Reciprocity (Social and Cultural Anthropology)

NATIVE MESSENGERS OF GOD IN CANADA?:
A TEST CASE FOR BAHA’I UNIVERSALISM (1996)

*** Christopher Buck, “Native Messengers of God in Canada?: A Test Case for Baha’i Universalism.” Baha’i Studies Review 6 (1996): 97–133.

*** Award for Excellence in Baha’i Studies. Association for Baha’i Studies, 1994.

EPILOGUE

Thereupon Tekanawitaˀ [Deganawida, the Peacemaker] stood up in the center of the gathering place, and then he said, “First I will answer what it means to say, ‘Now it is arriving, the Good Message.’ This indeed, is what it means: When it stops, the slaughter of your own people who live here on earth, then everywhere peace will come about, by day and also by night, and it will come about that as one travels around, everyone will be related. …

Now again, secondly, I say, ‘Now it is arriving, the power,’ and this means that the different nations, all the nations, will become just a single one, and the Great Law will come into being, so that now all will be related to each other, and there will come to be just a single family, and in the future, in days to come, this family will continue on.

Now in turn, the other, my third saying, ‘Now it is arriving, the Peace,’ this means that everyone will become related, men and also women, and also the young people and the children, and when all are relatives, every nation, then there will be peace as they roam about by day and also by night. …

Then there will be truthfulness, and they will uphold hope and charity, so that it is peace that will unite all the people, indeed, it will be as though they have but one mind, and they are a single person with only one body and one head and one life, which means that there will be unity.” …

When they are functioning, the Good Message and also the Power and the Peace, moreover, these will be the principal things everybody will live by; these will be the great values among the people.”

– Chief John Arthur Gibson, Concerning the League: The Iroquois League as Dictated in Onondaga, newly elicited, edited and translated by Hanni Woodbury in Collaboration with Reg Henry and Harry Webster on the Basis of A.A. Goldenweiser’s Manuscript. Memoir 9 (Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, 1992): 36–41. 

ABSTRACT

Academic and popular interest has lent prestige to native spirituality and has brought it into prominence. The United Nations proclamation of 1993 as the International Year of Indigenous People gave native peoples international recognition. A corresponding interest in native culture has “valorised” (brought respect to) native spirituality.

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada took a position of advocacy on behalf of First Nations Canadians in its formal submission to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the fall of 1993. The strong native presence in Canadian Bahá’í community life raises the question of the place of native spirituality within a Bahá’í worldview.

Homefront “pioneers” have extended Bahá’í universalism to a recognition of the richness and authenticity of native cultural values. Such recognition has been supported by local Bahá’í policy, as attested in teaching pamphlets addressed to native peoples, in which the concept of First World messengers of God has been validated. Although theoretically acknowledged, explicit recognition of native messengers of God has yet to be formalised in Bahá’í doctrine.

This study discusses the possibilities of incorporating the principle of “Messengers of God to Indigenous Peoples” within formal Bahá’í doctrine, reflecting a development that has already taken place in popular Bahá’í belief in the North American context. A hitherto under-studied Persian text of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá establishes the principle in such a way that its explicit enunciation is now possible.

The problem of historical attestation remains. The prophetic credentials of Iroquois culture hero and statesman Deganawida are critically examined as a test case. The legend of Deganawida has a kernel of historicity overlaid by hagiography, with admitted Christian influence. Nonetheless, if the Bahá’í principle of “Progressive Revelation” can assimilate the Amerindian spiritual legacy as distinct from and developmentally asynchronous with Irano-Semitic and Sino-Indic religious histories, then it might be possible to accord Deganawida a provisional status with Bahá’í prophetology, and still affirm Bahá’u’lláh’s unific role in world history, as oral cultures take their place alongside the more familiar “literate” traditions.

https://www.academia.edu/36294314/_Native_Messengers_of_God_in_Canada_1996_

SUMMARY: Chapter 9, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers the various types of trade and exchange in past societies, and how one may assess it, including different types of interactions (e.g., gift exchange), various scientific techniques (e.g., microscopic examination of materials; trace-element analysis; isotopic analysis), studying material and/or artifact distributions, assessing production and consumption, and analyzing the various means of exchange and interaction.  In my view, this is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record. UPDATED/REVISED March, 2021, some editing and new formatting, minimal new materials.

This paper has been published in a somewhat different form in Meg Harris Williams' "Aesthetic Conflict  and its Clinical Relevance." - Karnac, 2018.

It outlines the various "knife-edge" defenses the infant mind must struggle with in the face of the emotional impact of the mother's beauty, particularly when there is no absolute guarantee of this being reciprocated.
An attempt is made to disambiguate this vulnerability from those which call into play defenses against (Kleinian) unconscious envy.
Both serve to protect the internal good/beautiful mother from destruction, in the infant mind.
One aspect of Narcissism, not usually emphasized, is the lack of conscious awareness of one's rejection of love and beauty when offered by another.
Instead, the narcissist remains almost totally merely conscious of his or her own feelings of being rejected, especially aesthetically.

