Difference Between Gift Exchange and Market Transactions

Difference Between Gift Exchange and Market TransactionsWhat is the difference mingled with have exchange and market transactions, and how do they both(prenominal) relate to gender coitions?IntroductionKarl Polanyi (1968), in his critique of the principles that underlie the formalist approach to frugal analysis, attempted to define the tools by which the economies of traditional societies could be analysed. Central to the substantivists claims was the understanding that the introduction of money destroyed indigenous social relations by introducing the notion of equivalencies of value where none had previously existed. In this approach, the substantivists were pursual the legacy of Marcel Mauss,1 who, in his seminal The Gift (1954), had argued that in contemporary and archaic societies as widespread as North America, Polynesia and Ancient Rome the assumptions of economic analysis, as used in explaining market transactions, were not relevant as these societies were gift economies .In this essay, I will first examine what Mauss meant by the destination gift economies, before providing a contemporary example from the pass of Usula Sharma (1984) who demonstrates how a gift exchange may be instrumental in the subordination of women. In the second section, I then look at market transactions and, by drawing on the work of Maria Mies (1998), I reveal the gendered character of the market. In the conclusion, I problematise the division between gift and market economies, suggesting that both are weberian ideal casefuls and that neither is fully adequate to account for the complexity of both market transactions and gift exchanges, as both are deeply embedded in social relations and thus in relations of power. sexual activity and Gift ExchangeMarcel Mauss argued that in contemporary western society we make a distinction between gift exchange and market transactions, and that in the west we presume the former to be free of obligations (Douglas in Mauss, 2000 vii). How ever, Mauss argued that the gift in feature entails an obligation to reciprocate2 and thus creates ties between individuals and/ or collections. For Mauss, this form of deliverance differs from the disinterested and self-interested exchange of modern societies (Mauss, 2000 75-6) and he believed that all economies were originally gift economies the system that we propose to call the system of total services, from tribe to clan constitutes the most ancient system of thrift and law forms the base from which the morality of the exchange-thorough-gift has flowed (Mauss, 2000 70). An example of gift exchange is that of Northern India, and the Dowry system as depict by Ursula Sharma (1984), complete with mutual obligations and the creation of lasting ties.Sharma describes a marri suppurate system whereby the family of the bride must pay a dowry to the family of the groom, creating lasting ties between the two families, premised on the ability of the brides family to givewhen they arrange the marriage of a son, parents do not just look forward to the dowry they will receive at the wedding. They look forward to the brides familys general capacity to give (Sharma, 1984 64).Although, if asked, most participants would describe the dowry as freely given in fact behind the scenes explicit bargaining takes place (Sharma, 1984 64). In a society sharply divided, not only by gender but also by age and caste, control over what is given and what happens to these gifts once received is subject to division along lines of gender and age. Senior women in the household are trusty for seeing that obligations are met and proper relations maintained (Sharma, 1984 65), but when the gifts are of cash, then it is the senior men who are most in control (Sharma, 1984 66). The ties created by the dowry may have severe consequences for the dis-empowered bride dowry favours and is favoured by a cultural ethos in which brides can be viewed as objects to be passed from one social group t o another, further, in India the rapid inflation of dowries has led to a situation in which brides are more controlled by than controllers of property (Sharma, 1984 73). Finally, dowry deaths may clear when the grooms family is disappointed with her dowry and hope to negotiate a better one for a second marriage (Sharma, 1984 71). However, her powerlessness is eased by time, as she moves to universe a dowry-taker on the marriage of her sons (Sharma, 1984 72). Thus, we can see that in the gift exchange lasting relationships are created, and that these relations are contrastingiated according to age and gender.Gender and Market TransactionsIn this section I examine the market transaction through the work of Maria Mies (1998), revealing the gendered nature of the supposedly disinterested market. In a market transaction, rather than the exchange of gifts which then creates lasting ties between people, it is presumed that in the exchange of commodities only a relationship between thin gs is created the transactors are strangers in a state of reciprocal independence which persists after the transaction (Thomas, 1991 14). Such an understanding is supported by our common sense understandings of the different spheres of exchange for example, Paul Bohannan (1968), in his discussion of the spheres of exchange among the Tiv of Northern Nigeria, identifies a similar division in Tiv ideology between the gift and markets. The former representing the establishment and continuation of social relationships, while the later calls up no long-term personal relationship, and which is in that respectfore to be exploited to as great a point in time as possible (Bohannan, 1968 300) in this set of relationships, all items have an exchange equivalent. After all, when I exchange cash for a commodity I do not feel myself to be tied into a reciprocal relationship with the shopkeeper.However, Mies argues that rather than the formally free, atomistic individuals, engaged in disintereste d exchange (Polanyi, 1968) of conjectural liberalism, and therefore of much economic thought, instead we find that actors are no less entwined in power relations than in the gift economies outlined above. Indeed, she argues that the exploitative sexual division is the social paradigm upon which the international division of labour is built up (Mies, 1998 4, emphasis added). First, many have debated the