative thesis that gift exchange preceded commodity exchange. He

proposed a three-stage theory: first came the restricted exchange of gifts within

a tribe, next came generalized gift exchange, and finally the money economy

originated when the ancient Semitic societies ‘invented the means of detaching…precious things from groups’ (1954 [1925]:94).

It is interesting to note, in passing, that barter exchange is re-emerging in

the heartland of international financial capitalism as the hegemony of the

United States wanes and with it the value of the dollar. Barter has long been a

major component of international trade between East and West (i.e. on the

boundaries of United States power), but now many multi-national companies

are resorting to it to safeguard losses from deals involving a declining dollar;

within the United States the rise of computerized exchange, where debts can be

cancelled without the aid of money, has begun to worry the Internal RevenueService (Hart 1987:197).

The ethnographic and historical evidence, then, does not support any

simplistic theory of the evolution of economic forms. This is not to say that the

logical historical method, which organizes concepts in a sequence from simple

to complex, is invalid. To the contrary, as the above discussion has shown, it has

underlain all the significant conceptual developments in the theory of exchange

over the past two centuries.

Let me now turn to consider the question of exchange-rate determination.

Classical political economy, as we have seen, proposed the labour theory of value as the key to understanding the exchange-rate of commodities. It was

argued that two heterogeneous commodities can be equated in value because of

the equality of the labour time contained therein. Neoclassical economists, on

the other hand, proposed that scarcity and utility determine the prices of

goods. What contribution have anthropologists been able to make to this

debate?

The controversy has been uppermost in the minds of many ethnographers

as they observed and collected quantitative data on tribal systems of barter and

counter-trade. Godelier (1977), for example, explicitly addressed the debate onthe theory of value in his article on ‘“Salt money” and the circulation of

commodities among the Baruya of New Guinea’.

The Baruya are a people of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea for

whom the production of sweet potatoes is the principal economic activity. They

are also specialists in the production of vegetable salt which is redistributed

among relatives within the tribe and bartered for various products and services

beyond its borders. The latter exchanges were conducted in pre-colonial times

by daring individuals who made contact with hostile neighbours and managed

to establish ‘trade and protection’ pacts with certain members of the hostgroups. Trading partners would feed and protect their guests and do their best

to find the merchandise which the latter desired. Salt was a highly desired

prestige item which was stored above the hearth to be used on ceremonial



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SOCIAL LIFE

occasions involving the exchange and consumption of gifts. Baruya traders

bartered their salt for a range of commodities, one of which was bark cloth

obtained from the Youndouyé, long-time friendly neighbours. Godelier noted

that the exchange rate was one bar of salt (average weight 2 kg) for 6 bark cloths,

and he calculated the labour time required to make the two products. A singlebar of Baruya salt entailed, on average, days of labour, whereas 6 bark cloths

entailed 4 days of labour. In other words, the exchange rate was imbalanced in

labour terms, with the Baruya receiving the equivalent of almost three times

more labour than they gave.

Godelier denies, however, that the Baruya exploit other people’s labour.

‘What counts’, he argues

is the reciprocal satisfaction of their need and not a well-kept balance of their labour

expenditure. For this reason, the inequality of exchange expresses the comparativesocial utility of exchanged products, their unequal importance in the scale of social

needs and the diverse monopolist positions of exchange groups.

(1977:150)

Godelier’s conclusion is based on an interpretation of the statement of one of

his informants, who declared that ‘If we receive enough, then work belongs to

the past, it is forgotten.’

This looks like a victory for neoclassical theory. However, it could also be

argued that the unequal exchange reflects a difference in the quality of the

labour because the skills required to produce salt are much more highly

specialized than those involved in making bark cloth. The labour theory of

value requires that differences of quality be reduced to those of quantity, and if

the reduction factor was such that three hours of Baruya labour is equivalent to

one hour of Youndouyé labour, then it could be argued that the exchange is

indeed equal.

The conclusion that both theories are valid is, perhaps, to be preferred,

because evidence such as this cannot resolve the fundamental problems of the

theory of value. What is at issue are different methods of apprehending the

world. If we conceptualize Baruya salt as a commodity certain implications

follow; if we conceptualize it as a good different implications follow. They are

incommensurable paradigms and, as such, no way of comparing them exists.