When we engage in communication, the success of our communicative acts depends on whether we understand each other. This intersubjective understanding depends on both, that the words we use have a meaning and that we know what our words mean. The question which then arises is, what does constitutes the meaning of our words? With regard to this question Wittgenstein claimed that what constitutes the meaning of our words is their rule-guided use in the language. Hence, knowing the meaning of a word means knowing how to use it, in accordance with rules. Grice has criticized this Wittgensteinian view, arguing that meaning and use shall not be confused and that meaning can be analyzed in terms of speakers' intentions. This will enable us to account for cases in which utterances are produced in the absence of rules. What I aim at is to compare these two views in order to shed light on the phenomenon of unconventional language use. To give a philosophical account of the unconventional use of language can help us to grasp not only how intersubjective understanding works, but also why it matters to understand the other.

MA thesis: Ajijic: American dream, just in Mexico

Maģistra darbā “Ahihika: amerikāņu sapnis, tikai Meksikā” aplūkota plaša
pensionētu ārzemnieku kolonija nelielā Meksikas vidienes pilsētā, par darba mērķi izvirzot Ahihikas kopienas divu galveno iedzīvotāju grupu, iebraucēju un meksikāņu, savstarpējo attiecību izpēti, piedāvājot to iespējamo sadzīvošanas modeli un tā sekas.
Pēdējo desmitgadu laikā vērojamais milzīgais ārzemnieku skaita pieaugums un importētais dzīvesstils, ko veicinājusi tā saucamo jauno imigrantu iebraukšana, ir izmainījuši gan Ahihikas vidi, gan attiecības ar vietējiem iedzīvotājiem. Pretēji tradicionālajiem imigrantiem, kas vēlas iedzīvoties Meksikā, patiesi izprast tās kultūru, tradīcijas, apgūst
spāņu valodu un labprāt iesaistās vietējās aktivitātēs, jaunie imigranti izvēlas dzīvot savā ASV kopijā, tikai Meksikā. Arvien vairāk manāms, ka abas iedzīvotāju grupas - ārzemnieki un meksikāņi - dzīvo nosacītā izolācijā viena no otras, saskarsmei notiekot lielākoties došanas-ņemšanas kontekstā, kad katram ir kas nepieciešams.
Darbā aicināts palūkoties uz šīm attiecībām caur reciprocitātes perspektīvu. Kā galvenie apmaiņas veidi apskatīti darbinieku un darbadevēju attiecības, privātuzņēmumu darbība, labdarības aktivitātes un Meksikas netieši sniegtais ārzemnieku kopienai - iemesli izvēlēties Ahihiku kā pensionēšanās galamērķi. Došanas-ņemšanas mehānismi Ahihikas
ikdienā ir gan veidojuši un saliedējuši kopienu, gan arī iespaido kopienā valdošo nevienlīdzību starp abām grupām un no tās izrietošos konfliktus.
Ārzemnieki, kontrolējot meksikāņiem nepieciešamos resursus, piemēram, darbu, vidi, valodu, no “viesiem” ir kļuvuši par “saimniekiem” un arvien skaļāk sāk izvirzīt savas prasības, piemēram, iesaistoties vietējās politikas aktivitātēs, pamatojot to ar savu sniegumu Ahihikai. Tai pat laikā publiskajā diskursā tiek uzsvērta vienlīdzība un tirgus attiecības.

Depuis 2015 Jean-Michel Servet voit dans le “partage au sens de bien
commun” une forme du principe de réciprocité dont il conteste l ’assimilation au don.
Il rejette aussi la conception de la monnaie qui la rapporte au concept de dette de vie,
car elle occulterait l ’existence du partage. Le chapitre discute ce point de vue en en
récusant avec minutie l ’argumentation. Il montre que le partage ne saurait être assimilé
à la réciprocité telle que la définissent R. Thurnwald, B. Malinowski, M. Mauss et K.
Polanyi.

In Enabling Fidelity to God, Jason Whitlark has produced a stunningly fresh reading of Hebrews in its larger Greco-Roman context. Recent scholarship tends to read the soteriology of Hebrews as reflecting, indeed embracing, the Greco-Roman practice of benefaction and the assumptions of reciprocity that undergird it. In the reading of Hebrews, humans respond in gratitude to God's merciful and beneficent acts in an interdependent, mutually reinforcing circle of salvation. Through a remarkable mastery of primary and secondary sources, Whitlark shows rather that Hebrews, in a direct challenge to the reciprocity system, argues that human fidelity to God is utterly and absolutely predicated upon God's divine enablement.