elan in which the humans sphere is dominated by men, but Mies argues that it is in fact the un compensable work of the housewife, of caring and nurturing within the domestic sphere (Mies, 1998 ix), or womens work, that allows men to be free to enter the public realm (Mies, 1998 31). Next, Mies argues that the housewifization of labour3 not only naturalizes womens restriction to the private realm, but also means that her paid work is considered only supplementary to that of her husband (Mies, 1998 ix) the process of proletarianization of the men was, therefore, accompanied by a pro cess of housewifization of women (Mies, 1998 69). Finally, Mies argues that third cosmos women are valued by capitalism as producers due to their nimble fingers and as they are considered to be the most docile, manipulable labour force (Mies, 1998 117) in short, due to ascribed gender stereotypes. The emblematic hierarchy of gender thus has material effects as women are placed in an economically vulnerable position and are concentrated in low paid, part-time employment women and their children are the most economically disadvantaged group across the globe. Further, women are locked into an international division of labour whereby the third world women produce not what they need, but what others first world women can buy (Mies, 1998 118, original emphasis). Thomson echoes this argument everyone is now tied up in a historical entanglement of global relations we are all caught up in international relations of production and appropriation which stretch across the spaces separating us (Thomas, 1991 8-9) and this international relation of production is gendered.ConclusionNicholas Thomas rejects Mauss argument that the economies of Melanesia and Polynesia can be regarded as gift economies, which are thus opposed to the market economies of Europe. He argues that this division misses the way that these traditional economies are in fact deeply entangled with the global capitalist trade (Thomas, 1991 4) a wider range of evidence from indigenous Oceanic societies suggests that there is a broad continuum between systems in which it is possible to substitute only people for people, or food for food, and those in which a wide range of magisterial conversions are permitted (Thomas, 1991 4). Divisions, such as Mauss makes, between gift exchange and market transactions are part of the reification of difference between us and them (Thomas, 1991 34), further, the luxuriant polarities almost always turn out to be implausible (Thomas, 1991 27). Thomas argues that by scrutinisi ng our concepts via the lens of gender we can reveal the theoretical flaws or weaknesses that we mogul otherwise miss (Thomas, 1991 2)For Polanyi, the economic sphere as defined by the discipline of economics is base on a conflation of two distinct meanings the meaty and formal. The formal meaning of economic derives from the logical character of the means-ends relationship it refers to a definite situation of choice (Polanyi, 1968 122), whereas in the substantive exposition the economy here is embodied in institutions that cause individual choices to give rise to interdependent movements that constitute the economic process (Polanyi, 1968 125). In short, formal economics is based on the notion of formally free individuals, making rational economic decisions and which create no lasting ties, whereas substantive economics views all economies, whether regarded as gift economies or those based on market transaction, as embedded in social relations. Thomas concurs exchange is alw ays, in the first instance, a political process, one in which wider relationships are expressed (Thomas, 1991 7) for exchange relationships are always differentiated by power (Thomas, 1991 22), by race, class, gender and age.Thomas would not have us resign the distinction between gift and commodity entirely (Thomas, 1991 29), perhaps it would be better to view them as points along a continuum, with each ideal type at the opposing ends but the majority of actual cases lying somewhere in between further it is necessary that we recognise the coexistence of both types (Thomas, 1991 33). Whether or not the introduction of money destroyed indigenous social relations, by introducing the equivalencies of value, as the substantavists claimed, the ties that are created by contemporary commodity exchange may be less evident, but Maria Mies reminds us that nonetheless the global division of labour links third world producers to first world consumers in an asymmetric power relationship that ma kes a lie of the supposed disinterestedness of market transactions.BibliographyBohannan, Paul (1968) Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv, economic Anthropology Readings in Theory and Analysis, LeClair Schneider (Eds.), London Holt, Rinehart Winston, pp 122 143.Levi-Strauss, Claude (1969 1949) spirit and Culture The Problem of Incest, The Elementary Structure of Kinship, London Eyre Spottiswoode, pp. 3-25.Mauss, Marcel (2000 1954) The Gift The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, New York W. W. Norton.Mies, Maria (1998 1986) patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale Women in the International Division of Labour, London Zed Books.Polanyi, Karl (1968 1957) The Economy as Instituted Process, in Economic Anthropology Readings in Theory and Analysis, LeClair Schneider (Eds.), London Holt, Rinehart Winston, Inc. pp 122 143.Sharma, Ursula (1984) Dowry in North India Its Consequences for Women, Women and Property Women as Property, Hirschon, R . (Ed.), London Croom Helm, pp. 62-74.Thomas, Nicholas (1991) Introduction and Objects, Exchange, Anthropology in Entangled Objects Exchange, Materialism and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge Harvard University Press, pp. 1-34.1Footnotes1 As well as that of Bronislaw Malinowski, who in his influential (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, (London Routledge) closely depict the Kula exchange of the Trobriand Islanders.2 Levi Straus, following Mauss, argued that the exchange of women (exogamy) provided the basis for ties between different groups (Levi Strauss, 1969 14) via the incest taboo (Levi Strauss, 1969 9-10) and thus provided the basis for culture (Levi Strauss, 1969 24-5).3 The defining of women as homemakers, and then relying on this definition to characterise their work outside of the home (Mies, 1998).