Furthermore, accurate accounting of utility value and labour value is

impossible, even in the Baruya’s own terms. How does one reduce skilled

labour time to unskilled? How does one measure marginal utility and make

interpersonal comparisons? There are no satisfactory answers to these hotly

debated questions.

The labour-value and utility-value paradigms do not exhaust the universe of

possibilities, and there is room for other theories of value. Sahlins’s essay,

‘Exchange value and the diplomacy of primitive trade’ (in Sahlins 1972), can be

seen as an attempt to develop an alternative. He begins by noting that the



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SOCIAL LIFE

Markets can be classified by the types of commodities transacted, by the

forms of trade, by the roles of traders, and by the mode of spatio-temporal

organization.

The commodities traded in markets can be divided into those of the

‘vertical’ and those of the ‘horizontal’ type (Mintz 1959). Vertical commoditiesare either ‘upwardly mobile’ or ‘downwardly mobile’ (Skinner 1964–5).

Upwardly mobile commodities are those which are produced in a rural area and

exported from it by wholesalers. They usually consist of agricultural products,

but may also include products of artisanship such as ceramic pots, basketware,

iron tools, folk art, and so on. These products will ascend through a hierarchy

of wholesalers and eventually become the downwardly mobile commodities of

another area, usually urban and possibly overseas, where they will be

consumed. For a rural area, downwardly mobile commodities usually consist of

manufactured commodities of urban provenance such as clothing or jewellery.They are brought into a marketing area by wholesalers who resell them to

retailers who, in turn, offer them for sale at the market place. The image of a

vertical commodity, then, captures the nested hierarchy of markets that

characterizes many peasant marketing systems, and locates them in a system

that incorporates local economies into the regional, national and international

economy. By contrast with vertical commodities, horizontal commodities move

across a limited local space. They are usually sold direct to the final consumer

by the producer at the market place, without the mediation of wholesalers.

This distinction, then, provides the first means of classifying markets: somewill be characterized by a predominance of vertical commodities (e.g. China),

others by a predominance of horizontal commodities (e.g. West Africa—see

Hill 1966:298).

A second method of classifying markets is by the form of trade. All the forms

of commodity trade discussed above—barter C-C, selling in order to buy C-M-C , buying in order to sell M-C-M', and moneylending M-M'—are found in

rural peasant markets. Barter trade is extremely rare. I observed barter

transactions in the markets I studied in Central India, but they accounted for a

negligible proportion of total commerce. Reports exist of Andean marketsoperating almost exclusively by barter (Mintz 1959:29), but the vast majority of

transactions are of the C-M-C and M-C-M' variety. In Central India selling in

order to buy is the basis of the system from the farmer’s perspective. Farmers,

or rather the female members of farming households, bring small loads of

agricultural produce to sell at weekly markets in order to purchase kerosene,

cloth, ornaments or other items. Selling is obviously more intense at the end of

the harvest, but so too is buying. I was struck by the difference in the trading

patterns of markets in the more prosperous areas of northern India. Here

markets are solely of the M-C-M' variety, as farmers only go to the markets tobuy. Their produce, which is grown using more capital-intensive techniques, is

not brought to the market but sold through other channels in a manner similar

to that found in the rich capitalist countries.



933


Classification by the roles of traders is yet a third way to characterize

different market place systems. Traders fall into two main categories: the

mobile trader and the settled shopkeeper. Mobile traders include pedlars, who

wander from place to place hawking commodities in an unsystematic,

opportunistic way. They may be artisans who provide a service or add value to aproduct, or they may be pure merchants who buy in order to sell at a profit.

Pedlars of this type usually possess a very small trading capital and travel by

foot, but there are also relatively wealthy individuals who possess motorized

transport. Thus pedlars can be distinguished by the type of trade they do, by

the size of their capital and by their means of transport.