Chapter 1 - Introduction
                    Two Means of Fidelity: Reciprocity and Enablement
                    Benefaction and Partronage: Previous Applications to Interpretation
                    Method: Reading with the Authorial Audience                 
Chapter 2 - The Historical Context of Hebrews
                    A Characterization of Reciprocity
                    The Anthropological Assumption of Reciprocity
Chapter 3 - The Religious Background of Hebrews
                      Divine -Human Reciprocity Relationship in the Jewish Milieu
                      Consequences of Anthropological Assumptions in the Jewish Milieu
Chapter 4 - Fidelity in Hebrews
                      Hebrews and Its Milieu: Echoes of Benefaction in Hebrews
                      The Religious Appropriation of Benefaction/Patronage: Two Models
                      Interpreting Fidelity in Hebrews: A Critique of the Reciprocity Model
                      Interpreting Fidelity in Hebrews: Divine Enablement and Anthropological
                          Assumption in Hebrews
Chapter 5 - Conclusion

Although there is broad consensus that the majority of the early Christ-followers were poor, descriptions of the economic practices of their assemblies have focused on the contributions of a surplus-possessing minority. This article employs ethnographic accounts of the economic activities of the poor to challenge the assumption that Paul’s injunctions to generosity were targeted primarily at wealthier members. Since there is ample evidence from numerous societies of sharing among the poor, one cannot deduce from the fact that Paul commends generosity that he is addressing those with surplus resources. Moreover, the moral rhetoric employed by Paul addresses just such concerns as commonly arise when the poor participate in networks of reciprocal exchange. What Paul envisions and seeks to nurture are local networks of Christ-followers who utilize their mostly subsistence-level resources for their mutual benefit.

Resumen: El autointerés constituye el principal postulado de la teoría económica ortodoxa. Se trata de una perspectiva que ancla sus raíces en el egoísmo psicológico del siglo xvii, que se abre paso en el pensamiento económico a través de los trabajos de autores como Bernard Mandeville y Joseph Butler durante el siglo xviii, y que encuentra su lugar en la ciencia económica con la revolución marginalista y la posterior emergencia de la escuela neoclásica a lo largo de la segunda mitad del siglo xix. Sin embargo, la teoría de juegos, en su versión tradicional, evolutiva y neuronal, lleva décadas mostrando una realidad comportamental del agente económico motivacionalmente heterogénea y moralmente comprometida. Por ello, el objetivo del presente estudio será doble. Por un lado, mostrar cómo nace, concreta y desarrolla la perspectiva egoísta para la economía, y, por otro, dilucidar cuál es la perspectiva comportamental que subyace de los últimos estudios neuroeconómicos.

In 1986 Jonathan Parry’s ‘The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift'’ claimed to overturn conventional understandings of Marcel Mauss, by arguing that market societies most idealise the distinction between gifts and commodities, and gift giving need not entail reciprocity. Based on an analysis of Hindu religious gifts, Parry proposed a broad framework for understanding how ideologies of exchange function in different economic and cosmological contexts. 30 years later, this symposium considers the intellectual milieu in which The Indian Gift was written, and interrogates whether or not the work remains relevant to contemporary research and analysis.  The symposium opens with a short introduction that provides some background to Parry’s essay and incorporates material from a recent interview with him. This is followed by critical comments on it by five influential thinkers on gift exchange:  James Carrier, Chris Gregory, James Laidlaw, Marilyn Strathern and Yunxiang Yan. It ends with a short ‘revisionist’ note by Parry in which he tries to identify some of the limits of the Maussian approach for contemporary anthropology.

The author in her article investigates the rules, norms and practices of gift-giving at weddings in Ghimeș (Romania). She presents local people’s experiences about gift exchange at weddings and the way they interpret the process of gift giving and reciprocation, what calculations precede the compilation of guest lists, what factors are taken into consideration when people accept or reject wedding invitation and in what way they calculate the proper sum of money to be given as gift to the young couple. The return of gifts does not take place automatically in each case, the indebted party is not always asked to reciprocate, and not every indebted guest accepts invitation and returns the gift. The author has reconsidered the local norms of gift-giving at weddings relying upon Marcel Mauss’ model of gift exchange (1925). She wondered to what extent this model elaborated on premodern societies can be applied to societies in the 21st century. She observed gift giving at weddings on her
fi eld site in Ghimeș between 2007 and 2016, and points out that beyond the trinity of giving, accepting and reciprocating fixed by Mauss, some other factors also have to be taken into consideration as not all practices and norms of local gift exchange at weddings can be described with these three acts, which might call for a supplementation and further elaboration of the model.

This piece explores how human-fish relations in a) Paulatuuq, NWT in arctic Canada and b)
amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) in Treaty Six Territory act as a ‘micro-site’
where Indigenous peoples have negotiated, and continue to negotiate, concurrent and often
contradictory ‘sameness and difference’ vis-à-vis the State and its ideologies about lands, waters
and the more-than-human in order to assert and mobilize imperatives of reciprocity, care and
tenderness towards fish as more-than-human beings. I put forth a theory of fish ‘refraction’ and
dispersion, which is a process through which Indigenous peoples in Paulatuuq and
amiskwaciwâskahikan bend and disperse state laws and norms through local relations to fish and
waters. Exploring the ways that humans and fish alike work to navigate the complexities and
paradoxes of colonialism in Alberta and the Northwest Territories in the past and present, I
theorize a fishy and watery form of refraction of state laws, imperatives and colonial paradigms
by Indigenous peoples in Canada. In a time of rapid fish decline across the country --which some
argued is tied to the global realities of the Sixth Mass Extinction Event-- I argue for the urgency
and necessity of centering human-fish relations, alongside other fleshy engagements, in
contemporary and future political struggles.

