Ryan Schram
ANTH 1002: Anthropology in the world
Module 3, Week 2, Lectures 1–2
Social Sciences Building (A02), Room 410
ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au
October 9, 2019
Available at http://anthro.rschram.org/1002/3.2.1

What if you lived in a world in which everything you possessed also possessed a hau, and the hau—the spirit of the gift—“wished to return to its birthplace” (Mauss 2000 [1925], 12)?

Everything of value would be embedded in social relationships.

In many societies the embeddedness of value takes the form of a system that organizes objects into distinct, ranked spheres of exchange. One example is the Tiv of Nigeria, who have three spheres:

1. Women as wives
2. Prestige items: brass rods, tugudu cloth, slaves
3. Subsistence items: food, utensils, chickens, tools

Some things, like land, cannot be exchanged for anything, but are inherited (Bohannan 1955).

We can take the idea of spheres of exchange and apply it to the different ways people exchange:

• Kula valuables (bagi, mwali) are a sphere of exchange. These objects can only be exchanged for each other, and not for anything else.
• Moreover, one only does kula with certain kula partners, and one must keep one's kula exchanges separate from other kinds of exchanges with other people, like barter.

Piot describes the relationship among ikpanture (friends).

• The way you treat your ikpanture is distinct from the way you treat other people. The relationship comes with certain rules.
• Ikpanture give each other the same kinds of things people buy and sell with others, but they must adhere to the rules of the social institution of ikpantuna. The things are not kept separate, but the rules for exchanging them are linked to the people involved in the exchange.
• One relies on ikpanture to meet one's needs, but this is not always the easiest or cheapest way to meet needs.
• Ikpanture relationships are not quid pro quo.

Bohannan, Paul. 1955. “Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv.” American Anthropologist, New Series, 57 (1): 60–70.

Mauss, Marcel. 2000 [1925]. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W. D. Halls. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.