Category: Gift of Life

In the 1960s and 1970s, American-born Genevieve Vaughan was living in Rome with her husband, philosopher Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, and their three daughters. When Rossi-Landi, using Marxist models, began to write about language as a form of “exchange,” Vaughan was inspired to articulate her alternative theory based on the idea that language was developed and is learned through the gifts of the mother to the child. From that beginning, Vaughn developed an alternative theory of culture based on what she calls the “gift economy.”

We are born into a Gift Economy practiced by those who mother us, enabling us to survive. The economy of exchange, quid pro quo, separates us from each other and makes us adversarial, while gift giving and receiving creates mutuality and trust.

According to Vaughan, the “exchange economy” is based in the gift economy, while at the same time it denies the gifts it has received from mothers and mothering figures and disparages mothers and their work. Mothers rear children who enter into the exchange economy, but these children would not be alive to enter the exchange economy unless they had first been nurtured by the freely given gifts of mother. Vaughan writes that prior to patriarchy, cultures and societies valued the gifts of mothers and were organized around the principle of gift-giving. Vaughan states that gift-giving economies are based in the idea of meeting the needs of others, while exchange economies are focused on the enrichment of the individual self. She believes that re-valuing and re-instating the gift economy is the only path to creating and restoring peace and justice in the world. Continue reading “Maternal Gift Economy: Webinar Gifts by Carol P. Christ”