Статья посвящена одержимости и жертвоприношениям в афрогенных традициях, главным образом в пало монте и сантерии. В ней также уделено внимание обрядам и феноменологии вуду и креольского спиритизма. Жертвоприношения и практики
одержимости (инкорпорации духа) рассматриваются в контексте реципрокной субъективации людей и духов, что позволяет обнаружить общую для обоих направлений сакральной деятельности логику обмена. Как жертвоприношения, так и се-
ансы одержимости взаимно одаривают и усиливают духов и участников культа. Бытие людей связывается с развитием духов мертвых и регламентируется через практики одержимости, обустройство ритуальных ассамбляжей и их усиление
субстанциями жертвенных животных. Интерпретируя одержимость через понятия телесности (воплощенности), становления, интенсивности и ассамбляжа, автор обрисовывает постструктуралистские рубежи афрогенной сакральности, намечая пути сближения с концепциями перспективизма и проблемные места на этих путях.

The article tackles the spiritual possession and sacrifices in Afrogenic traditions, mainly in Palo Monte and Santeria. It also examines the rites and phenomenology of Voodoo and the Creole spiritualism. I consider possession practices (the incorporation of the spirit) and sacrifices in the context of the reciprocal subjectivity of people and spirits in order to locate the sacred logic of exchange unifying both types of activity. Sacrifices and possession rituals bestow and empower spirits and worshipers mutually. The existence of people is associated with the development of spirits of the dead and regulated through the possession practice, the arrangement of ritual assemblies and their strengthening with the substances of sacrificial animals. By interpreting the logic of possession through the notions of embodiment, becoming, intension, and assemblage, I outline the post-structural frontiers of the Afrogenic sacredness and draft the ways of convergence with concepts of perspectivism and some problems related to these approaches.

From the bestselling author of Blink and The Tipping Point , Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success overturns conventional wisdom about genius to show us what makes an ordinary person an extreme overachiever. Why do some people achieve so much more than others? Can they lie so far out of the ordinary? In this provocative and inspiring book, Malcolm Gladwell looks at everyone from rock stars to professional athletes, software billionaires to scientific geniuses, to show that the story of success is far more surprising, and far more fascinating, than we could ever have imagined. He reveals that it's as much about where we're from and what we do, as who we are-and that no one, not even a genius, ever makes it alone. Outliers will change the way you think about your own life story, and about what makes us all unique.

In this paper (published five years after I wrote it) I attempt to show that, through his reading of Proudhon in The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), Lévi-Strauss aimed at solving the well-known dilemma put forth by Hobbes and Rousseau: was there at the dawn of humanity human competition, or peaceful commonality? With this purpose, I analyse two key passages in chs. 3 and 21 of Lévi-Strauss’s doctoral dissertation which heretofore have not received due attention. Read side by side, these passages prove, first, that Lévi-Strauss was deeply familiar with Proudhon’s thought. Secondly, they show that Proudhon’s ideas influenced his own concepts considerably, to the point that their respective views can be said to intertwine. Lastly, they make patent that Proudhon’s influence on the founder of structural anthropology touches on the very fundamental problem to which the latter consecrated his life and career as an anthropologist. Additionally, I provide some insights into Lévi-Strauss’s early writings, his reading of Mauss, and the work of Pierre Clastres.

Drawing is one of the most popular recreational activities among children’s peer groups. The drawing child is not only building a representation that ‘stands for’ something of the outside world, he is projecting in the image a sign that refers to his personal identity. Each line inscribed on the sheet contains an indexical reference to the child who has traced it. In fact, the result of a drawing session is primarily a ‘thing’ that refers to its manufacturer and, as it, can be used to mediate social relationships. This image-object has its own ‘social life’ which deserves observation. Following the ‘cultural biography’ of the drawings you will discover that they have a later life in circuits of exchanges among the children. Drawing on ten months of field research in an infant school (3-5 years old), this article will investigate several ethnographic cases coming to outline different ‘gift strategies’ that underlie the use of drawings to fulfill social inclusion and exclusion in peer groups and to establish, reproduct and manifest social relations.