Pedlars are only one kind of mobile trader, and they should be distinguished

from periodic market place traders. These traders have a set round of places,

which are visited on specified weekly market days. A cloth trader I interviewed

in India, for example, would set up his ten thousand rupees’-worth of stock atthe big market in his home town of Kondagaon on Sunday, travel 20 km by jeep

to Sampur on Monday, 50 km to Makdi on Tuesday, 70 km to Randha on

Wednesday, rest on Thursday, travel 80 km to Bare Dongar on Friday, and 50

km to Mardapal on Saturday—and so on in this way for 52 weeks of the year.

Like the pedlars, traders in this category can be divided into artisans and

merchants and ranked in terms of their capital (which for many is often less

than a hundred rupees); they can also be divided into wholesalers and retailers.

In addition, traders who attend periodic markets can be distinguished by the

particular locations in the market where they set up shop. Rich traders usuallyhave a fixed establishment (e.g. a thatched-roof stall covering a small piece of

cleared ground), poor traders will crouch in the dust under an umbrella, while

the pedlar will wander around the market place hawking his or her

commodities.

Mobile traders of all kinds are to be distinguished from shopkeepers. Again,

this category can be subdivided along a variety of axes: wholesaler-retailer,

rich-poor, and so on, all of which are salient in rural areas. They usually

surround the central market place. In Western European countries the relative

importance of the periodic market trader has declined significantly over thepast two centuries as shopkeeping has emerged as the dominant form of

exchange. Nowadays the large department stores reign supreme as the central

loci of exchange. In many non-European countries, however, periodic market

traders are still the key merchants in most rural areas. They capture almost all

of the trade and customers only go to stores for emergency purchases or to buy

insignificant items such as a toothbrush, a pencil, or a packet of biscuits.

It is obvious that the distinct ways of characterizing markets outlined above,

according to types of commodities, forms of trade and roles of traders, are

interrelated. But it is also obvious that they allow for very diverse combinationsof features, and hence for a great variety of possible market place systems. The

task of the observer, looking at such systems in their empirical manifestations,

is to identify the principal tendencies and to account for them. But before we



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SOCIAL LIFE

examine some of the factors which have been used to explain the observed

patterns (such as the predominance of periodic market traders in the rural areas

of poor countries, of hierarchical markets in China, of C-M-C markets in

Central India, and so on), it is necessary to consider some of the many different

types of spatio-temporal organization found in periodic markets.Periodicity concentrates the demand for a product to a certain place on a

specified day between set hours. A trader can, by repositioning him or herself at

regular intervals, tap the demand of a market area and obtain an income from

commerce that is adequate for survival. From the point of view of farming

households the periodicity of markets reduces the distance they must travel in

order to sell their produce and to buy goods for consumption. In effect,

periodicity disperses the central market-town throughout the countryside and

converts sleepy backwaters into thriving commercial centres for a few hours

each week. This pattern of dispersal is a function of the availability of transport: for rich market-town traders there is a limit to how far they are

prepared to drive each day, and for poor farmers there is a limit to how far they

are prepared to walk.

The distribution of periodic markets over time and space poses a problem

that can be expressed in mathematical terms. Christaller’s (1966 [1933]) classic

application of central place theory is one such expression that has proved very

influential with geographers and with some anthropologists (e.g. Skinner

1964–5). However, rather than elaborating on formal models of this kind, it is

more appropriate here to give some indication of the actual variations found inthe spatio-temporal organization of marketing systems.

In China market schedules are usually based on a ten- or twelve-day week.

This structure allows for the development of cyclical systems of great

complexity. For example, the 12-day cycle yields three regular cycles of 12-day,

6-day and 3-day market weeks; within these cycles many further possibilities

for scheduling are found. Six different schedules make up the 6-day week for

example: the first consists of the 1st and 7th day of the cycle, the second of the

2nd and 8th day, the third of the 3rd and 9th day, and so on. If town A chooses

the first schedule, town B the second, town C the third and so on, then it can beseen that a farming household living equidistant from these three towns has 3

markets close by on 6 of the 12 days of the market week; towns D, E, F, G, etc.

will provide the household with a range of more distant markets to choose from

on the other days of the week.

In Central India the system is comparatively simple. The market week is a 7-

day one. The major market is held on Sundays at the central market town;

intermediate level centres hold their markets on Fridays, Saturdays and

Mondays; and small centres hold their markets on the remaining days. In West

Africa there is a standard market week of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 days in length, suchthat all markets in a given locality are based on the same cycle.

