Difference Between Gift Exchange and Market Transactions

Difference Between contri scarcee Exchange and Market TransactionsWhat is the inequality betwixt represent put back and market infinite proceeding, and how do they both relate to gender transaction? designKarl Polanyi (1968), in his critique of the principles that underlie the dressist approach to stinting analysis, attempted to pin down the tools by which the economies of traditional societies could be analysed. Central to the substantivists claims was the understanding that the introduction of bills destroyed indigenous sociable transaction by introducing the nonion of equivalencies of esteem whither none had previously existed. In this approach, the substantivists were avocation the legacy of marcel Mauss,1 who, in his seminal The Gift (1954), had argued that in contemporary and archaic societies as simplespread as North America, Polynesia and Ancient Rome the assumptions of economic analysis, as utilise in explaining market transactions, were not relevant as t hese societies were give elbow room economies.In this essay, I ordain first examine what Mauss meant by the term indue economies, before providing a contemporary character from the lop of Usula Sharma (1984) who demonstrates how a bequest mass meeting whitethorn be instru workforcetal 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 separate the gendered nature of the market. In the conclusion, I problematise the division surrounded by gift and market economies, suggesting that both ar weberian ideal types and that neither is fully adequate to greenback for the complexity of both market transactions and gift converts, as both argon deeply implant in social relations and and so in relations of power.Gender 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 antecedent to be free of covenants (Douglas in Mauss, 2000 vii). However, Mauss argued that the gift in fact entails an obligation to reciprocate2 and thus creates ties between individuals and/ or sort pop outs. For Mauss, this form of economy 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 offer up to call the system of total services, from clan to clan constitutes the most(prenominal) ancient system of economy 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 describe by Ursula Sharma (1984), complete with mutual obligations and the creation of lasting ties.Sharma describes a married couple system whereby the family of the bride must pay a lot 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, pargonnts do not just look forward to the dowry they will receive at the wedding. They look forward to the brides familys ecumenical 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 whole by gender however also by age and caste, control all 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 argon responsible for give earing that obligations are met and proper relations maintained (Sharma, 1984 65), but when the gifts are of cash, then it is the ripened men who are most in control (Sharma, 1984 66). The ties created by the dowry may stick severe consequences for the dis-empowered bride dowry favour s and is favoured by a cultural ethos in which brides good deal be viewed as objects to be passed from one social group to another, win, in India the rapid inflation of dowries has led to a post in which brides are more controlled by than controllers of property (Sharma, 1984 73). Finally, dowry deaths may occur when the grooms family is disappointed with her dowry and hope to negotiate a relegate one for a second marriage (Sharma, 1984 71). However, her power littleness is eased by time, as she moves to being 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 differentiated 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 things is created the transactors are strangers in a state of reciprocal independence which persists after the transaction (Thomas, 1991 14). much(prenominal) an understanding is supported by our common sense understandings of the different spheres of exchange for example, capital of Minnesota Bohannan (1968), in his discussion of the spheres of exchange among the Tiv of Northern Nigeria, identifies a kindred division in Tiv ideology between the gift and markets. The former representing the shaping and continuation of social relationships, while the later calls up no long personal relationship, and which is therefore to be exploited to as great a degree as possible (Bohannan, 1968 300) in this set of relationships, all items have an exchange equivalent. After all, when I exchange cash for a goodness 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 disinterested exchange (Polanyi, 1968) of theoretical liberalism, and therefore of much economic thought, alternatively 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 transnational division of labour is built up (Mies, 1998 4, stress added). First, many have debated the way in which the public sphere is rule by men, but Mies argues that it is in fact the un nonrecreational work of the housewife, of warmth 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, go with by a process of housewifization of women (Mies, 1998 69). Finally, Mies argues that third world women are treasured by capitalism as producers out-of-pocket 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 symbolic hierarchy of gender thus has material cause as women are placed in an economically vulnerable plaza 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 network of globular relations we are all caught up in international relations of yield and appropriation which stretch across the spaces separating us (Thomas, 1991 8-9) and this international relation of exertion 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 marine societies suggests that there is a broad continuum between systems in which it is possible to put back only people for people, or food for food, and those in which a wide range of expansive 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 grand polarities almost unceasingly turn out to be implausible (Thomas, 1991 27). Thomas argues that by scrutinising our concepts via the lens of gender we can reveal the theoretical flaws or weaknesses that we might 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 substantive and formal. The formal meaning of economic derives from the logical character of the means-ends relationship it refers to a defined situation of choice (Polanyi, 1968 122), whereas in the substantive definition the economy here is embodied in institutions that cause individual choices to give rise to mutualist movements that constitute the economic process (Polanyi, 1968 125). In short, formal economics is establish 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 always, in the first instance, a semipolitical 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 abandon the distinction between gift and goodness 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 bills 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 globa l division of labour links third world producers to first world consumers in an stooped power relationship that makes 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.), capital of the United Kingdom Holt, Rinehart Winston, pp 122 143.Levi-Strauss, Claude (1969 1949) Nature 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, smart York W. W. Norton.Mies, Maria (1998 1986) Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World ordered series 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 described the Kula exchange of the Trobriand Islanders.2 Levi Straus, following Mauss, argued that the exchange of women (exogamy) provided the radix 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 specify their work outside of the home (Mies, 1998).