My first encounter with spawning salmon gleams with a cool, moonlit radiance in my memory. I'd grown up in the suburban east coast and knew nothing of this wild fish and its mysterious ways. It was in the mid-eighties, and I was kayaking in the Prince William Sound a year or two before the taut, ever-shifting surface of that life-filled sea was generously layered with a glistening blanket of oil by the Exxon company. This was my first time in Alaska, and I was stunned by the vastness of the mountains laced with glaciers and the abundance of bald eagles that seemed to gaze down at me from every overhanging branch and snag. We had beached our kayaks on one of the larger islands for the night, and after a simple meal I went walking off along the coast as the sun was slipping down toward the horizon, drinking the salt air and listening to the lapping of the small waves and the wind in the needles. After some time I came to the edge of a surging stream about twelve feet across, whose surface was rippling and splashing in the fading light -and without paying much attention I sat down on a mossy rock a ways back from the stream's edge just to bask in the rushing speech of those waters, and to gaze out into the oncoming night. And I lost myself in some reverie or other, until my awareness was brought back to the place by a pale glow beginning to spread into the sky from the rocks on the far side of the stream. The glow got steadily more intense until, as I watched, the full moon was hatched from those rocks, huge and round as a ripe peach, pouring its radiance across the stony beach and the gleaming waves and the rustling spruce needles and generally casting a kind of spell over the whole place. Now, I have never, of course, seen a cow jump over the moon. But that night I did see a fish jump over the moon. A great streamlined silhouette, its tail flapping, arced right over the full moon, and splashed back into the water. Whaa?! I couldn't believe what I'd just seen, and so was still staring at the after-image -and then another silhouette leapt right over the moon! I got up and walked over to the water's edge: the stream was thick with salmon, boiling with salmon, all jostling and surging against the current in fits and starts -it was as if the stream was made of salmon! I gazed and gazed for a couple hours. Then went back to my tent and tried to sleep, but couldn't. So I came back in the middle of the night, and stood staring into that moon-illuminated river of fish, and then I waded out into the middle of that mass of silvery, sparkling muscles all surging and lunging against the current. In the middle of the stream I

In this book I argue that in order to understand why we pay tax—tax compliance—as well as why we avoid doing so, we have to look beyond legal changes, psychological experiments, economic results, the organization of revenue collection and all actors’ practices in society’s tax arena and study the type of relations, and expectations, that taxpaying is seen to create in society. In this quest, returning to Marcel Mauss and his analysis of the gift and its resulting relations will help us understand this. I want to direct our gaze onto the concept of reciprocity, which is often proposed as an explanation in tax compliance research, and explore its diverse meanings and implications.

Reflecting on the recent book by Marina L. Butovskaya and Victoria V. Rostovtseva, the author discusses altruism and selfishness as preconditions for cooperation of humans in society for collective actions, as a result of which its sociocultural transformations take place. It is argued that the problem of sources of cooperative behavior is by no means the one of strict choice between altruism and selfishness. Cooperation in society is based on a combination of altruism and selfishness in human behavior, with reciprocity of relationships as a connecting link between them. Butovskaya and Rostovtseva’s approach to the problem of the sources of cooperation as the background of social evolution is compared with the theories for which this problem is crucially important, too but solved differently – the collective action theory and collective acceptance theory of institutions.

For the indigenous Dene of subarctic Canada, food is central to negotiating their relationships with family, animals, and the spirits of ancestors. Indigenous religions and environmental relationships are seldom discussed in terms of foodways, yet centering a discussion of Dene spirituality around the mate-riality and necessity of food grounds an understanding in the lived realities of Dene peoples. Dene understand animals to gift themselves as food to hunters, who in return demonstrate respect to the animal by sharing the meat within the human community and by offering meat to ancestors through ceremonies such as feeding the fire, thus maintaining social relationships with animals and ancestors through respectful reciprocity. Dene also demonstrate respect by following interspecies social conventions, protocols of respect particular to different beings which are followed by all those involved in the killing, distribution, cooking, and eating. This includes not just male hunters but also women so that animals will continue to give themselves to the people. In traditional Dene ontol-ogies, respectful reciprocity through sharing food serves to maintain balanced and mutually beneficial relationships between social beings living in the same environment.

In Thyestes, Seneca rewrites the practice of the gift (536, 984) as a tool of tyrant’s revenge, which takes advantage of its captivating power. By combining the category of fides with the mechanism of fraus, Atreus intends to perform a deceit that can meet the ‘unfair expectation’ (spes improba, 295) of Thyestes, who hopes to obtain the kingdom (regna nunc sperat mea, 289), and provide him with a tangible guarantee of peace (fides pacis, 294). Such a dynamic takes the form of a “simulated gift”, a practice of reciprocity in which Atreus plays the role of the giver (dans) and Thyestes is led to assume the role of the receiver (accipiens). The tyrant represents it as a way to close the gap between him and his brother and reciprocate his iniuriae. The paper aims to explore how Seneca shapes the tyrant’s gift as a tragic pattern of revenge- system and a reversal of the theories on gift and benefit provided in De beneficiis.

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time.

Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.

Eroticism, kinship, and gender all intersect in transactional sexual relationships between young women known as curtidoras and older white men in Maputo, Mozambique. I draw on postcolonial feminism to argue that curtidoras’ erotic powers are a central part of sexual–economic exchanges with men and that senior female kin are deeply involved in processes of seduction and extraction of money. I conceptualize relationships between curtidoras, female kin, and male partners as “gendered triads of reciprocity” to unsettle Western stereotypes of female victims and patriarchal structures in Africa. Transactional sex often makes the partners mutually dependent and emotionally vulnerable, and, although moralities of exchange collide, young women tend to redistribute accumulated money from men among female seniors and kin.