In areas where vertical commodities predominate, space becomes ordered in

a hierarchical way with market centres of various sizes constituting the nodal



935


points. Skinner (1964–5) proposes a multi-level typology of central places,

ranging from the local minor marketing area, based on a central village, to the

major regional trading area based on a regional city. He finds that the

arrangement of minor market areas in China approximates to a honeycomb

pattern and that this hexagonal spatial grid is reproduced at the higher levels.Abstract models like this are useful heuristic devices for understanding the

empirical complexity of market systems and have stimulated much

geographical research (Smith 1978), but it is the social organization of markets

that has been the anthropologists’ prime concern.

A persistent theme of anthropological literature is the ubiquity of economic

and social differentiation in periodic market places. Mintz (1959), for example,

notes that in Haiti horizontal exchange occurs among class equals, while

vertical exchange occurs between class unequals. In other words, as we move up

the hierarchy of vertical commodities we also move up through a classhierarchy. Dewey (1962b) found a similar situation in Java. Here Javanese

farmers dominate the small-scale trade, Chinese, Arabs and Indians dominate

the large-scale inter-market trade, and Europeans retain control over the really

large-scale economic enterprises. This pattern, she claims, is found throughout

South-east Asia. In India the marketing system is entirely in the hands of

Indians, but the general correlation of class and ethnicity is still to be found.

The élite traders found in almost all market areas of India are the Marwaris.

They are migrants from Marwar in Rajasthan and, as a group, control a

disproportionate share of the industrial and mercantile wealth of the country.Explaining this social differentiation has been a central concern for

anthropologists. How is it, they ask, that markets that are the closest known

approximation to the economists’ ideal of free competition are nevertheless

characterized by such gross social and economic inequalities? Many

explanations have been put forward. Investigations have focused, among other

things, on culture, ecology, population pressure, the labour-intensive

technology of poor farmers, and systems of land tenure.

One paradox that anthropologists have identified is that the competitive

market system is backed by a ‘strong personalistic element which affects thenature of internal marketing activity’ (Mintz 1959:25). In Haiti this personal

relationship is called pratik. It means that buyer and seller emphasize ‘the

reciprocal nature of relationships’ (1961:55, my emphasis). Women who buy

and sell on these terms call each other bel me (‘stepmother’) or matelot (‘concubine of the same man’). Reciprocity of this kind between buyer and

seller is called ‘goodwill’ in European countries, where it has been converted

into a commodity: shopkeepers and sellers of professional services (e.g. doctors,

lawyers, dentists) pay huge sums for it.

Another important kind of reciprocity in market systems is that obtainingbetween sellers of a given type of vertical commodity. As we have seen, these

merchants tend to belong to families or ethnic groups whose members identify

with each other in opposition to the world at large. These groups, Dewey (1962b)



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notes, develop a social structure that enables them to bring informal sanctions to

bear on their members. In these localized power systems coercion and

collaboration create solidary relations which bring benefits to the in-group and

problems for the out-group. One of the greatest benefits to the in-group is access

to credit. This provides members of the in-group with initial capital and theability to accumulate more. Whereas debt can enchain a consumer, for merchants

it is their lifeblood, for without it they cannot expand their capital. It is obvious

that credit will not be extended where there is neither trust nor sanction and, in

periodic market systems, this marks the boundary between the in-group and the

out-group. Thus we find that credit for merchant capital expansion flows upon

the foundations laid by consanguinity and territoriality. Here, then, is an

important factor behind the observed hierarchies found in market places and,

when considered in the light of the particular history of a merchant class, it goes

some way towards explaining the wealth of some and the poverty of others.Dewey’s argument, for which a wide range of supporting evidence can be

marshalled, amounts to the claim that positive reciprocity asserts itself in unique

ways in the heartland of negative reciprocity, the market place.

