gift economy

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Maternal Gift Economy: Webinar Gifts

This was originally posted December 7, 2020

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.”

Maternal Gift Economy: Webinar Gifts by Carol P. Christ

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”

Gift-Economy in a Time of Lack by Elisabeth Schilling

Carol Christ wrote about gift economy on this blog in 2013, and I am taken by her story of the woman who brought raisins or cracked nuts to the group even though she had very little. In beginning to encounter the literature on gift economy myself, I am wondering how it all works, especially wondering, perhaps outside of such a conversation if it doesn’t relate or misses the point, what someone who feels they have nothing to give can give.

When Genevieve Vaughan wrote about gift economy in Ms. Magazine in 1991, she wrote, “where there is enough, we can abundantly nurture others. The problem is that scarcity is usually the case, artificially created in order to maintain control, so that other-orientation becomes difficult and self-depleting.”

I think we start to look for other ways of existing when we experience the brokenness of a current existence. The exchange economy under mindless capitalism does not honor equal, fair exchanges. If we could keep from manipulating and being deceptive about what a product is worth, if we could more generously assess the contribution of workers, then some of us might not be bothered. Of course, for that work which is never compensated by money, mostly women’s work, that is the other issue that might not be solved by more equal exchange, and probably more the point of Vaughn’s.

Continue reading “Gift-Economy in a Time of Lack by Elisabeth Schilling”

The Gifts of Life: Do We Remember? by Carol P. Christ

Strawberries shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward, you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears.

Sweetgrass belongs to Mother Earth. Sweetgrass pickers collect properly and respectfully, for their own use and the needs of their community. They return a gift to the earth.

That is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value increases with their passage. The fields made a gift of berries to us and we made a gift of them to our father. The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes. This is hard to grasp for societies steeped in notions of private property, where others are, by definition, excluded from sharing.

The essence of a gift is that it creates a set of relationships. The currency of a gift economy is, at its root, reciprocity.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 27-28

Thanksgiving has come and gone. We gave thanks for the food placed on the table and for the family or friends who shared it with us.

In our culture giving thanks can feel forced: I remember how my brothers and cousins and I hated to be asked to say grace at Grandma’s house. When we have not been taught, it can be difficult for us to understand that nothing is ours by right. Continue reading “The Gifts of Life: Do We Remember? by Carol P. Christ”

A Gift Economy: Could It Be Better To Give Than To Receive? by Carol P. Christ

In a gift economy inequalities are balanced out by the cultural practice of gift-giving. If you have more, then you give more, if you have little, you still feel it is better to give than to receive. A person who hoards wealth is not viewed positively.

The worldview of a gift-giving economy is so far from our own that we can barely comprehend it.

In Skoteino, Crete, eighty-seven year old Marika awaits eagerly for the arrival of our group. She does not come empty-handed to join us after we have finished a meal lovingly prepared by Christina. Marika brings a bottle of raki and urges us all to join her in downing a small glass of her homemade moonshine. Often she offers us nuts she has cracked or raisins she has prepared as well . She has almost nothing and lives without many modern conveniences, but she would not consider joining us without bringing a gift.

In Zaros, we arrive at our favorite hotel only to be told that the taverna that serves fresh trout is closed because the owner’s son will be getting married in the evening. When I complain that we have come to eat the special trout, our whole group is invited to the wedding. Outside the taverna the grandmothers light fires under massive copper pots where they prepare the food. Over 600 people have been invited to the wedding. We are first served macaroni with virgin olive oil and goat cheese, then lamb, then goat, and salad. When the wine runs out, bottles of raki are brought to the tables. We dance all night long in a kind of a frenzy. Continue reading “A Gift Economy: Could It Be Better To Give Than To Receive? by Carol P. Christ”