Luca Aversano (ricercatore di Storia della musica), Corrado Bologna (professore ordinario di Filologia e linguistica romanza), Sergio Botta (docente di Storia delle religioni, Università La Sapienza), Francesca Brezzi (professore senior di Filosofia morale), Giuliana Calcani (professore associato di Storia dell'Archeologia), Miriam Castorina (assegnista di ricerca Dipartimento di Studi orientali, Università La Sapienza -professore a contratto di Lingue e letterature della Cina e dell'Asia sudorientale, Università degli Studi Roma Tre), Adele Teresa Cozzoli (professore associato di Lingua e letteratura greca), Lorenzo D'Avack (professore ordinario di Filosofia del diritto), Mariangela Luiso (studente CdL Giurisprudenza), Claudia Gatti (Università degli Studi Roma Tre), Daniele Manacorda (professore ordinario di Metodologia della ricerca archeologica), Leticia Marrone (Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda, Buenos Aires), Vincenzo Matera (professore associato di Antropologia, Dipartimento di sociologia e ricerca sociale -Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca), Giovanni Scarano (Presidente della Scuola di Economia e Studi aziendali), Giovanni Serges (professore ordinario di Istituzioni di diritto pubblico), Massimiliano Smeriglio (vicepresidente della Regione Lazio con delega all'università) Ringraziamo Michela Monferrini per la gentile concessione del brano pubblicato a p. 33 tratto dal suo romanzo Chiamami anche se è notte (Mondadori 2014) e Bia Simonassi (treebookgallery.blogspot.com) che ha realizzato per noi il mind map pubblicato alle pp. 34-35

Para la filosofía contemporánea, las relaciones entre el don y la reciprocidad han sido siempre problemáticas, casi imposibles. En gran parte por la perspectiva de una economía de mercado basada en el intercambio: el don corre la amenaza de ser reducido a simple objeto, encerrado en el círculo que obliga devolver lo que se ha recibido.
Frente a ello, la cosmovisión de las naciones indígenas puede constituir una propuesta alternativa y superadora. 
En el caso de los Guaraníes, la economía del don y la reciprocidad que que practican se distingue de la economía de mercado ya que no se basa en el intercambio, sino que se encuentra fuertemente unida al carácter festivo y celebrativo de su cultura, donde prima la gratuidad y el interés por el otro.
Bartomeu Melià, antropólogo, lingüista y jesuita que ha conocido y estudiado en profundidad al pueblo Guaraní, proporciona  un recorrido de vivencias e interpretaciones de un valor incalculable.
Esta obra presenta y reelabora los rasgos fundamentales de esta interpretación poniéndolos en relación con las posiciones y debates de la filosofía contemporánea.

This book sheds light on the little-known phenomenon of the final process of slavery in Morocco during European colonialism in order to unravel the contemporary roots of servility and stereotypes of blackness in the Arab world. Unlike other generalist analyses, this research focuses on the practice of servitude through a case study, centred on the city of Tetouan. Until well into the twentieth century, bought women arrived in the city to feed the domestic labour market and also to become a sign of social distinction for the wealthy classes. This case is paradigmatic for reconstructing the relations between masters and domestics of slave origin, from the economic, familial and symbolic dimensions, giving names and faces to the subalterns in order to rescue them from oblivion. This historical ethnography is based on a complex and original triangulation of Moroccan and Spanish oral, visual and written sources, which serves as a methodological orientation for the transdisciplinary study of societies in their historical complexity. The research presents a wealth of challenges for collective memory studies, showing that past and present intermingle to discuss the very notion of slavery, based on the oral history of descendants and the documentary rhetorics of the classification of people in the buying and selling, transfer or manumission of slaves. The result is a complex narrative that weaves together the origins of these women, their life trajectories, and the paradoxes of subordination, highlighting the subtle mechanisms of physical and symbolic interdependence in extreme power relations.
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Este libro aporta luz a un fenómeno poco conocido como el proceso final de la esclavitud en Marruecos, en tiempos del colonialismo europeo, para desentrañar las raíces contemporáneas del servilismo y los estereotipos sobre la negritud en el mundo árabe. A diferencia de otros análisis generalistas, esta investigación pone la lupa sobre la praxis del servilismo a partir de un estudio de caso, centrado en la ciudad de Tetuán. Hasta bien entrado el siglo XX llegaron a la ciudad mujeres compradas para nutrir el mercado de trabajo doméstico y devenir también un signo de distinción social de las clases pudientes. Este caso es paradigmático para reconstruir las relaciones entre amos y domésticas de origen esclavo, desde la dimensión económica, familiar y simbólica, poniendo nombre y rostro a las personas subalternas para rescatarlas del olvido. Esta etnografía histórica se basa en una compleja y original triangulación de fuentes orales, visuales y escritas, marroquíes y españolas, que sirve de orientación metodológica para el estudio transdisciplinar de las sociedades en su complejidad histórica. La investigación presenta abundantes desafíos para los estudios de la memoria colectiva, al mostrar que el pasado y el presente se entremezclan para discutir la propia noción de esclavitud, a partir de la historia oral de los descendientes y las retóricas documentales sobre la clasificación de personas en la compra-venta, el traspaso o la manumisión de esclavas. El resultado es un complejo relato que entreteje los orígenes de aquellas mujeres, sus trayectorias vitales, y las paradojas de la subordinación, evidenciando los sutiles mecanismos de interdependencia física y simbólica en las relaciones extremas de poder.