This argument seems to contradict Sahlins’s theory of positive and negative

reciprocity. However a distinction must be maintained between the analysis of

abstract principles of exchange and the analysis of exchange in concrete

situations. The theories developed by scholars such as Smith, Ricardo, Marx,

Malinowski, Mauss, Polanyi and Sahlins are abstractions which must be

recognized as such and applied with caution to the analysis of concrete reality.The message of Dewey’s argument—and of the growing body of literature

concerned with applying the theory of the gift to European history (White

1988), literature (Hyde 1984), economy (Zelizer 1989) and culture (Agnew

1986)—is that concrete reality is riddled with contradictions. This means that

any attempt, say, to characterize the European economy as a commodity

economy and the Melanesian economy as a gift economy, is bound to fail

because positive and negative reciprocity is at work in both economies. The

notion of reciprocity, then, can be defined in the abstract but its real meaning

will always depend on the concrete political context.

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Proceedings of the 1959 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society,ed. V.F.Ray, Seattle: Washington University Press.



938

SOCIAL LIFE

——(1961) ‘Pratik: Haitian personal economic relationships’, Proceedings of the 1961 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, ed. V.E.Garfield,

Seattle: Washington University Press.

Peterson, N. (in press) ‘Demand sharing: reciprocity and the pressure for generosity

among foragers’, American Anthropologist.Polanyi, K. (1944) The Great Transformation, New York: Rinehart.Quesnay, F. (1962 [1759]) ‘The tableau economique’, in R.Meek (ed.) The Economics of

Physiocracy, London: George Allen.

Robbins, L. (1932) An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science,London: Macmillan.

Sahlins, M. (1972) Stone Age Economics, London: Tavistock.

Samuelson, P. (1947) Foundations of Economic Analysis, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press.

Skinner, G.W. (1964–5) ‘Marketing and social structure in rural China’, Journal of Asian Studies 24:3–43, 195–228, 363–99.

Smith, R.H.T. (ed.) (1978) Market-Place Trade: Periodic Markets, Hawkers, and Tradersin Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Sraffa, P. (1960) Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities: Prelude to aCritique of Economic Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Strathern, M. (1988) The Gender of the Gift, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Weiner, A.B. (1992) Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving,Berkeley: University of California Press.

White, S.D. (1988) Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum inWestern France, 1050–1150, University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill.

Zelizer, V. (1989) ‘The social meaning of money: “Special monies”’, American Journal of Sociology 95:342–77.

FURTHER READING

Belshaw, C.S. (1965) Traditional and Modern Markets, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-

Hall.

Bohannan, P. and Dalton, G. (eds) (1962) Markets in Africa, Evanston, Ill.:

Northwestern University Press.

Dalton, G. (ed.) (1967) Tribal and Peasant Economies, Austin: University of Texas Press.

Geertz, C. (1963) Peddlars and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization inTwo Indonesian Towns, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Godelier, M. (1977) Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Gouldner, A. (1960) ‘The norm of reciprocity: a preliminary statement’, AmericanSociological Review 25:161–78.

Gregory, C.A. (1982) Gifts and Commodities, London: Academic Press.

Gregory, C.A. and Altman, J.C. (1990) Observing the Economy (ASA Research Methods

in Social Anthropology, 3), London: Routledge.

Humphrey, C. and Hugh-Jones, S. (eds) (1992) Barter, Exchange and Value: an Anthropological Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leach, J. and Leach, E.R. (eds) (1983) The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.




Lévi-Strauss, C. (1969) The Elementary Structures of Kinship, London: Eyre &

Spottiswoode.

Malinowski, B. (1921) ‘The primitive economics of the Trobriand Islanders’, Economic Journal 31:1–16.

Mauss, M. (1990) The Gift: the Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans.

W.D.Halls, London: Routledge.Parry, J.P. and Bloch, M. (eds) (1989) Money and the Morality of Exchange, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Polanyi, K. (1944) The Great Transformation, New York: Rinehart.

Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C. and Pearson, H. (eds) (1957) Trade and Markets in the EarlyEmpires, New York: The Free Press.

Sahlins, M. (1972) Stone Age Economics, London: Tavistock.

Skinner, G.W. (1964–5) ‘Marketing and social structure in rural China’, Journal of Asian Studies 24:3–43, 195–228, 363–99.

Strathern, M. (1988) The Gender of the Gift, Berkeley: University of California Press.

gregory, c. a. exchange and reciprocity

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