Vicerrectorado administratiVo centro de inVestigaciones agroalimentarias (ciaal) mérida -Venezuela El plátano en la gastronomía Venezolana (Musa paradisiaca / Harton cv) José daniel anido rivas y rafael cartay (Compiladores) El plátano En la gastronomía vEnEzolana (Musa paradisiaca / Harton cv) Primera edición, 2010

Radical geographers have been preoccupied with Marxism for four decades, largely ignoring an earlier anarchist tradition that thrived a century before radical geography was claimed as Marxist in the 1970s. When anarchism is considered, it is misused as a synonym for violence or derided as a utopian project. Yet it is incorrect to assume anarchism as a 'project', which instead reflects Marxian thought. Anarchism is more appropriately considered a protean process that perpetually unfolds through the insurrectionary geographies of the everyday and the prefigurative politics of direct action, mutual aid, and voluntary association. Unlike Marxism’s stages of history and revolutionary imperative, which imply an end-state, anarchism appreciates the dynamism of the social world. In staking a renewed anarchist claim for radical geography, I attend to the divisions between Marxism and anarchism as two alternative socialisms, wherein the former positions equality alongside an ongoing flirtation with authoritarianism while the latter maximizes egalitarianism and individual liberty by considering them as mutually reinforcing. Radical geographers would do well to reengage anarchism as there is a vitality to this philosophy that is missing from Marxian analyses that continue to rehash ideas–such as vanguardism and a proletarian dictatorship–that are long past their expiration date.

Tombs of the kings of the Western Han dynasty (202 B.c.e.–9 c.e.) often contain burial items that are related to the material culture of the Eastern Eurasian Steppe. These artifacts are usually interpreted in a general sense, for instance as a sign for the fascination of the Han elite with the exotic. A closer analysis of relevant finds, however, shows different strategies of dealing with foreign influences. While the exchange with the empire's northern neighbors is evidenced through goods for which identical excavated parallels from the steppe exist, the royal tombs of the Han also contained items that resemble and reference steppe motifs and objects but were clearly produced locally and for local consumers. Especially the latter type of artifacts can thus not simply be interpreted as the passive byproduct of exchange relations. Instead, we have to acknowledge that design, production, and usage of these objects were based on conscious decisions. Based on the insight that objects always have a social function, this article argues that the Han elite not only appropriated steppe influences and motifs but also strategically (re)produced and integrated them into their world in order to redefine, enhance, and strengthen their position within their social framework.

Anarchism and geography have a long and disjointed history, characterized by towering peaks of intensive intellectual engagement and low troughs of ambivalence and disregard. This paper traces a genealogy of anarchist geographies back to the modern development of anarchism into a distinct political philosophy following the Enlightenment. The initial rise of geographers’ engagement with anarchism occurred at the end of the nineteenth-century, owing to Élisée Reclus and Peter Kropotkin, who developed an emancipatory vision for geography in spite of the discipline’s enchantment with imperialism at that time. The realpolitik of the war years in the first half of the twentieth-century and the subsequent quantitative revolution in geography represent a nadir for anarchist geographies. Yet anarchism was never entirely abandoned by geographical thought and the counterculture movement of the 1970s gave rise to radical geography, which included significant interest in anarchist ideas. Unfortunately another low occurred during the surge of neoliberal politics in the 1980s and early 1990s, but hope springs eternal, and from the late 1990s onward the anti-globalization movement and DIY culture have pushed anarchist geographies into more widespread currency. In reviewing the literature, I hope to alert readers to the ongoing and manifold potential for anarchist geographies to inform both geographical theory and importantly, to give rise to more practice-based imperatives where building solidarities, embracing reciprocity, and engaging in mutual aid with actors and communities beyond the academy speaks to the ‘freedom of geography’ and its latent capacity to shatter its own disciplinary circumscriptions.

What is the role of gifts in Medea’s story, and what do they convey? By the means of her gifts, Medea seems able to build relationships and, conversely, to take revenge upon her enemies. Moreover, on the basis of the gifts, she interprets offences and revenge as the reversals of the positive reciprocity mechanisms in which she is involved. So, starting from the assumption that Medea is, above all, a “female giver”, the paper explores the most relevant representations of her mythic tale, in the light of the category of gift. Therefore, in the first part (“the gifts for Jason”), we will pay particular attention to Pindar’s, Apollonius Rhodius’, Ovid’s and Valerius Flaccus’ portrayals of Medea’s gifts, without overlooking the most important mythographic sources (Apollodorus and Diodorus Siculus); in the second part (“the gifts against Jason”) we will examine Euripides’ and Seneca’s tragedies, in comparison with Dracontius’ Medea, in order to highlight the way by which Greek and Roman authors rewrite her myth in relation to the dynamics of positive reciprocity and their violations.

Recent discourse on citizenship and identity in Myanmar has been dominated by practices of othering and exclusion, often amplifying historically constructed notions of ethnicity and belonging. Notions of citizenship, both in terms of the right to belong, and the performative role of citizens, remain contested. Despite a recent emphasis on poverty reduction in rural areas, climate change, inequitable market chains and an absence of effective welfare have contributed to a rural context in Myanmar best described as precarious. From within this context, there has been a (re) emergence of localized, self-organized community welfare associations.  Although drawing on traditions of reciprocity which have long existed in rural Myanmar, these organizations represent an increasingly sophisticated iteration of self-help, frequently self-identifying with the concept of parahita-loosely defined as altruism.  By occupying an operational space located between formal religious institutions, village administration and traditions of reciprocity, these organizations have in essence created a new, albeit contested space for interdependency, largely built around identity of place. Although modest in the scale of financial resource redistribution, these organizations nonetheless embody a peculiar emergent politics, generating new forms of citizenship, linked to performative action, in the form of participation in visible social works. The performative expectations are, however, in most cases linked strongly to Burmese/Buddhist identity, which raises a wider question as to whether these emergent social welfare movements are likely to lead to more inclusive forms of belonging, or be potential vehicles for more exclusionary, nationalist movements. This research, based on in-depth interviews with 12 community welfare organizations in central Myanmar, as well as data from large scale longitudinal studies of rural poverty, explores the nature of parahita claims, the limits and boundaries of localized welfare arrangements, and the possibilities for articulation of citizenship which reside outside established boundaries of locality, ethnicity and religion.

Schenkt man den gegenwärtig in der Politik und den Massenmedien gebräuchlichen Gesellschaftsanalysen Glauben, befinden wir uns in einer Zeit des fundamentalen Umbruchs. Der Blick richtet sich dabei vornehmlich auf die durch Globalisierungsprozesse ausgelösten Veränderungen des sozioökonomischen Faktors Arbeit, der neben dem Staat als der zentrale Integrationsmechanismus der Gesellschaft aufgefasst wird. Auch die Sozialwissenschaften haben sich im Rahmen der soziologischen Armutsforschung und der soziologischen Analyse sozialer Ungleichheit an dieser Argumentationslogik beteiligt. Bereits in den 80er Jahren kursierten hier Schlagworte wie "Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft" 1 und "Neuen Armut" 2 , um den wahrgenommenen Umstrukturierungen der Arbeitswelt und den damit einhergehenden gesellschaftlichen Konsequenzen einen griffigen Namen zu geben. Seit den 90er Jahren wird jedoch mit dem zunächst in Frankreich prominent gewordenen sozialpolitischen Topos der Exklusion ein weitaus bedrohlicheres Szenario entworfen, in dessen Mittelpunkt die Diagnose einer zunehmenden Innen-Außen-Spaltung der Gesellschaft steht. 3 Der These liegen empirische Studien zugrunde, die auf das verstärkte Wirken kumulativer Exklusionsprozesse hinweisen, in deren Folge eine immer größer werdende Anzahl von Menschen vollständig von den gesellschaftlichen Berufs-und Statuspositionen ausgeschlossen werden. Dieses Schreckgespinst der vollständigen gesellschaftlichen Exklusion von Niedrigqualifizierten, Alten, Migranten etc. wirft seinen düsteren Schatten allerdings nicht nur auf diejenigen, die der "Underclass" 4 bzw. der Gruppe von "Überflüssigen" 5 , "Überzähligen" 6 , "Ent-1

Marcel Mauss’s concept of the gift has provided what is arguably one of the most productive analytic frameworks that economic anthropology has produced. Thinking carefully about gift exchange can tell us why we feel the need to give people things, why they feel the need to return them and why some gifts are valued differently from others. The gift is important because it allows us to see better where our sociality meets the economy. The chapter explores this topic in four sections. The first section outlines three core assumptions about gift giving that were common in early anthropological readings of Marcel Mauss’s work. The second section discusses how anthropologists have gone on to question the idea that there is a clear distinction between gifts and commodities. The third section explores how anthropologists have critiqued the Maussian assumption of reciprocity. The fourth section describes the broader place of the gift in anthropological thought.

The Burgundian duke Charles the Bold (1433-1477) was not particularly well known for his liberality. According to De Barante, the nineteenth century historian of the Burgundian dukes, he was seen by his officers and the nobles as ‘bien avare et peu liberal pour un prince si jeune et si nouveau’. One of this article’s purposes is to investigate this claim, but my larger concern is to make sense of the patterns of gift-giving evidenced by the available sources. Although we do not have complete records of all Charles’s gift giving, the account of the highest financial officer, the argentier, combined with the household ordinances and a few narrative sources, provide a good overview of the importance and nature of gift-giving in Charles’s court. These texts reveal a charged and unstable culture of gift-giving, one in which the category of ‘gift’ itself is in some disarray and where bureaucratic pressures both distort the gift and ntensify Charles’s need to deploy gifts in order to secure his power.